Food insecurity is a buzzword issue on campus, popping up in multiple campaign platforms and campus events. But it takes more than discussing an issue to create tangible change, and that is what Food for Thought has done.

A collaboration between the Student Wellness Centre, Mac Bread Bin, the Indigenous Studies program and Mac Farmstand, Food for Thought is an initiative that aims toto equip students with basic cooking skills they can use on a slim student budget. The group operates largely as a series of cooking workshops, currently held at the Fortinos community kitchen in Ainslie Wood.

While they have only run a few events this year, this is not the first time Food for Thought has popped up on campus.

“A few years ago when I was finishing up my degree, I was volunteering with Farmstand and… I started a little salad bar and… served salads to students,” explained Jordan Weisz, the original founder of Food for Thought. “And I found there was overwhelming interest in what I was doing and how. So I started doing [free workshops] through the Ontario Public Interest Research Group.”

Following his graduation, Weisz opened a business in Hamilton and put cooking on the back burner until last summer, when the groups now involved with Food for Thought came together.

Taryn Aarssen, a wellness educator at the SWC, began looking into Food for Thought’s previous efforts. Following a donation from the Mac10 Young Alumni Bursary, she connected with Weisz and Adam Chiaravalle, Mac Farmstand’s education and advocacy coordinator. Chiaravalle met Weisz at a lecture over the summer and was inspired by his stories of the original Food for Thought program.

“The funding was to expand our nutrition-related programming at the Student Wellness Centre in general,” Aarssen explained. “We offer Free Fruit Fridays, and that’s removing one barrier but there’s a lot more impact from offering food and cooking skills.”

Shortly afterwards, they connected with Taylor Mertens, who heads Mac Bread Bin’s community kitchen initiative.

“We’re all trying to put this together in our own separate areas based on the specific needs of those areas… Mac Bread Bin, Mac Farmstand and the Student Wellness Centre might have different goals but this kind of program meets all those goals and feeds the needs of all students,” Aarssen said.

Despite each member’s different goals, each wants to see students gain essential cooking and nutrition skills from Food for Thought’s programming.

“It’s really about technique and it’s about breaking down certain barriers that are preventing students from cooking for themselves, shopping for themselves,” said Weisz, who now leads the cooking workshops.

“Giving students [cooking] skills is really a life skill,” Chiaravalle added.

To ensure the workshops are built around teaching students how to make nutritious meals, the program consults with the registered dietician on campus.

Weisz, Aarssen, Mertens and Chiaravalle are all passionate about food, but their inspirations take different forms.

For Weisz, the nutritional element of home-cooking was one of his reasons for starting Food for Thought during his undergraduate.

“In first year I gained about 15 pounds eating on campus,” he explained. “And then you learn to cook and it really opens doors to relationships, community, the local agriculture.”

Aarssen, on the other hand, was inspired when she learned how to make her own soup.

“I look at my childhood and the reliance on Campbell’s soup and how that can be created very deliciously and with a few simple ingredients,” she said.

“It’s really about technique and it’s about breaking down certain barriers that are preventing students from cooking for themselves, shopping for themselves.”
Jordan Weisz,
Founder
Food for Thought

Mertens explained that he loved learning how to experiment with spices while making chicken fajitas for the first time, while Chiaravalle’s experience with food began with his first vegetable garden in Grade 8.

Enthusiasm only takes an initiative so far though. Like many other campus groups, Food for Thought has run into the common problem of space, or lack thereof.

“You’d be surprised how challenging it is to find a kitchen [because] technically it has to be a professional or commercial kitchen that will allow you to come in,” Weisz said.

While most workshops take place at Fortinos, Mertens cited the chili demonstration pop-up in the SWELL as a great example of how the group works with what they are given.

“It was intimate… everyone [still] had a turn... we make do with what we can and that’s all we can do, really,” he said.

“I think that’s an over-arching theme of what we’re trying to do,” said Weisz. “The point of this is to teach students to cook, but we also take into consideration the time and budget constraints that students are on… [and also] teaching people to make do with what’s around them.”

Food for Thought announces their workshops through their Facebook page, and will continue to connect people through food.

Food insecurity is a frightening reality for a large number of Hamiltonians.

With the rising cost of food, people throughout the city are left feeling insecure about how, when and what they will be able to eat. The monthly cost of food for a four-person family in Hamilton is estimated at over $700 per month, and over 17,000 people within the city access food banks on a monthly basis.

Food insecurity can mean different things for different people. For some, it can mean a lack of physical, economic and culturally acceptable access to food, and in extreme cases, it can mean that one’s nutritional food intake is too low. It can also refer to a lack of locally grown, sustainable food in one’s city. In all cases, food insecurity is detrimental to the health of those affected.

Hamilton’s Community Food Security Stakeholder Committee reissued a Food Charter for the city in 2014. The charter envisions “a healthy, sustainable and just food system” and seeks to guide municipal policies and community action to raise awareness about farm income, fair food prices and low paying jobs within the food industry.

There are several initiatives implemented throughout the city that raise awareness regarding the issue and help those that are in need of a dependable and sustainable food source on a monthly basis. One of these initiatives is Neighbour to Neighbour.

Neighbour to Neighbour provides emergency food programs for those in need through a food bank in the form of a grocery store. Each person visiting is allocated points to spend on key nutritional items such as meat, dairy and produce, as well as non-perishable food items. This ensures that customers have the agency and comfort of choosing their own groceries for their family.

