Observations Part III: Grand Avenue Market

Only one observation today, about 20 blocks down Wisconsin Avenue from Lucky Supermarket.

The first major difference between the Market and the other locations I’ve visited so far is the Market’s hot food corner. A microwave, coffee/hot chocolate machine, and a hot turntable housing pizza stand inside the door with places to sit. A few hot dogs and tortilla chips with nacho cheese containers were also kept warm in a compartment. However, hot food is not technically covered by FoodShare, just like tobacco and alcohol.

The Market is easily twice the size of Lucky Supermarket—triple the size of the National Avenue convenience store—and also in a very busy location. Given these factors, I was expecting a healthier ratio of foods than I had found at other locations so far.

The first shelves past the hot food area are packed with dusty canned food items. The first canned food I pick up—a fruit cocktail mixture—expired in 2007. I try another, this time a can of green beans: expired in 2009. This goes on for the next four cans I try, sometimes having to wipe off a layer of grime just to read the fading expiration date. Every thing I touch expired sometime between 2007 and 2009 and I’m not even reaching to the back of these crowded shelves.

Finally, on the third shelf into the store, I find a can of beef broth that doesn’t belong in the trash until December of 2013. Although the shelves mostly carry canned goods, a box of Lucky Charms cereal and a bag of white rice are also available.

A long row of freezer cases: Kid Cuisnie microwave dinners, pizzas, one partition of the case was devoted exclusively to Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

The refrigerator cases had a few packages of Oscar Mayer bologna and a stack of old “Lunchables”: the cheese, cracker, salami boxes, each packing 75% of an average person’s daily sodium intake.

A low refrigerated bunker in the back corner of the store housed fresher-looking deli sandwiches. Five McIntosh apples wobble in the bottom of the bunker, befriended by three dimply, puffy navel oranges—clearly rotten. At nearly three times the size of the Lucky Supermarket and in just as busy a location, if not busier, I was expecting to find the slightly higher ratio of healthy to unhealthy options.

Passing bag upon bag of cheddar popcorn, potato skins, boxes of processed breakfast foods, I made my way back to the front of the store. One bright bunch of ripe bananas sat by the register, along with one yellow onion and one brown potato.

The clerk shouts at me as I exit the store, “What were you looking for?”

“Oh, ah…nothing,” I reply, and go on my way.

Observations Part II: Coggs Human Services Center

Earlier today I visited the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center on Vliet Street. A major hub of managing the city’s assistance programs, I thought this would be the ideal place to start looking for what nutritional information may be available to those living on a constrained food budget.

There are several Community Access Points throughout Milwaukee where people can sign up for BadgerCare, FoodShare, and other assistance programs. Ideally, I would visit or contact all of them, inquiring about their supply of healthy eating information. My own time and resource constraints, as well as the importance of making neighborhood grocery store observations, will probably limit me to the Coggs Center for the time being.

It was about 3pm when I arrived at the Coggs Center, making my way into the busy atrium of the building. I held the door open for a woman pushing a stroller with a little girl of maybe four years old who had her hand buried in a bag of Cheetos. Two ladies sat at the front counter, each with a line of seven or eight people standing before them. Flanking the left side of the front counter were three touch-screen computer kiosks. I watched one of the front desk ladies walk a younger man over to one of the computers and ask him if he would like to apply for FoodShare online, right now, and began helping him do so.

Several different waiting areas were visible from the main artery of the first floor: one was for continuing assistance and addressing a person’s problems with their current plans, another for processing new applications. Digital “Now Serving Number...” screens were used in the various service areas, and people waited in chairs watching TV for their number to be called.

Signs posted on all over the walls declared “Emergency Food Pantry in Basement.” The visceral sense I was getting is that this place is indeed no stranger to people in crisis and in need of immediate help. Basic needs kind of help. Not necessarily a recipe for quick dill carrots.

One of the emblems on the Coggs Center exterior.

Plastic document bins line the wall to the right of the new applications window. Although there are labeled slots for about 50 different documents, only a handful of the slots contained any papers. Handouts that are present are offered in English, Spanish, and Hmong.

