Good bites, food insecurity, love letters, and a misplaced reception of birthday cake, 1/30

Good bites, food insecurity, love letters, and a misplaced reception of birthday cake.

On Wednesday, the class met at The Plantory to:

I.   listen to two presentations concerning

A.  the availability of healthy and nutritious food to children.

B.  the challenges faced by older Americans in securing enough food for themselves

II. Begin crafting our love letters to Lexington.

Part I.

A.  Our first presenter was the founder of the Tweens Nutrition and Fitness Coalition. The work she chose to share was with the organizations:

            i. Snack Strong: Better Bites

                        An organization dedicated to providing affordable, healthy, and nutritious                         snack options at public concession stands.

            ii. Good Neighbor Stores

                        Focused on making neighborhood “quickie-mart”s frequented by the  

                        low-income and transportationally-challenged safe, clean, and                    communally-involved while also offering healthy food at fair prices/ accepting EBT & WIC.

B.  The second presenter discussed the challenges faced by older Americans in                             securing enough food for themselves. Over the course of this talk, the presenter discussed:

i.  SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program)

ii.  The risk factors of food-insecurity in older americans:

a.  lack of socialization

b.  growing up food-insecure

iii.  He also discussed how familes who were considered to be “poor” (grossing less than $26,000 in a family of four) were less likely to be food insecure than those who are not. This led to the discussion of the average American’s ability to compute wants vs. needs.

Part II.

The second half of class focused on the formative phase of our personal love-letters to the city of Lexington and/or the people who might see them on Lexington buildings. 

A.  Kremena and Kurt circulated images that inspired the project, and gave us time to begin work on our own 15-words-or-less love letters. Along with some scrap paper to begin sketching on.

i.  Postcards featuring our love letters should be completed and available to share by Wednesday, February  6.

B. The class ended with the consumption of a cake made to commemorate Archie’s birthday. Archie was not present. It felt so wrong, but it was so delicious.