Day at the Soup Kitchen

"If it's about the system, then it's about us..so it has to be about you." This quote has really struck me, and I find myself going back to it often when thinking about issues such as poverty, hunger, and food insecurity. To me, it translates what our society thinks about these issues: if the fault lies in the system, then poverty and food insecurity become our problems and our responsibility. It therefore has to be about you (the individual); it becomes your fault, your problem, and (eventually) your resolution. We are practically living in denial. We deny any responsibility when it comes to this particular population. We take ourselves out of account, and instead find ways to fault or blame these people rather than looking at issues as a collective whole. It's quite comical to me that we think this way. In contrast, I think that Bronfenbrenner's model for poverty is an accurate depiction of how we are all, in actuality, very interrelated. We have learned in class that food insecurity and poverty fall in/on all levels of the ecological model, and in/on all levels of Bronfenbrenner's model, too. This takes apart society's idea of there being an 'us' and a 'you', particularly because we are all connected ranging from the microsystem to the macrosystem. The microsystem revolves around the individual, while the meso, exo, and macrosystems are inclusive of, and build upon, both the individual and societal factors. In this model, attitudes and ideologies of culture, mass media, neighbors, social services, local politics, industry, and the individual are distinctive in terms of which system they fall in, but are connected on the larger scale. You simply can't tweak one aspect of a system without experiencing a ripple effect-- these systems are all interconnected and elements found in each play an equal role in maintaining balance. Because of this, food insecurity and poverty are ideas involving much more than simply the individual. It is essential that we (society) forgo the existing notion of there being an 'us' and 'you', and realize the interplay between individual characteristics, societal conditions and processes, and their combined influence on behavior.   

I found it necessary to preface this post with the aforementioned ideas because I believe that it exploits many points of intersection between individuals, society, and ultimately food-related behavior. Serving at the soup kitchen was a way for me to actually see the reality of these intersections. Cultural scripts, to me, is basically the idea that we have predetermined ideas about how things should go or the way things should work-- societal expectations. At the soup kitchen, the interplay between cultural scripts and categories such as class and gender became apparent. Even if I wasn't explicitly informed about the backgrounds of some attendees, I quickly noticed that many who attended the soup kitchen were CHAPS members, too. As I reflect, it's interesting that I immediately paired the attendees to CHAPS-- a local outreach program that hosts mental health consumers differing in terms of function. Having interned at CHAPS, I am well aware of most member's SES and levels of functioning. In terms of cultural scripts, I now understand why I actively sought out a relationship between the soup kitchen and CHAPS: it is true that those who attend both are often of a lower SES, but it is 'culturally accepted' that if you attend one, it is normal to attend the other. 

Another idea I seemed to have noticed is that a lot of soup kitchen attendees were either males who attended alone or with another male (probably someone they knew), and (seemingly) mothers or primary caregivers with their children. As we have learned from previous research regarding gender and food-related behavior, it is common for mothers to take on the responsibilities and needs of their children (aka fulfilling maternal roles). Mothers tend to be most involved in the preparation of meals, actual action of eating with their children, and knowing what their children eat. Although the mothers weren't able to prepare meals themselves, they were active in eating with their children and knowing what was being consumed. Moreover, I noticed that mothers were very active in their kid's food choices. Although food choice was very limited from the start, options were still available: 1) one could choose to have an item or not 2) some items had different options (such as milk and/or juice, or different flavors of cake or cookies). I noticed that if a child deferred a certain food item (such as beef stew, slaw, or peaches) the mother tended to give ultimatums. For example: "you can have the slice of cake IF you eat the peaches", or, "you can have the cookie IF you eat the slaw". 

It is quite interesting to look back on this experience and pick apart how interplay between social categories and our predetermined cultural scripts influence food behavior and food choices. Like Fitchen explains, in order to understand issues such as hunger, poverty, food insecurity, and their influence on food-related behavior, culture needs to be deeply examined. Bronfenbrenner's model for poverty is one way that helps us understand these issues and their connections. By diagraming the interdependence between social category differences and embedded cultural assumptions and ideas, we see that food-related behaviors are indicative of both cultural scripts and societal preferences.