American Health: an Elite Privilege or a Human Right? A College Kid’s Guide to Action

Perhaps you have heard that the poor are typically less healthy than the affluent in America today, but have you ever stopped to think why that may be? Maybe the answer seems simple, unhealthy food is the cheaper option. This is true, but why? Is it the law of nature that a cheeseburger is cheaper than a salad? Absolutely not. However, somehow, it is the law here in America. I propose that this is not “just the way it is”, but instead this price divide stems from meticulous choices by our government and policy makers. I implore you to ask yourself why low income means low nutrition, and why we pass laws that enact subsidies to make unhealthy foods cheap and fresh foods seem to be only a privilege of the elite.

This issue is complex, and in no way, shape, or form is there a one stop shop for a quick fix. However, it is important for college students to know what’s up with nutrition insecurity, and thus be given a voice to use in the name of change. Let’s break it down.

The problem: The lack of affordability of nutritious food in America.

The cause: The farm bill–most of it goes to subsidies for the five biggest commodity crops: corn, cotton, rice, wheat and soybeans. Notice that this list does not include fresh fruits and veggies but rather crops that require extensive processing before consumption.

The goal: Increase accessibility/affordability of nutritious, local, food in the hopes reducing obesity and nutrition related chronic diseases among Americans. Give children from low income families a chance to succeed and grow up to be healthy by refinancing food subsidies.

How: College students can use resources available to us to make waves of change.

This all sounds simple enough, right? Well let me divulge on why this issue is such a prominent and seemingly permanent one.

Why can’t Americans can’t afford to eat healthy?

Every five years, congress rewrites and passes the farm bill which dictates about 489 billion dollars each 5 year cycle in federal spending. The bill was introduced in 1933 as part of President Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation in response to the Great Depression. The goal of the program was to temporarily sustain farmers by paying them extra when crop prices were low. Nearly eight decades later, the benefits flow primarily to large commodity producers. We are essentially throwing cash at big agribusiness, which is as profitable as ever. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the top ten percent of the wealthiest farmers in the country receive 74 percent of the subsidies. These crops happen to constitute the key ingredients in fast food. The mass production of corn is in turn made into high fructose corn syrup found in sugary drinks such as sodas, and animal feed that sustains “factory farming” of livestock. This meat is higher in fat because it has been fed corn rather than grass, kept confined in a space not large enough to walk around, and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones to help it grow larger, faster. Thus subsidization manufactures a price inequality that helps a happy meal from McDonald’s undercut real, wholesome foods.

On top of all this, our media glorifies a culture of gluttony. We must consider who ultimately benefits from making an XXL Coca-Cola look sexy on TV. I propose that the beneficiaries are once again, big agribusiness and of course the the companies profiting from product sales, but most definitely not by any means the consumer. Thus we can establish that American policy and media are huge contributors to the polarity of access to nutrition by rich vs. poor.

What are the effects on our nation?

The poor become even more disadvantaged. A 2009 study that focused on a nationally representative sample of more than 12,000 children aged 2 to 19 years found that rates of severe obesity were approximately 1.7 times higher among poor children and adolescents (Skelton et al., 2009). And according to feedingamerica.org, currently more than half (58%) of the households served by the Feeding America network of food banks have at least one member living with high blood pressure, and more than one-third (33%) has a member with diabetes.When faced with chronic disease, many economically unstable families do not have access to healthcare. Therefore the poor are cut with a double edged sword: they only have access to food that makes them sick, but they do not have access to medical care when they do get sick. The paradox is paralyzing and creates a huge inequality that we have the power to change.

What can we do?

It is not out of your hands. It’s in your hands, your hearts, and your pockets

• Educate yourself on the farm bill and food subsidies: knowledge is power.
• Take action when you find something that bothers you: write to congress, protest, volunteer for organizations who are already responding to the issue. We can change the next farm bills incentives.
• Put your money where your mouth is: buy local, organic, fresh fruits and give your dollars to the farmers who need it to flourish, not those who are reaping millions of taxpayer dollars every year.

We have power but that power is useless unless we harness it through education and action!

Clearly change is not as easy as 123. Food subsidies provided by the farm bill are deeply rooted in the nature of American capitalism. Affordability of healthy food is dependent upon a change in policies that have withstood huge social and political movements towards equality in marriage, racial and gender equality etc. I propose that human equality is greatly dependent health, and that it is unjust for American government to uphold policies that make the less wealthy the less healthy.

