Lab 033: Supermarket Sweep
About the Episode
Lab 033 is all about understanding our food system. At the top of the pandemic (and even up until now), certain food products have been in short supply in the grocery stores. In response to so many people losing their jobs and the financial burden of the pandemic, many more people are going hungry as well. We tried to make sense of the conflicting images and messages we saw on the internet. We saw food banks with people lined up for miles & grocery stores with empty shelves, but we also saw dairy farmers dumping milk & potato farmers paying to bury potatoes they couldn’t get anyone to buy. How Sway?
All About Food
Titi & I had a lot of questions for this lab. One of our first shocks was discovering the Food Pyramid we learned about in elementary school is outdated and wrong! We should’ve known that no one should have 6-11 servings of grains a day! The food pyramid was revamped twice over, and now there’s a new guide in town. The Food Plate! The new recommendation is half a plate of fruits and veggies, while the other half is protein & grains according to Choose My Plate.
Food Access
Almost 13% of the US lives in a low-income or low access food area. (2010-2015 Census Data)
A study by Feeding America predicts the pandemic could increase food insecurity to 1 in 3 adults and 1 in 2 children. Read the report.
In some low access areas, food prices can be really high.
Farm to Fork
Just how much land is used to produce food in the US?
How much are we spending on food? On average, people in the US spend ~10% of their disposable personal income on food.
Has the price of food gone up in the pandemic? From January to August 2020, the USDA’s weekly cost of food report reflects increasing prices.
A TikTok to help you understand how farmers & grocers keep onions in stock year round, beyond their harvest season.
Dr. Spiker shared a book recommendation
And I was reading-- there's a great book. It's called A Square Meal, and it's about how people here in the US ate 100 years ago during the Great Depression. And they talk about how in the nineteen twenties, thirties and forties, sort of the earlier versions of our poverty relief program.
Fork to Flush
Food waste is the single largest contributor to municipal landfills. Each year in the United States, 90 billion pounds of food goes to waste - edible food, not rotten!
We closed talking about sustainable food systems. How do we make the best choices for ourselves and hold companies & industries responsible at the same time? Dr. Spiker made great points and you can read more about sustainable food systems in the paper she co-authored.
Guest Expert
Dr. Marie Spiker is an expert in public health nutrition and sustainable food systems. Her research focuses on food loss and waste, value chains for nutrition, systems modeling of food supply chains, and capacity building within nutrition and public health. To explore these topics, I draw from training in quantitative and qualitative research and systems science, as well as my training as a registered dietitian nutritionist.