Why Project Bread?
More or less everyone can recall a moment when they turned to a friend or family member after a long day and exclaimed, "I am ACTUALLY starving". In my own personal experiences this statement is an obvious hyperbole. And until the final year of my undergraduate career, I naively assumed the majority of people in my classes, my teammates, and within my community shared a varied yet similar experience. This was until one fall day at Wheaton when my sociology professor showed HBO's documentary, "The Weight of the Nation". The documentary explored the obesity and health crisis in the United States from a perspective fundamentally different from any I'd seen before. Terms like "food desert" or "food access" were entirely foreign to me. While I knew healthy food was generally more expensive than unhealthy food, it hadn't crossed my mind that some people didn't have the opportunity to even buy reasonably priced fresh food because they lacked access to local supermarkets. It didn't seem fair to me that some people didn't even have a choice to nourish their bodies with food that would make them well. The picture of the U.S. food system painted by the documentary was one I didn't recognize. I left class determined to familiarize myself with the picture.
The research was equally fascinating and overwhelming. It inspired me to write my senior thesis on the globalization of capitalism and its effects on the local and ethnic food cultures of Mexico. Through hours of research and analysis it became undeniable that the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) played a central role in Mexico's floundering local food culture. Mexicans' perpetually thinning wallets and perpetually expanding waistlines as an apparent implication of increased U.S. exports of commodity crops revealed how damaging the U.S. food system is. This research prompted me to think even more seriously about what "The Weight of the Nation" already brought to my attention: how skewed the U.S. food system is.
Energized by all I learned, I decided to start volunteering with local food pantries and community organizations and eventually grounded my interest in food policy in food assistance programs. In addition to my interest for food policy, my personal belief that public health is the foundation for all civic life and engagement informs my interest in food assistance programs. A major reason why I am dedicated to ending hunger in the Commonwealth is because anyone who has experienced hunger pangs knows you cannot perform to your potential if you are hungry or malnourished. In order to continue to positively grow as a Commonwealth, we need to reframe how we think about hunger and malnutrition. Instead of being viewed as an indication of personal failure and laziness, it needs to be viewed as a collective public health issue. As a community outreach fellow, I have the opportunity to empower individuals with the information to think differently about hunger and hopefully inspire them to make a change. The importance of community outreach in my mind is second to none. I believe informing people about the reality of hunger and malnutrition in Massachusetts is a critical first step towards ameliorating hunger and improving overall wellness in the Commonwealth.
I'll end with this: there are700,000 people (Project Bread 2013) in Massachusetts- enough people to fill our beloved Gillette Stadium roughly ten times- who don't know where their next meal is coming from.
-Samantha Bennett
More or less everyone can recall a moment when they turned to a friend or family member after a long day and exclaimed, "I am ACTUALLY starving". In my own personal experiences this statement is an obvious hyperbole. And until the final year of my undergraduate career, I naively assumed the majority of people in my classes, my teammates, and within my community shared a varied yet similar experience. This was until one fall day at Wheaton when my sociology professor showed HBO's documentary, "The Weight of the Nation". The documentary explored the obesity and health crisis in the United States from a perspective fundamentally different from any I'd seen before. Terms like "food desert" or "food access" were entirely foreign to me. While I knew healthy food was generally more expensive than unhealthy food, it hadn't crossed my mind that some people didn't have the opportunity to even buy reasonably priced fresh food because they lacked access to local supermarkets. It didn't seem fair to me that some people didn't even have a choice to nourish their bodies with food that would make them well. The picture of the U.S. food system painted by the documentary was one I didn't recognize. I left class determined to familiarize myself with the picture.
The research was equally fascinating and overwhelming. It inspired me to write my senior thesis on the globalization of capitalism and its effects on the local and ethnic food cultures of Mexico. Through hours of research and analysis it became undeniable that the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) played a central role in Mexico's floundering local food culture. Mexicans' perpetually thinning wallets and perpetually expanding waistlines as an apparent implication of increased U.S. exports of commodity crops revealed how damaging the U.S. food system is. This research prompted me to think even more seriously about what "The Weight of the Nation" already brought to my attention: how skewed the U.S. food system is.
Energized by all I learned, I decided to start volunteering with local food pantries and community organizations and eventually grounded my interest in food policy in food assistance programs. In addition to my interest for food policy, my personal belief that public health is the foundation for all civic life and engagement informs my interest in food assistance programs. A major reason why I am dedicated to ending hunger in the Commonwealth is because anyone who has experienced hunger pangs knows you cannot perform to your potential if you are hungry or malnourished. In order to continue to positively grow as a Commonwealth, we need to reframe how we think about hunger and malnutrition. Instead of being viewed as an indication of personal failure and laziness, it needs to be viewed as a collective public health issue. As a community outreach fellow, I have the opportunity to empower individuals with the information to think differently about hunger and hopefully inspire them to make a change. The importance of community outreach in my mind is second to none. I believe informing people about the reality of hunger and malnutrition in Massachusetts is a critical first step towards ameliorating hunger and improving overall wellness in the Commonwealth.
I'll end with this: there are700,000 people (Project Bread 2013) in Massachusetts- enough people to fill our beloved Gillette Stadium roughly ten times- who don't know where their next meal is coming from.
-Samantha Bennett