Are Food Banks solving the Food Insecurity Problem?

The Toronto food problem can in part be described by how a significant number of individuals are still food insecure. In challenging the built environment to provide solutions to this problem the accessibility, affordability, adequacy, and appropriateness of foods offered in food banks will be discussed. Food banks have received attention in recent years and conquered up debate as to whether these methods were in fact helpful to populations or degrading and inadequate.

Valerie Tarasuk is an author that writes about food insecurity and “the problem”; her theory of food security will be contrasted and compared against Wayne Roberts (the Toronto Food Policy Council President).

I cannot speak for Tarasuk in answering whether or not she thinks food banks are a viable solution to the food insecurity problem, what I do know is that she focuses her discussion on very low income groups. Her focus is these people need to eat. Period. She is less concerned about what they eat, but challenges us to just have everybody fed. Additionally, plainly put, she believes that a better distribution of money would be the means to have this accomplished. Seeing how very low-income families spend the greater portion of money on foods, she has no doubt, and the literature supports her, that these people would be spending money on foods. Furthermore, she is less concerned where that money is being spent: on an apple or burger… not her concern.

Whereas, Wayne Roberts perhaps is more idealistic in that having everybody fed is simply not good enough. According to his perspective, people need to have culturally appropriate and healthy foods.

In reference to my previous blog, “Tricking parents to eat fruits and vegetables” perhaps our paradigm was wrong in relation to the food security problem. Perhaps telling people fruits and vegetables are good for you isn’t good enough…. As far as Malcolm Gladwell discussion went in TVO, seatbelts were right in front of parents and they were told over and over by public safety campaigns the importance of buckling up… didn’t happen, until they scared parents into buckling up for the safety of their children.

What I propose, is that maybe Valerie is onto something here. Maybe people need to develop their own agency… people don’t like to be told what to do… perhaps educating people that fruits are healthy isn’t the problem here…

With that said I’m not sure money distribution is the problem either, seeing how only 33% of high income groups (compare to 18% of low income groups) are reaching their recommended amount of green leafy vegetables (63%, and 57% respectively for total fruits) (USDA, 2009). Therefore, a high percentage of high-income group individuals aren’t reaching their daily intake either. What do we do now?

Change our paradigm. Look into the built environments; are there food desserts, how expensive is transportation to get to grocery stores? Are our environments safe… do people want to walk to get fresh fruits regularly? Are they culturally appropriate vegetables around? Do I know how to cook? What they heck is a cheese grater?

Aphrodisiacs

The other day I went to The Big Carrot, and found myself in an aisle with herbal remedies claiming to have natural plant hormones that would enhance female curves, increase sex drive, reduce menstrual cramps and menopause symptoms. Looking around twice to make sure my mom was not around, I realized I was in an aisle that had every pant, seed, and herb available that could influence the hormones of a body. Interesting… My friend came by holding two melons in her arms near her chest, I laughed at the coincidence... and then, the discussion on aphrodisiacs began....

According to my source (Cambridge World History of Food), aphrodisiacs were first sought out as a remedy for fears of inadequate performance and to boost fertility. In earlier times, food was not as available as it is today, thus undernourishment was common and created a loss of libido as well as decreased fertility rates. Foods that "by nature" represent "seed or semen” such as bulbs, eggs, snails were considered to have sexual powers. Aphrodisiacs also included foods that resembled genitalia, because their appearance was considered sexually stimulating. Consensus was not always reached upon when deciding what foods were actually aphrodisiacs. However, the ancient list included "Anise, basil, carrot, salvia, gladiolus root, orchid bulbs, pistachio nuts, rocket (arugula), sage, sea fennel, turnips, skink flesh (a type of lizard) and river snails."

The concept of aphrodisiacs might all sound a little nuts. However, when googling scholarly journals on aphrodisiacs I came across the article entitled,”The aphrodisiac and adaptogenic properties of ginseng" (E Nocerino, M Amato, AA Izzo - Fitoterapia, 2000) from the department of experimental pharmacology. Ginseng is a root that has properties that “enhance physical performance (including sexual), promotes vitality and increases resistance to stress and ageing." The article states that the root has effects on the pituitary gland increasing corticotrophin and corticosteroids levels, which of course result in the effects mentioned above. In my search I also found that beer, fennel and anise among many other products have phytoestrogens, which may have a bodily effect on the hormones.

My thought of this topic and some of our class discussions allowed me to question if the food we eat have an effect on our hormones then maybe it should be labelled?

When we look at food labels on products, some advertisement specialist have suggested the link of certain functional foods to health effects, such as pomegranates, have only been used as marketing tactics in earn a buck or two. So then what about labelling GMO foods? Would these product stop from being consumed if the public became aware of what is really in them, and the effects the hormones injected into them have on our bodies? What about the herbal remedies I saw at The Big Carrot? Are they regulated by the Food and Drug Act?

