Guest Bloggers
How Many Calories Does $1 Buy?
Published August 27, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
The answer depends largely on what type of food you're purchasing.
As I was reading through the recent TIME Magzine cover story on the real price of cheap food, I came across reference to a study conducted by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The study examined how many calories, of certain kinds of food, one dollar can buy you. They determined that:
A dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit.
Yeah, you read that right. A dollar can buy you almost 10 times more calories from potato chips than it can from fresh fruit. Is it any wonder that obesity and food security are so intricately tied to income level in this country? I think not.
This statistic has a lot to do with why many people who do not have adequate access to healthy foods are often unhealthy and overweight. Really, it's all about the energy density of the foods we eat. Let me explain.
Katrina Reflections 4 Years Out
Published August 26, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
At field hearings of the Congressional Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity in New Orleans last week, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II (D-MO) contrasted the polite behavior of the audience with the recent inflammatory behavior of participants in town hall sessions across the country regarding health care reform. Congressman Cleaver stated that this difference was curious to him, because as he saw it, Gulf Coast residents have so much to legitimately be angry about. But local advocates and residents can easily explain away the difference—we are exhausted.
Saturday will mark the four-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall on the Gulf Coast back in 2005. It is a little daunting to try to write a post that incorporates the meaning imbued in this anniversary, and I’ve been pondering about what to write for several weeks now. In doing so, I have been confronted with how differently I felt about the date in years past than I do this year.
Taking Stock: Hunger Across America
Published August 20, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
In previous posts, including this one, I've talked about the need for adequate summer feeding programs in order to make sure that children do not go hungry while school is out of session.
But as the economy continues to contract and unemployment continues to rise (although apparently levels of joblessness are beginning to level off), I've come to realize that it's not just children who are in need of food assistance this summer, it's everyone.
From middle-class families to single parents to young couples trying to support themselves on minimum wage jobs, it seems as though no one is immune to the pangs of hunger this season.
With this in mind, I decided to take a look around the country to see how bad it really is out there:
Ask Congress About Medicaid
Published August 19, 2009 @ 01:04PM PT
After Congress failed to meet self-imposed deadlines to put together a comprehensive plan before the August recess, it's clear healthcare reform has run into some major issues. Some of them - like the wailings of a wacky former Governor about "death panels" (sounds like bad siding) are easily dismissed. Others are issues that are not likely to go away, and may well affect what happens to healthcare reform when Congress resumes in September.
The press and many progressive advocates have latched onto the "public plan", shorthand for some sort of government run insurance plan which would serve as a backstop for households when no other insurance option was available. The "public plan" has come to symbolize, for the right, the threat of a "government takeover" of healthcare... and for the left it has become a rallying cry of necessity if reform is to be done right.
Neither is entirely the case. First, I agree with other progressive advocates urging you to call your members of Congress about healthcare reform. But rather than emphasizing the public plan, if you're concerned about healthcare and poverty... ask them how they plan to defend and strengthen Medicaid.
Poverty @ Netroots Nation
Published August 14, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
Many of my fellow bloggers have gone to Netroots Nation for the weekend; ironically, I suppose, I lack the funds for the trip.
It's too bad; Netroots Nation is one of the best known coalitions of progressively-minded activists in the country and certainly the best known for those of us who use the web and media for our work. The annual conference is taking place in Pittsburgh this year, a city I'd love to visit some day.
So let's pretend I'm at NN, and take a look at a few of the key convenings I'd be joining on behalf of Poverty in America:
Survey on Classroom Hunger
Published August 13, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
(Hello everyone, Greg here. This week I'd like to feature a guest post by Stephanie Keller from the nonprofit group Share Our Strength. The organization is asking teachers who have experienced child hunger in their classrooms to fill out a short survey to help Share Our Strength document and raise awareness about hunger in the classroom. If you're a teacher, please fill out the survey (link below). If you have teacher friends or colleagues, please forward this to them. Thanks in advance for all that you do!)
Every day, in classrooms across America, teachers witness the devastating impacts of hunger on the children they serve - problems that we might see as behavioral, teachers know are often the result of children not eating breakfast that morning or dinner the night before. We hear from teachers across the country that more children come to school hungry on Monday morning than any other day of the week, because they didn't eat enough over the weekend.
This summer, Share Our Strength is talking with teachers across the country about child hunger in their classrooms, and we need your help. Through a project called Hunger in America's Classrooms: Share Our Strength's Teacher Report, we hope to raise awareness about child hunger in America and build a movement of Americans dedicated to ending it.
Gulf Coast Census Imperatives
Published August 12, 2009 @ 05:12AM PT
Katrina and the failure of the federal levee system in New Orleans created unprecedented levels of upheaval and destruction in a frightening number of people’s lives. This upheaval has still not subsided, even as we approach the four-year anniversary of the storm.
Our collective refusal to account for and deal with the effects of the large-scale, forced displacement of Gulf Coast residents in 2005 has yielded problematic outcomes for survivors and host communities. Assistance programs did not accurately consider the needs of the displaced, and many “receiving” cities were not equipped to handle the needs of internally displaced people.
The conversation and planning leading up to the 2010 Census as it relates to New Orleans is another disheartening reminder that as a country, we still do not recognize the full impact that Katrina had (and continues to have, and will continue to have) on an entire region and its population. With the stakes as high as those associated with the Census population count, it is absolutely imperative that we get it right for the Gulf Coast. Federal funding and political representation are both determined using Census population counts.
Below are three recommendations for the Census Bureau to accurately gather data about the post-Katrina Gulf Coast.
