Other than the cheese toast for breakfast this morning ($0.16), my last day on food stamps will be spent eating leftovers. Spaghetti for lunch, and for dinner either taco soup from Monday or Dal Palak from Wednesday. I still have plenty of bread, potatoes, pasta, onions, old broccoli, rice and beans. I have so many beans. I could cook something different tonight, but this food needs to be eaten. There wouldn't be much of a lesson from working so hard on preparing good food on the cheap only to throw it away.
I feel like I did ok this week. In class we talk a lot about resources and how lacking a single resource can wear on those resources that an individual does have, causing that person stress. In a simple example, a person loses their job (resource), therefore losing their health insurance (resource) and source of income (resource), causing them to rely on their family for help (resource), which diminishes their self-esteem (resource) needed for interviews, causing depression and so on. It snowballs.
This week the resource I most lacked was time. I came home from 5 days out of town and threw myself into this project in the midst of work, class, meetings and study time. In turn, I wasn't able to buy the delicious fresh produce I'd been craving or cook many of the meals that I really wanted to. Lucky for me, I have lots of other resources to rely on, like an awesome husband who will clean the mess in the kitchen that I made (cooking for only myself) while I study. This helped in reducing my stress allowing me to bounce back quicker. But week after week, I'm not so sure. Lucky for me, this project was only for 5 days. That also means that I have hope (resource) that tomorrow I will be going out to eat, something I look forward to.
According to a new study (click here to see the interactive map), there are over 100,000 "food insecure" people in Davidson County. That's more than 16% of the population. Over 33,000 of them are children.
For even more of a disappointment, type in "Nashville, TN" in the search box on this Food Desert Locator to see how much of Nashville is considered a food desert.
What can our city do to increase access to healthy food for the people in these food deserts, thereby increasing their resources, reducing stress and improving the overall health (physical and mental) of our community?
A peek into what it means to live, work and play in the area just south of Downtown Nashville.
1 comments:
An awesome husband is indeed a wonderful "resource"!
Thanks so much for charting your journey here. It's been very instructive.
I think Nashville needs more community gardens, more access to fresh, healthy produce and lean, healthy proteins for ALL income brackets, not just the Green Hills/Belle Meade set. There's really something wrong when low income folks are forced to resort to a greasy, salty bucket of KFC because it costs just $20 bucks. Meanwhile just a few miles away wealthier folks spend 4 times that amount on organic, free-range chicken and veggies at an upscale restaurant.
Health is as much an economic issue as anything else.
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