A friend who owns a bookstore reminded me to sub in hunger for food insecure and I do it regularly now. Food insecure has lost its meaning. But hunger or hungry has potency because we all know what it means to be hungry and can imagine the depths of it. Or this is what I like to think. Lovely essay.
Thanks Kim:) I love that reminder and I think I’ve accidentally used hunger instead of food insecure a few times. Hungry/hunger is much harder to abstract, which I think is part of the issue with food insecure!
Thank you for writing this! I work at a Feeding America partner food bank, and our terminology for discussing access to nutritious food has been really iterating in recent years. I love how you discuss all of these facets surrounding food and I can't wait to read more from you. Lately, I've seen lots of people in the charitable food space talking about the pros and cons of the terms "food security", "food poverty", "nutrition security", and "hunger". When it's officially measured, "food security" tends to reflect how someone responds to the same short survey(s) as when the term was adopted in 1974 (for the sake of keeping consistent data). Newer and more intentionally holistic terms like "nutrition security" are still standardized with uniform surveys like that but use newer questions that can do better at evoking the nutritional value of the food individuals can access, so we often like leaning in that direction when we're collecting hard data. "Hunger" and "food poverty" are less standardized, and they tend to be used in general communication and advocacy but aren't usually associated with any concrete numbers. Ultimately, I love your attention on the holistic health of the whole system, including the well-being of the environment and the importance of seeing all facets of an individual's life and well-being as intersecting with their relationship to food. I find myself excited to think about if there are ways to condense and discuss it all more holistically! Also, if you haven't explored the "Self Sufficiency Standard" studies yet, I highly encourage you to check those reports out! They track the localized costs of food, housing, child care, transportation, and other basic costs at a county-by-county level for varying family compositions, and it's really helpful for looking at the larger economic landscape that food access falls within. Thanks for keeping me thinking! 💞 (Gosh, reading that back, some of it sounds super teacher-y, my apologies! I love getting excited about this stuff but I don't mean to be preachy! Your writing is amazing and words can be slippery little creatures, but yay in general for talking about true nourishment!)
These are some really important questions - thank you for starting the conversation! Food is often on my mind: how it grows, who grows and prepares it, how it moves across the globe, who pays for it and makes money off of it.
I've learned a lot from Angela at Parkrose Permaculture (her YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ParkrosePermaculture), she's often looking at food from a community aspect and I think that helps us zoom out in a really helpful way.
Dec 3, 2023·edited Dec 3, 2023Liked by Devin Kate Pope
I also want to thank you for this thought-provoking essay. I also found the comments submitted (at this writing) to be very educational in their own right. I'd like to emphasize the premise of "agency," although I realize it is implied in the essay and in the comments. I often think that people are first robbed of their agency, in a variety of ways, and as a consequence, lose their ability to maintain food security (the term we're trying to define).
A friend who owns a bookstore reminded me to sub in hunger for food insecure and I do it regularly now. Food insecure has lost its meaning. But hunger or hungry has potency because we all know what it means to be hungry and can imagine the depths of it. Or this is what I like to think. Lovely essay.
Thanks Kim:) I love that reminder and I think I’ve accidentally used hunger instead of food insecure a few times. Hungry/hunger is much harder to abstract, which I think is part of the issue with food insecure!
Thank you for writing this! I work at a Feeding America partner food bank, and our terminology for discussing access to nutritious food has been really iterating in recent years. I love how you discuss all of these facets surrounding food and I can't wait to read more from you. Lately, I've seen lots of people in the charitable food space talking about the pros and cons of the terms "food security", "food poverty", "nutrition security", and "hunger". When it's officially measured, "food security" tends to reflect how someone responds to the same short survey(s) as when the term was adopted in 1974 (for the sake of keeping consistent data). Newer and more intentionally holistic terms like "nutrition security" are still standardized with uniform surveys like that but use newer questions that can do better at evoking the nutritional value of the food individuals can access, so we often like leaning in that direction when we're collecting hard data. "Hunger" and "food poverty" are less standardized, and they tend to be used in general communication and advocacy but aren't usually associated with any concrete numbers. Ultimately, I love your attention on the holistic health of the whole system, including the well-being of the environment and the importance of seeing all facets of an individual's life and well-being as intersecting with their relationship to food. I find myself excited to think about if there are ways to condense and discuss it all more holistically! Also, if you haven't explored the "Self Sufficiency Standard" studies yet, I highly encourage you to check those reports out! They track the localized costs of food, housing, child care, transportation, and other basic costs at a county-by-county level for varying family compositions, and it's really helpful for looking at the larger economic landscape that food access falls within. Thanks for keeping me thinking! 💞 (Gosh, reading that back, some of it sounds super teacher-y, my apologies! I love getting excited about this stuff but I don't mean to be preachy! Your writing is amazing and words can be slippery little creatures, but yay in general for talking about true nourishment!)
These are some really important questions - thank you for starting the conversation! Food is often on my mind: how it grows, who grows and prepares it, how it moves across the globe, who pays for it and makes money off of it.
I've learned a lot from Angela at Parkrose Permaculture (her YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ParkrosePermaculture), she's often looking at food from a community aspect and I think that helps us zoom out in a really helpful way.
I also want to thank you for this thought-provoking essay. I also found the comments submitted (at this writing) to be very educational in their own right. I'd like to emphasize the premise of "agency," although I realize it is implied in the essay and in the comments. I often think that people are first robbed of their agency, in a variety of ways, and as a consequence, lose their ability to maintain food security (the term we're trying to define).