As college students, it is OUR responsibility to change the trajectory of our nation’s health. We are the next policy writers, the next activists, the next farmers, the next parents. Will we sit and passively watch as schools serve our children ultra processed foods that are detrimental to their health and thus, their future? Will we compromise our own health and that of our families if our paycheck does not amount to the price of whole, nutritious foods? Will we allow the gap between rich and poor to widen as our public policy stagnates? We ought not, we will not.

UCSB Student Propelled by Passion: Angela the Activist

The wind is warm and gentle, and the leaves of an overhead tree rustle while college students chatter and study. Caje cafe at 5:49pm on a Wednesday bursts with young energy and new ideas. Angela Shields sits at one of the outdoor stone tables, exuding it all. Her warm and youthful face tells not of the trials and tribulations this young warrior has thus far encountered in her life. Her lips speak fluent and smooth words, free of pauses, “likes” and “ums”. To say that Angela is wise beyond her years is an understatement. Angela’s passion for nutrition is her life force; it drives her, it permeates everything she does.This is the passion that has led her to build her own nonprofit from the ground up. It has helped her spread her organization to 10 school districts and fuels her vision of bringing it to every major city in the United States. Oh, and in the meantime she is wrapping up her fourth year at UCSB as a bio-psychology major. Busy you say? Maybe a little!

Angela founded Kids in Nutrition (KIN) during her sophomore year at UCSB. The goal of the program is to get kids thinking about how food affects their individual health, public health and their environmental. The program was developed in response to the rising issue of nutrition-related chronic illnesses in America such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. These diseases, among others, haunt and kill millions of Americans. But perhaps the scariest part is that we have the ability to prevent them… And yet we do not. This concept both disturbs Angela, and motivates her to make waves of change. The structure of the program is ingenious: Student volunteers from UCSB run the health education program for elementary school students in the Santa Barbara public school system. Young people who are passionate about changing the outcomes of the future work to actively engage other young people. KIN’s instructors establish a personal student-to-student small group dynamic in every classroom and Angela feels strongly about the merit of this approach.  “Creativity,” “inspiration,” “intimacy,” “brother-sister bond” and “community,” are a few phrases that stick in my mind as she describes what this approach is able to foster in students.

Angela exudes a deep desire for young children to become more cognizant of nutrition and its serious implications for our future. Afterall, these youth are our future. Over 75 percent of our healthcare dollars goes to chronic diseases… Most chronic diseases are preventable. Additionally, eighteen percent of our CO2 emissions come from the cattle industry; That’s more than the transportation sector. These are a few of the statistics that called on Angela to step in. She could not find other organizations that were directly conquering these issues through primary education and she sensed that there was a gap. Her ideas were catapulted into action when she experienced a personal loss: “My friend from high school”- she hesitates- “my best friend passed away. So she motivated me to do something that I have wanted to for a long time.” I sense pain in her voice as she introduces this void that was created in her life by losing a close friend. Excruciating sadness and goodbyes undoubtedly change us, flipturn our perspective and let us see things differently. This trauma left Angela with an insatiable hunger to make her vision of KIN come to life, “almost an obsession” she calls it.

“Whenever I walked to school I would be sending out emails for KIN, whenever I had any downtime I was doing KIN. It was how I relaxed” she giggles and shakes her head. She had committed herself to creating KIN, and she would not stop until she made her plan a reality. Angela worked tirelessly, emailing every teacher in the Goleta and Santa Barbara school districts. “Nobody got back to me” she shrugged, with a gentle understanding in her eye. She explains that teachers were hesitant to allow KIN instructors into their space as the organization was newly sprouting. But that did not stop her. Angela continued contacting anyone she could think of, and the idea finally snagged the interest of one of the principals. KIN began small, smaller than small, but what it has bloomed into is quite spectacular.

Since Angela’s sophomore year, the program has manifested itself in over 10 schools in Goleta and Santa Barbara, sending five instructors into each classroom to teach one hour a week for seven weeks. Angela, once standing on her own with a vision of the program, now stands with eleven directors and over 150 volunteers. KIN does not intend to stay stagnant: next quarter they are starting a chapter in Santa Cruz and, next year, setting up four more chapters in the Bay Area. She is beaming with excitement as she fills me in on her plan to spread up the West Coast to gain credibility, then expand from there.Louisiana is their next destination which will be a huge breakthrough as Angela explains that the South is where health education is most needed. “It would be amazing if we could get into EVERY classroom” she gushes with a twinkle in her eye; her cheeks pucker and the corners of her mouth are tugged up into a smile. The goal is a huge one and she is aware. But with the interest KIN has gained from UCSB professors wanting to partner, their successful results in their research studies, the grants they have received, and the positive feedback they have heard from the community and teachers, it is impossible not to imagine how far this thing could go. Angela has been working closely with David Cleveland, an Environmental Studies professor at UCSB who teaches on diet and climate change. He endorses her work and they meet regularly to discuss effective curriculum and important materials to include. She recently developed an independent research project with Professor Hegarty of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences to investigate the the success of KIN’s nutritional education programs for local children (Taking into account age, gender, and and socioeconomic status). “We found significant differences in not only their knowledge but also their behavior [their listening]” Angela shares with me, feeling extremely fulfilled by the knowledge that they now have objective data that insures that KIN’s curriculum is effective. Although at first the program was funded out of Angela and other volunteers’ pockets, this year, she received the Strous scholarship which awards one person from each UC $15,00, and the year before was granted $4,200 by the community affairs board.