None of the labels indicated that a currently empty slot usually holds information on shopping for and eating healthier foods. Not one slot is designated for nutritional guidance of any kind.

None of the available handouts had anything to do with cooking, meal planning, or general health information like the FoodGuide Pyramid.

The most readily available handout is a three-page document about using the QUEST card, explaining how to select and use a PIN number, how to check the remaining balance of the card, and what types of error messages can occur when trying to use a QUEST card such as “inactive card” or “insufficient balance.” Unauthorized item is not one of the error messages.

I returned to the front desk, hoping to ask an employee about what types of nutrition education materials they may facilitate at the center. But the lines facing the receptionists are longer than when I arrived. I stand back and watch the steady stream of people coming through the door. Two women walk in, bypassing the line, and go straight to a computer kiosk to conduct their business. As I turn to go, I overhear one of the receptionists directing a young man down to the food pantry, saying “They will help you out down there.”

A security guard circles the building, and watches me as I snap this picture back at my car.

I did not know the geography of Vliet Street, so I did not expect to be able to see the Marquette campus from the stoop of the Coggs Center. Standing in the shadow of the building, I could not help but think of how just an arm's reach away there is a different world altogether. Just across Highland Avenue and a chain link fence.

Observations Part I: Lucky Supermarket, Pick 'n Save, and an unexpected find

Today I embarked on the first round of observations. My plan was to visit the Lucky Supermarket, and the Pick ‘n Save nearest to Lucky on  W. National Avenue. Little did I know I would stumble upon an unplanned location today as well...but we will get to that later.

Lucky Supermarket

The first item of note is this sign on the side of the building. Now, I want to “flow” through my observations and eventually connect them to sources, ideas, and other research, but...

...I think a textual analysis of this sign is warranted before moving on to other observations.

As FoodShare benefits and every rendition of the USDA food stamp act clearly state,  food stamps do not cover the purchase of alcohol (or tobacco, or pet food, or...the list goes on). So, declaring “We accept Quest cards” and advertising for beer on the same sign is contradictory. The juxtaposition of the words to the image is glaring: 'We can process your government assistance and we sell beer.'

Hmm.

Either the people that ordered and printed this sign were oblivious to the fact that alcohol has never been covered by food stamps, or they are sending a purposeful signal. Now, I do not yet know the details of using a Quest card, but like a debit card, I do know it is swiped at point-of-sale, suggesting it could be declined for an unauthorized item.

The shop owner said hello as I entered the shop, and immediately stepped into an enclosure housing the register and cigarette wall.

I made a slow loop around the perimeter lined with beverage coolers: soda, sports drinks, and water sat in dingy racks and the doors on the coolers did not seal. Most were propped open leaking cold, foul-smelling air into the store. I grabbed a bottle of water out of one case and attempted to properly shut the door to no avail.

The coolers lining the entire back wall of the shop fulfilled the promise of the advertising out front: beer. Beer obviously dominated the ratio of all other products combined. Sitting perpendicular to the beer wall was a deli-style cooler case. Through the dingy glass, I spotted the only semblance of fresh food in the store:

Two thickly molded tomatoes sitting on a plate,

Two heads of iceberg lettuce,

Three bags of Sargento shredded cheddar cheese,

Several packages of bologna and hot dogs.

The case was empty except for these items.

The shop owner was staring at me from the counter.

The three aisles in the middle of the store had short shelves, only about neck high, and offered a few stray canned products, boxes of off-brand cereal, and a lone tube of Quaker Oats; no price tag was in sight for the oats.

Cans of nacho cheese dip, bags of potato chips, Cheetos, and a large assortment of candy bars blurred past my vision as I scanned the aisles, still feeling the shop owners gaze. I kept a ratio running in my head: Quaker oats on the health side of the ratio, a package of fried pork rinds on the other. Moldy tomatoes? I'm not sure where to put that.

At the register, I smiled and handed the shop owner my bottle of water. He punched in a number and muttered the amount due; he did not scan the water bottle’s bar code. As I made my way to the door, heavily armored with black bars, three people were funneling into the store. I side-stepped to let them pass. They gave me a first glance, then a second, making eye contact that has the makings of a question: what are you doing here?

