Article on Food Insecurity in Chicago

The name of the article on food insecurity in Chicago is "Reporting From FamilyFarmed: Community Food Insecurity" written by Martha Bayne on March 12, 2010 on the chicagoreader.com website. This article talks about the approximately 600 Bhutanese refugees that have resettled in Chicago. The Bhutanese are dealing with issues of community food security- the access to affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food. A woman named Sarah Eichberger is one of the only dieticians in the U.S. who works specifically with refugee communities- she assesses the nutritional needs and risk factors of refugees. As stated in the article, "After 17 years in a refugee camp, living on fixed rations of beans, lentils, oil, salt and grain, new arrivals to the U.S. are often anemic, with depressed immune systems and compound health problems. When they arrive stateside they can quickly develop hypertension and diabetes from an unfamiliar Western diet, and gain weight from a suddenly sedentary lifestyle." It is discussed that refugees are at greater risk at being food insecure because, 1) The language barrier makes it hard to get a job and many refugees are also unaware of additional food benefits they may be eligible for, 2) They may have no idea how to budget, 3) Due to years of harassment in Bhutan, refugees are likely to be mistrustful of government, and 4) They fear that if they ask for help, that they will be arrested. Also said, there is a lack of familiarity with common Western industrial food. Eichberger discovered that a refugee client was using the cans she received from a food pantry to decorate her apartment- she didn't realize the cans actually contained food. To address all their needs and foster connections between the Bhutanese community and their neighbors, Eichberger started two community gardens. The author of the article stated that hearing the gardeners talk about the joy they have gotten from being able to grow fresh fruits and vegetables as they did before they fled Bhutan, was heartwarming. It was stated that the Bhutanese felt that it was so nice that they had food grown by their own hands. They learned that everything they have, they need to share with the family and the community, so they end up sharing everything they grow in the garden. One of the Bhutan refugees stated that the only drawback so far has been adjusting to the restrictions of urban living. It was stated by the same refugee that "In Bhutan, whatever we needed for food in our daily life we would grow ourselves. We only went to the market to buy clothes." At the end of the article it is stated that when she (the same refugee just previously discussed) came to Chicago and went to examine the Heartland Alliance garden, she said, "I saw this very small area and thought, how can we grow anything in this tiny space?"

In "So You Think I Drive a Cadillac?" by Karen Seccombe, food insecurity was discussed on page 122. There is food insecurity and then food insecurity with hunger. Seccombe explains that food insecurity is "defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as households that were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food for all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources." Food insecurity with hunger is "defined as households that were food insecure to the extent that one or more household members were hungry."