Soup Kitchen

Working at the soup kitchen really, really humbled me. It’s a great reminder that while times can be hard and students can struggle, at times, with availability and quality at Brooks and McKinley’s – that others have it worse. It also puts a face to the numbers in our readings, a friendly, normal face that you might see on the street or out and about and not think anything of. The stigma of soup kitchens and food insecurity is one of shame in the modern day United States and it’s really too bad because we’re all just trying to do our best and at the soup kitchen it didn’t matter what side you were on or what was being served everyone was just trying to do what was best for them to keep going. It starts you thinking about how others think and live and it brings you back to center, I think. 

I didn’t notice any major trends in who was coming into the kitchen either, except that many mothers came in with children alone. This made me think that they were the primary food provider and that this was probably a major meal for them and their kids each day. Olson corroborates that many women of low socioeconomic status that have children are overweight and are more prone to certain health risks. It seemed like many of the soup kitchen clients had families, probably worked and struggled in our food insecure society. Supermarkets aren’t solely to blame for this of course but they make some things inaccessible and confuse people. As for access, even Nestle – a white, comfortable woman talks about how it was difficult for her to pick out which blueberries were cheapest in Ithaca at her supermarket.

As far as power and cultural scripts go food insecure people had a lot of the same demographic – women and children are often slighted. This seemed to be that many of the women were single mothers trying to support several children on one, two or sometimes more jobs. This lead to them not having much time at all to be home to cook healthy meals or go to the store to get ingredients or even have enough income at the end of the day to feed their families. This is what drives people to soup kitchens and EFAP’s (emergency food assistance program?) oftentimes due to their not really having much more of an option. This could also have something to do with the fact that men make more on the dollar still and are more often hired for a position – when similar qualities are presented.