Essentially, the verdict is in. People want to know what is in their food and how this may harm, benefit or affect them. In relation to GMOs, labelling is a challenge because scientists have not tracked them to know if the effects they have on our bodies are harmful or not. From what I found, there is not a lot of research on the longitudinal affects of these herbal remedies either. In terms of foods that may affect our hormones, it appears the amounts needed may be insignificant in relation to how much we actually consume.

So, perhaps we are all just waiting for an overt sign... something to go wrong (pessimistic), or something to go right (optimistic). After all, the importance of nutrition was truly realized in historical events, such as:
- World War II after the performance of soldiers started deteriorating because of poor foods/meals
-During the discovery phase of the globe when explorers ventured the earth, the quick spoilage of fruits and vegetables prevented them from eating enough, hence scurvy was the result

Tricking adults into eating more fruits and vegetables

How do health professionals get adults to eat more fruits and vegetables? Health professionals cannot simply say ‘follow the Food Guide” or “eat lots of fruits and vegetables,” but our messages must be framed in the context of what are the barriers and understanding social as well as behavioural theories of initiating changes. From Malcolm Gladwell TVO (2008) presentation, I realized the importance of the previous statement, and to be quite frank, recognized the power of mind manipulation in getting messages across and acted upon.

In his presentation, Gladwell gave the example of a public awareness campaign surrounding seatbelt use targeted towards adults. This intervention was created in the 70’s, as only 15% of individuals in vehicles wore seatbelts. A study found that instead of targeting adults, they would simply ask that adults ensure their children wore seatbelts. Within three years, the amount of people who wore their seat belts increased dramatically from 15% to 75%. This example as well as others, proves that adults are responsive when the safety of their children or vulnerable people is questioned. Subsequently, the children who were forced to wear the seatbelts began to regulate their parents to wear theirs as well.
Another example that demonstrates the agency of people in relation to protecting children, involves junk food advertisements towards children. This created a bit of debate between the WHO and private industries because children are considered part a vulnerable population, which is highly susceptible to manipulation of attractive packaging, high sugar and fat foods. Additionally, proportionately to the Fruits and Vegetables campaigns, private industries have much more advertisement and money invested into marketing their campaigns.

Generally speaking, mothers regulate their children and tell them to eat their vegetables; I think children in turn regulate their parents making sure they are eating their vegetables. An interesting study would be to see if this type of regulation makes adults healthier. It would also be interesting to see if parents eat healthier because they try to model behaviours in order to get there kids on board to eating more fruits and vegetables. According to a USA news article entitled, “Wish your kids ate more fruits and vegetables?” (2009) “when nutrition experts examined the eating habits of overweight children 4 to 9 and their parents, they found that kids tended to eat what their parents ate.”

Therefore, according to these messages, parents are helpless in the face of their children’s requests. They just can’t say no to little Jimmy when he says “Mom where’s your seatbelt?” or “Why do I have to eat vegetables if you don’t?”

Perhaps, if advertisement rests on parental fear that they are not being good parents we can trick them into changing their behaviours by positioning advertisement to rest on these fears (Evil laughter begins). While one can debate how ethical this is, the verdict is in, and the aforementioned method works.

So at the end of the day, when adults don’t like to be told what to do, we can say: A HA! Got you! Or at least little Jimmy got you. Now you will buckle your seat and eat your vegetables too!

Looking at Community Assets and Needs for Two Different Communities

A few weeks back we looked at community development and community capacity building. We have decided to take this opportunity of a team blog to show you the differences in our communities using a community-development lens, to identify some of our community assets and needs.

First, a little review might be good for all of us. We learned that community development is the planned evolution of all aspects of community well-being (economic, social, environmental and cultural), where the primary outcome is to improve quality of life (Human Resources Development Canada, 1999). Community development results in mutual benefit and shared responsibility among community members and recognizes diversity of the community, the importance of social, environmental and economic matters, as well as the value of capacity building, where it takes capacity to build capacity (Human Resources Development Canada, 1999).

That said, our community assets and needs maps have been summed up below:

(Please click on the tables below to see them enlarged & clearer)

The information gathered above sheds light on our communities in a holistic framework. We are able to see the assets each possesses, which could be used to build capacity within each community and enable health within them. We can also look at the needs each possesses, and extend them to the built environment, where we can make “physical connections between the places we live, work and play” (McCann, 2003). Some opportunities for the built environment would be to increase green space and wildlife in Thornhill, have more block and cultural groups in Corso Italia, and for both to provide more attention to disabled people, in terms of support and acceptance.