About last week. Last week was a fun and engaging week especially for the youth I am working with. The topic was food, and more particularly, food apartheid. We started off with a review of the topic discussed for the previous week, which was educational inequality. We then went on to discuss the week’s topic food apartheid with a brief activity on the structure of the food system, a discussion on where the food we eat comes from. We then went on to compare nutrition labels of various foods (which they later on ate) where they were able to see the stark contrast between the fat, sodium, and sugar levels in the various foods, most of which we consume more regularly than not.
After laying the foundation, we proceeded to discuss the aspect of food and racism, that all too often is not obvious. With the usage of the term food apartheid, we were able to look at the location of ‘food deserts’ as being not only the availability of healthy and nutritious food in certain areas, but also the inaccessibility of those foods due to various factors. These food deserts are primarily located in low income neighbourhoods and, in Buffalo in particular, those neighbourhoods consist of majority black communities. The youth were able to map and share the availability of the fast food chains in their neighborhoods as compared to grocery stores that sell healthy food.
We also talked about the stereotypes that persist about the foods particular communities eat, with a primary focus on black communities. Tracing the origins of such stereotypes, we were able to understand them more and debunk some. On the next session, we went ahead and cooked some of the food that is considered a stereotype and shared the meal together which was really wholesome.
Similarly, some of the other youth came up with different projects from videos, powerpoint presentations, interactive activities/games, and art. All in all it was a fun filled week. Till next time