I want to return to the picture for a moment, and thoughts about the Quest card being denied for unauthorized purchases. If the point-of-sale system does not include a bar code scanner and the shop owner is manually entering the purchased product, what would prevent someone from calling a six-pack of Budweiser a few cans of Dr. Pepper? The shop owner still makes money—maybe even charges a premium for the misrepresentation—makes a happy customer and covers his tracks with the false identification of the sale.

Next, driving down unfamiliar streets, I took in the National Avenue neighborhood. The houses and buildings seem to be in decent shape, and every other business was a Mexican restaurant, suggesting a higher Spanish-speaking population in the area.

Pick 'n Save

The Pick ‘n Save at 1818 W. National Avenue is huge and straight out of the 1980s. From the tile pattern on the floor to the style of the aisle markers, I traveled back in time to my childhood trips to Pick ‘n Save with my mother; our local branch has since been totally remodeled, and I had forgotten what it had looked like. This Pick ‘n Save was its exact replica.

Even though it was a little after 5pm on a Thursday evening when people might be stopping on their way home from work, the store was nearly empty of customers. I perused the bakery which offered several sampling stations, and entered the produce department. It was every bit as large and stocked as I’ve seen at other Pick ‘n Saves: the lettuce was piled high, freshly hydrated, and crisp. The fruit selection included ten varieties of apples, a wide assortment of berries, and the more exotic starfruit, mangoes, and coconuts. One long shelf in the center of the department hosted a Spanish brand of bulk spices and dried food products I have never seen before.

The meat, fish, and dairy departments told the same story. The store was clean, orderly, and appeared highly standardized. If anything was missing that most Pick ‘n Saves have today, it was a bulk and organic food aisle.

National Ave. convenience store

One mile from the National Avenue Pick ‘n Save, I spotted another sign that simply read “Food stamps” on the front of a small convenience store. When I pushed on the front door, I found it was locked, even though the lights were on and the store owner was standing at the register. He motioned that he was coming, and had to unlock the deadbolt before I could enter the store.

This store, much smaller than Lucky, contained coolers with an assortment of sodas, juices, and sports drinks. I would estimate over 85% of the store was candy: two for $1 packages of flavored gummi rings, Snickers, Doritios...I did not even spot a bag of simple pretzel twists.

I bought another bottle of water. It was not scanned.

Up at the register, the shop owner was featuring 7Up-brand pound cake. Not something I had ever seen before.

The shop owner re-locked the door behind me. I passed an empty wrapper of the 7Up pound cake on the way back to my car.

Nudge.

A fantastic book, hailed by The Economist and the New York Times, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness is a resource worth annotating. It offers excellent insight into human behavior and our seemingly inherent aversion to change. Two of its major concepts, nudging and choice architecture, are highly relevant to any conversation on nutrition education and concern with getting people to eat better and consequently live a healthier life.

The concepts go hand-in-hand. Choice architecture refers to the way decision-making contexts are established. One example would be the way the cereal aisle is organized at a grocery store, or how the entire store is laid out, for that matter. Nudging a person, gently probing them in a direction, is something that can be done via choice architecture. Making option A bolder than option B on a form would be a nudge; you may be trying to get people to choose option B for some reason.

Nudging is effective because it doesn't incite resistance by pushing people too hard in a new direction, but in small steps and (hopefully) innocuous ways to shift people's thinking and behavior. That is the key: nudging is about getting people to choose for themselves to enact a behavior. A person may have been guided, but the action was ultimately the individual's decision.

A choice architect is someone responsible for setting the decision-making context for someone else. So, the person writing up the form or laying out the floor plan is a choice architect. When it comes to the people of Milwaukee, especially those using the FoodShare program, there seems to be a huge opportunity for providing information and guidelines that nudge. We have a captive audience of people who already need assistance, already need to walk through the door or go online to register for a QUEST card. Why not take these opportunities to nudge people toward making better selections at the grocery store and preparing more nutritious meals at home?

What kinds of information would Milwaukee citizens be most interested in utilizing: recipes, meal planning guides, shopping tips? How can we be better choice architects?

