The problematic context of a college’s soup bar.
‘My theory is the empty stomach is an empty mind.” That was Feed It Forward executive chef Jagger Gordon’s comment to the Toronto Star Thursday, in conversation about Humber College’s new “pay-what-you-can” soup bar. The soup bar is designed to address student hunger by feeding about 900 students a day for free, or whatever the students can afford to chip in. The items on the menu will be made from “rescued” food and food by-products — food that is, as the Feed It Forward website puts it, “blemished but perfectly edible.” It’s the stuff that would otherwise get thrown away by stores and suppliers.
Monica Khosla is the president of Humber College’s IGNITE Student Union, which is partnering with Feed It Forward on the soup bar; she told the Star that demand is growing for initiatives like this one since “a lot of things these days are going to waste or (are) too expensive.”
That all sounds great at first blush. But our notions about students’ empty stomachs rest on the shaky foundation of “food insecurity,” a deeply flawed measure inherently slanted to overstate the level of true hunger in any population.
In 2016, the charitable organization Meal Exchange released a report called Hungry for Knowledge, which stated that almost 40 per cent of Canadian students were food “insecure.” If that number sounds high, that’s probably because you’re assuming that food insecurity means not having enough money to eat.
It doesn’t. The Hungry for Knowledge report explains that in general, the concept of food insecurity includes factors that have nothing to do with hunger. Lacking access to food that is “produced in environmentally sustainable ways” is considered a form of food insecurity. So is lacking access to “culturally acceptable food, which is produced in and obtained in ways that do not compromise people’s dignity (or) self respect.”
In fact, a food insecure person needn’t lack access to food at all. Under this definition, simply being “worried” or anxious about running out of food — regardless of whether that worry has any grounding in reality, or whether what’s worried about ever actually comes to pass — is enough to contribute to the designation.
To its credit, the Hungry for Knowledge survey does not rely as heavily on non-hunger factors as many such measuring tools do. But nonetheless, of the six questions the survey asks respondents, only half address having a literal lack of food, as opposed to say, addressing whether meals are sufficiently “balanced” or varied (or, as stated above, whether there’s a psychological worry about running out).
By these measurements, a student who did not answer “yes” to any question about literally lacking actual food could still be scored as moderately food insecure. A student who literally lacked food, but only because he blew his entire month’s food budget on a week’s worth of gourmet products, could be scored as severely food insecure.
These are probably not the empty stomachs most of us are imagining when we read about student hunger, and it’s worth being clear about that.
In terms of the Humber College soup bar, if its costs are not being imposed on Humber students or on government, then its superfluity could be of limited economic and moral concern. If Feed It Forward runs on strictly voluntary donations — and Humber student fees or government grants aren’t being tapped to help bear the cost — then who am I to say it shouldn’t offer free food to whomever it feels like, regardless of need?
However, the context of the soup bar — the unquestioned understanding that student hunger is a major and growing issue — is problematic. It’s a terrible way to start young people off in the world: sending them the message that they are more helpless and dependent than they actually are.
Many post-secondary students do scrimp and save and work service jobs to get by. Many of them eat more pizza and fewer veggie stir-fries than is ideal.
But is that really a crisis? Or is it a transitory phenomenon during a period of conscious sacrifice for future gain — an exercise of responsibility, planning, and delayed gratification? A worthwhile preparation for running one’s own life?
Chef Gordon told the Star, “If we can fill those stomachs they can make brighter new possibilities for our future.” I suggest that brighter new possibilities for our future might result from empowering students to fill their own stomachs, rather than convincing them that they’re destitute and powerless.
Feeding the hungry is one thing. Insulating capable young people from the challenges of transitioning to self-reliant adulthood is quite another.
A FOOD INSECURE PERSON NEEDN’T LACK ACCESS TO FOOD AT ALL