Looking forward, they are working with a financial consulting firm, KoGIO, that helps nonprofits raise money. They are helping Angela pursue her dreams and work fulltime for KIN next year: “KoGIO created a case statement for us and are working on corporate sponsorship to help us raise enough money by June to fund three people to work full time next year on the program, one here and two up in Oakland.” As a soon to be college grad, I commonly hear chatter about the future among my peers that is dominated by fear of the unknown. Angela seems to view the future differently, she sees it as an opportunity for growth, the chance to take the next step towards creating a healthier America. She humbly shares these successes and future plans with me, embraced by a sense of gratitude rather than pride.

Angela’s long dark hair wisps across her brow. Jean shorts, vegan– “most of the time”. The NorCal native with a mother from Vietnam and father from the South harnesses quite a bit of understanding at a young age. Not being raised particularly healthy, in fact eating Taco Bell every day in high school, she is an activist who forged her own path. She has not followed someone else’s trajectory to make her dreams become a reality. Instead, she found a void that needed to filled, and manifested her own path, regardless of challenges she met along the way. Angela carries herself like someone who knows who she is and why she is here. For a twenty-two year old college student, she is extremely self-aware and exists with a clear sense of purpose. Shoulders drawn together and down her spine, she leaves me with the resounding impression that it is inexplicably important to consider nutrition and how it plays into our future. Eventually she wants to work on food security, and partnering with parents outside of the classroom, so that KIN can tell their students what to eat and where to get it for cheap, or free. Of course, “money is the issue,” she scrunches her nose and continues “in an ideal world we could all make it work for free.” She does not seem discouraged by the challenge; her fire is fueled and she is prepared to take on the pursuit of KIN’s expansion full time once she graduates. “That is what I’m really passionate about, so I’m going to go for it.” Angela makes it seem simple, and maybe it is. That is what it means to be an activist after all, to devote yourself to what you believe in. She does this fearlessly, with a tremendous amount of energy and drive.

Angela packs up her things and with the shake of a hand and the click of a bike lock, she pedals away towards her future. Ease encompasses her, passion constantly propels her forward, and she refuses to take the easy route. Angela the activist.

The Suquamish Kids

I remember the first time that I ate lunch at a public school. Kingston Middle School, grade eight, Suquamish WA. There I was in the dimly lit cafeteria gazing down upon the food that had been plopped onto my tray: three flimsy cheese filled breadsticks, a vacuum sealed “Smucker’s Uncrustable” peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a scoop of canned peaches swimming in high fructose corn syrup. Me, an impressionable and awkward tween, was being handed this processed, packaged, frozen, defrosted, and reheated “meal” and told to eat up. No wonder the kid to my right looked malnourished – school meals were the only source of nutrition he got each weekday, courtesy of the free lunch program for us whose parents’ income sunk down below the national poverty line. Or, what about Christine in my PE class who received a failing grade because she could not run the mile in under 20 minutes? On fitness testing day, I watched her self-confidence plummet as she stepped on the scale and the numbers simultaneously skyrocketed. There we were, given national standards to meet but no tools by which to get there. We were supposed to run a 7 minute mile, and do 10 pull ups in a row, but we were served mystery meat and hormone filled chocolate milk for lunch. The two just did not add up.

I watched as my friends slowly trickled off the school bus and stopped getting back on. Many of them had to stay home and take care of their younger siblings while their parents went off to work. I grew up on a small Native American reservation in the Pacific Northwest called Suquamish. The local casino was the source of much of the reservation’s income, as were family-run firework stands that popped up around New Year’s eve and the 4th of July. It was not uncommon to see parked trailer cars converted into homes, built upon with scraps of wood and cardboard. I will always remember the abandoned houses I walked by on my way down to JC’s market to buy ice pops in the summer. Overrun by blackberry brambles, I could hardly see the sunken in roofs and crumbling wood that used to resemble a doorway, or perhaps a living room I would imagine. Skinny dogs with patches of missing fur sniffed around the trash cans on the streets, searching for scraps of last night’s dinner.