“When you don’t have enough food, it impacts your health and that impacts society as a whole,” said Charlotte Redekop-Young, Manager of Emergency Food Services at Neighbour to Neighbour. “One in four children [and] one in six adults live below the poverty line [in Hamilton] and that’s an issue for all. We’re all concerned about providing an adequate food supply to those in need.”

Not only is the struggle a prominent issue within the city, it also affects students at McMaster. According to Meal Exchange, a charity aimed to end food insecurity, approximately 39 per cent of Canadian university students are affected by food insecurity. On-campus initiatives like McMaster Bread Bin aim to combat these statistics.

"One in four children [and] one in six adults live below the poverty line [in Hamilton] and that's an issue for all."
Charlotte Redekop-Young
Manager of Emergency Food Services of Neighbour to Neighbour 

A student-run service, Mac BB works towards building stronger food systems within the McMaster and surrounding community. The service offers resources that include an on-campus food bank, a monthly Good Food Box filled with fresh, local produce and  anonymous assistance in acquiring non-perishable goods. A community kitchen is also in development. Mac BB also hosts several events and campaigns throughout the year that raise awareness surrounding food security.

“Being food insecure turns the everyday task of feeding oneself into a gigantic burden. It holds individuals back from doing what they would like to do as so much of their time has to be devoted to finding that next meal,” said Daniel Lu, McMaster Bread Bin’s social and political advocacy coordinator.

Several initiatives both on campus and throughout the city are actively searching for volunteers and donations on a monthly basis. Participating in local food drives, community gardening and fundraising for these initiatives go a long way in the process of eradicating hunger in Hamilton.

“Do we want to live in a society where other people are going hungry? Are we comfortable with such disparate circumstances in our community?” said Tahima Shamsheri, McMaster Bread Bin’s other social and political advocacy coordinator.

“A strong community is one that is integrated and organized, one that can mobilize around the sharing of resources to ensure basic standards are met for all of its citizens.”

I volunteered for MAC Bread Bin in second year, and I helped run an event called Feed the Bus. We parked a school bus on campus and asked students to donate food and spare change for Hamilton food banks.

I was a SOCS rep then, too, so I talked to one of the vice-presidents of SOCS about helping me promote the event by spreading the word among reps.

The response was incredible. A crowd of reps, who brought with them their orange jumpsuits and Welcome Week enthusiasm, congregated outside the bus every day for the week, soliciting donations from passers-by. We wouldn’t have raised near the amount of money that we did without them.

SOCS still helps out every year for Feed the Bus. Why? Because SOCS reps care about feeding the hungry in Hamilton, and they do something about it by supporting MAC Bread Bin. That’s just what it means to be a rep with the off-campus students society.

Fast forward three years to the MSU’s general assembly on Tuesday. After last year’s attendance of over 670 students, this year was an embarrassment. Only 60 people showed up, and no more than 30 voted on either of the two motions.

To be clear, a well-attended general assembly is not the end goal. It shouldn’t be about quorum for the sake of quorum, or direct democracy for the sake of direct democracy. It shouldn’t use gimmicks to boost attendance. But it has the potential to be a big opportunity for student ideas to get some attention, and people need to be aware that it’s happening.

Promotion for this year’s GA, though, was awful. Intentionally or not, the MSU made little effort to tell students about an event that, just a year prior, they felt was worthy of a major marketing campaign. The date announcement came late. There weren’t many posters. There wasn’t even a Facebook event.

There’s no question that the poor promotion was responsible for the low turnout. But, more importantly, it meant that only one motion was on the table at the start of the meeting.

In years past, the motions were what drew the crowds. Last year, the Welcome Week fee proposal got reps to attend. A motion for the MSU to recognize the Greek Life Council got fraternity members out. The McMaster Marching Band went to see their fee request pass.

It wasn’t about attracting students one at a time. It was about finding where they were already engaged and meeting them halfway.

And despite the problems with the 2012 general assembly (see last week’s editorial), it got that right, even though our students union usually gets it wrong on political student engagement. Be it in General Assembly or the SRA or other avenues, they don’t go to where their members already are.

It’s not that students don’t care. The term “student apathy” is an ugly one – it misplaces the blame.

The problem is structural. If you’re on the SRA, you might be involved in some other segment of campus life, but only by coincidence. At Mac, student government is just another thing to do.

Students care about their societies, clubs, rep groups and social circles. That stuff comes to constitute a person’s identity. I wasn’t just a Mac student. I was an ArtSci, and I lived off-campus, and I was – and continue to be – a Silhouette editor. And because of those things, I found new ways to engage. I found new things to care about.

And that’s why, if the MSU really wants to know how students are feeling or what they want, it needs to connect itself to other groups.

In the same way that being a SOCS rep has become synonymous with caring about food security in Hamilton, being a part of some facet of campus life should fit naturally with political engagement in the MSU. A change like that could ensure better use of student money. It could improve student life. It could turn unilateral lobbying efforts into movements.

It won’t be easy. It could mean re-making a decades-old student government structure to incorporate student leaders from other parts of campus. Or it could mean that the MSU should absorb faculty societies.

But if the MSU wants to be seen as a viable means through which its members can improve their undergrad experience, change is necessary. The MSU can’t be isolated. It can’t keep splitting the attention of students who want to be engaged.

And it can’t keep trying to fight this enemy that is so-called student apathy.