Connectivity is fuel! We all want to tackle complex issues, like hunger. The bigger the problem, the more help we’ll need.

As food insecurity professionals, we need to understand that leadership bubbles up all around us. We need to consider how we can reach that, how we tap into that, how do we celebrate that!

Moralizing foods or cooking practices creates a superior us and inferior them. This individualizes shortcomings and stops us from paying attention to the real problem. For instance, we don’t want to default to saying, “Families don’t have the right values because they’re buying chips or fast food.” Instead, we want to ask the bigger questions like, “Are there healthier options readily available and affordable in communities? Why do I deserve to eat better or more than the next person? Why is there so much food produced yet people still go hungry?” In order to solve food and nutrition insecurity, we have to take the fight beyond the kitchen and come up with a collective solution.

At 10 years as a dietitian standing up for the rights of those suffering from food insecurity, poverty, and economic injustice, Amanda learned one of the biggest lessons of her career. It came during a recipe testing at a food pantry. Guests made something she dreamt up, a jelly barbeque sandwich. The recipe cooked quick, had few ingredients, and who doesn’t like barbeque!? But one of her participants disagreed, gentle-voiced and dignified. She dropped her cooking utensils, “Jelly is expensive.” She was looking straight at Amanda. She recently became a single mom of four after losing her husband to a brain tumor. She now worked two jobs and moved into a mobile home with room for the kids, a couch, sleeping quarters and little else. She knew exactly how her jelly would be used – as a part of a PB & J. This condiment would NOT be caught in an unfamiliar dish that her family might not eat. She worried constantly about getting children kids enough food, on top of everything else. Every drop of jelly counted.

As a food and nutrition health professionals, we must look deeper and see why people choose the food they do. We can't ask what healthy things are on people's plates, if they don't have the money to purchase or have access to healthy foods. When people are lacking these resources, they are asking themselves, "Can I get anything on my plate to fill my belly?"