Most people who moved to the reservation never left, my mother being one of those permanent residents. I observed generations upon generations of the same family line, most of whom lived the same narrative- born to a young mother, grew up with aunties, uncles, and grandparents, went to school for a while and then got pregnant with their own child and dropped out. Suquamish functioned in this cyclic way of life. The rainfall was heavy year round and playing outside was not very safe; therefore, exercise was a foreign concept to the Suquamish kids. As the dreary days dragged by, the older kids and adults would seek comfort at the local liquor shack, and once the booze ran dry, many looked to drugs in hopes to find… well in hope to find hope, I suppose. Thin and shaky-handed users convened in the wooded trail between my house and the elementary school. I remember following a pathway of cigarette butts one day when I was nine and finding two people shooting up. Before I ran away, I locked eyes with the young girl. Her soul must have slipped away through the needle in her arm, because all I saw was a slender silhouette, a ghost of a person. She must have been about 14. The vision of this girl still sticks in my mind like a photograph, 13 years later, like it was yesterday.

My family moved to Suquamish when I was five and my brother was three, at which time my parents were separating; my dad would soon vanish from our lives for what felt like a very long time. A time of stagnation and pain, but also immense growth and learning. That left us a family of three in a little house on top of Prospect hill. I learned to keep to myself a lot so as not to bother teachers or faculty at school–it seemed that most of them didn’t want to spend time on the poor kids who were going nowhere. Myself and the rest of the Suquamish kids were mostly ignored in school: many of us did poorly, had trouble paying attention, and many just stopped coming. Looking back makes me want to put the pieces together. Why were the poorest kids considered the troublemakers in school? Could it be because their parents could not afford nutritious food for them? And what about when they came to school, what were they being fed then? Sugars, fats, and processed carbs stuffed into little plastic wrappers. These were the subsidized foods that they had access to; the foods that were made cheapest by our nation, not by the laws of nature but by the decision of our government. These kids were the ones who had full-time jobs at home at the age of 12, taking care of their siblings, cooking, and cleaning. So maybe when they came to school, they just wanted to be the kids for once. Maybe they wanted to play, be loved, and be cared for.

Countless studies show the link between a mother’s affection in the early development stages of their baby to that of child’s success in life later on- health, happiness, creativity, and learning capacity. Unfortunately, mothers on the Suquamish reservation may not have had time to give their kids that love if they were single, working full time, and struggling to put food on the table. In addition to a lack of care, the Suquamish kids had no introduction to healthy living. Most of us did not play sports because our parents could not afford it. Many kids had no concept of nutrition, because their families were going to food banks and taking whatever they would offer. Cheap food was offered, and cheap food was unhealthy food. Perhaps this could have been counter acted if we had been given primary education on healthy living, if we had learned about exercise, and if we had above all been granted access to healthy foods. But that did not happen. Instead, we were served the cheapest and most processed foods and given very limited education on health until High School, by which time for many it was too late. Many kids had become obese, become heavy drinkers or drug users, become pregnant, or failed out of school and stopped coming entirely. Or worse, some kids had so much energy that they could not sit still for hours on end in a small metal desk. Instead of giving these children breaks to run around outside, to exercise and play as nature intended, these kids were pumped full of drugs that paralyzed them, silenced them, and turned them into little robots.

I believe that our school system has the responsibility to provide comprehensive support to all of its students, independent of their family’s income. This will mean making changes, adopting a more holistic approach to education, and recognizing that education does not come in a “one size fits all” modality, but rather it depends heavily on what the children are is getting outside of school, and what they are not. If we want our youth to succeed, we must empower them by teaching them how to be healthy individuals. Healthier kids will in turn to be the better students and citizens. Schools should be given support and funding to provide healthy food, health education, and overall more healthy student engagement. Of course, this change will take policy changes (food subsidization, etc.) and many dedicated people who are willing to fight for what American youth deserve. First and foremost, there needs to be a change in the food we are serving children in schools and the health education that comes along with it. Furthermore, we must work to extend food security beyond schools, to the community. This is no easy task, it will take a complete refinancing of our food system, reassigning subsidies to fresh fruits and vegetables instead of crops such as corn. I envision my children and their children someday at school running around outside, and then sitting down to a plate of fresh veggies, and whole proteins and carbohydrates, with a smiles on their faces. I believe our culture has the potential to propel our youth forward by giving them these tools to succeed- giving them the opportunity to be healthy, to break patterns of the past where poor kids get the poor food and rather make health accessible for everyone. Health for America is on the horizon, but we must push forward and be willing to make changes if we ever want to reach it.