Reference

Thaler, R.H., & Sunstein, C.R. (2009). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. NewYork: Penguin Books. 

Setting Up the Observations

Before I can explore the status quo of food access in neighborhood grocery stores and nutrition information availability in Milwaukee, I need to develop an observation plan including where I will go and what guiding principles I will use to focus my attention. Walking into a new environment intent on seeing and soaking up details can result in sensory overload, and while the thrust of qualitative research is to examine complete pictures of culture and society—in all of its glorious complexity—a solid context is necessary before beginning.

Permit me a few more instances of "academese" here while I lay out the main principles of ethnography and textual analysis that will guide my work.

The particular type of ethnography I will employ is called participant observation. That means I conduct my observations while acting as a member of the context. Visiting a grocery store and purchasing items makes me a participant shopping in that environment and provides the means for me to also make some observations.

Absence, a textual analysis concept, allows us to account for what we do not find that we might expect to. So, at a grocery store people expect to find food, beverages, maybe some personal products. The absence of these items is worth mentioning as long as it remains "at the level of probability"—within reason, so that you do not comment on the absence of snow on a tropic beach (Cormack, 1998, p.31).

Time for a few disclaimers: it is not the intent of this qualitative observation to produce generalizable results or statistical analysis. The goal? Understanding--a greater grasp on what exists in our focused contexts (neighborhood grocery stores and food stamp distribution sites).

I am “exploring the nature of a particular social phenomena…investigating a small number of cases…[and] interpreting the meanings and functions of human actions” (Atkinson & Hammersley, 1994, p.248).

The American Journal of Public Health released a study this year examining neighborhood grocery stores and obesity in urban communities. During this research, the authors found the following:

"in small grocery stores, the average amount of shelf space devoted to fruits and vegetables was considerably smaller than the average amount of shelf space devoted to snack foods. If a higher neighborhood density of small grocery stores increases the likelihood of shopping at a small grocery store, residents of neighborhoods with a higher concentration of small grocery stores may have greater exposure to the low ratio

of healthy to unhealthy food choices and consume more calories as a result" (Gibson, 2011, p.73).  

Borrowing from this study, I will keep these general guidelines in mind: what is the ratio of healthy options (fruits, vegetables, lean meats) to less healthy options (commercial snack foods), and generally what is present and what is not.

---

Picking Observation Points

Unlike a lab experiment or survey, participant observation does not seek a randomized sample, but rather what exists in a given area. I have chosen these eight locations to focus my initial observations. All of these locations accept Quest cards, have direct or indirect access by Milwaukee Public Transit, and represent central, West, and East side areas of the city. Below I list each location and briefly explain why I chose them in particular.

Here's a map of the places I will conduct my observations, too.

A) Marcia Coggs Human Services Center (1220 W. Vliet St.): To explore the availability of nutrition information for people eligible for FoodShare assistance, I will visit the Cogg's Center which seems to be Milwaukee's "hub" for government assistance applications, distribution, and management. I will look for what kind of information is provided and in what format (i.e. pamphlets, handouts, not online materials) about stretching the Quest dollar to its healthiest potential, and hopefully inquire about what resources of this type are made available to people in Milwaukee.

B) Lucky Supermarket (27th St. & Wisconsin Ave): On a busy intersection with multiple bus stops, Lucky proclaims "We accept Quest cards" on two large signs outside of the building. Its mile-or-more distance from any larger grocers like Pick 'n Save make it a good example of a neighborhood grocery store.

C) Pick 'n Save (1818 W. National Ave.): Located 1.2 miles from Lucky Supermarket, an estimated 18 minute commute by bus, this is the closest large supermarket to the central area of my sample. The purpose of visiting this location is to observe the condition of the store, surrounding neighborhood, and fresh food availability.

D) Grand Avenue Market (6th & Wisconsin Ave): Further east on Wisconsin Avenue, the Grand Avenue Market also announces they accept food stamps. Similar to Lucky in its centrality and proximity to multiple bus stops and Milwaukee's Grand Avenue Mall, the Market offers a convenient stop for those commuting by bus and living in the Avenues West/Kilbourn Town neighborhoods.

E) Pick 'n Save (East Lyon St.): Situated 1.3 miles from the small neighborhood grocer, Koppa's, and the third closest supermarket of its size from Lucky's at 2.3 miles away, the same purpose applies as visiting the National Avenue Pick 'n Save.

F) Koppa's Farwell Foods (1940 N. Farwell Ave.): I read about Koppa's in an article from OnMilwaukee magazine, which reported on the use of Quest cards and grocery stores that accept them in our city. Located on the Lower East Side on the high-traffic Farwell Avenue, and in the middle of a sea of apartment buildings, Koppa's seems like a quintessential neighborhood grocery store providing easy access in walking distance for thousands of people living in the immediate area.

G) Walmart (401 E. Capitol Dr.): Walmart's low prices, multiple departments including food, personal products, home goods, and its location on Milwaukee's east side make it a good observation point to include. Similar to Aldi, Walmart offers a look at what food is available from a low-price provider; a big-box store like Pick 'n Save, Walmart will offer another look at the chain retailers provisions and role in the Milwaukee area.

H) Aldi (6700 W. Capitol Dr.): Aldi food markets are known for being very inexpensive grocery stores ideal for people trying to save money on food (I don't know how I would have gotten through college without Aldi myself). I have heard many people assert that Aldi's do not accept Quest cards because of their already discounted prices, and I will ask at the store if this is the case. Aldi also carries several exclusive off-brand lines of products, and will be a good additional observation point for analyzing the ratio of food types available and price differences.

I plan to take two or three locations at a time over the course of several days. After visiting each place, I will make notes about my observations while they are fresh in my mind and blog about them when I return to my computer. Putting a little space between observing and actually publishing the blog posts will allow ideas to settle and key observations to rise to the surface.

Now...off to get started!

References 
Atkinson, P., & Hammersley, M. (1994). Ethnography and participant observation. In Denzin & Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook
    of qualitative research (pp. 248-261). London: Sage.
Cormack, M. (1995). Methods of analysis. Ideology, pp. 26-36. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Gibson, D. (2011). The neighborhood food environment and adult weight status: Estimates from longitudinal
    data. American Journal of Public Health, 101(1), 71-78.

Questions, Questions, Everywhere

I am really swimming in them now, let me tell you. Of course I knew the social justice of food equality and access, the constraints of living on a food stamp budget, and receiving government assistance was nothing if not excruciatingly complex.

That's probably why I am interested in the first place: I was always better at the harder math problems in school. The easier ones eluded me.

So let me just drop some of these questions on "paper" and then I will clean it up with the two main research questions I am going to use to guide the first part of this project; as we call them in academia, RQ1 and RQ2. So official.

Coming from a communication persepective, I am quite simply interested in what is being communicated in terms of nutrition, healthy eating, and wellness to the citizens of Milwaukee county. What is available? What is available without Internet access, assuming many people on public assistance programs may not have Internet access at home, and may not be computer literate anyway? Are there piles of dusty pamphlets in a corner that no one takes, or are resources readily provided on health shopping, cooking, and eating?

If newsletters or pamphlets are available, are they written for their audience? One study found that women on a food stamp program  devoured the information provided to them, especially recipes, but were 'turned off' to language that was not in their vernacular and went unexplained in the passage.

I think we are ready to wrap this all up with one big question. Here it is (no drum roll necessary)...

RQ1: What information is provided to people on food stamps in terms of nutrition, and stretching their food stamp dollar to its healthiest potential in Milwaukee?

Here comes another one of those 'buts': All of the information on meal planning and more nutritious diets in the world is totally useless if people do not have access to healthy food. Health communication can open someone's eyes to choices that will make them feel better, live better, and change their behavior.

All great stuff, but it cannot make up for a lack of resources and it cannot magically make apples and whole grain bread appear on store shelves. Research on neighborhood grocery stores, ‘food deserts,’ and the social justice issue of equitable food availability requires me to ask...

RQ2: What kinds of food are available at the small grocery stores that accept food stamps in Milwaukee? 

Another way to ask this question, and some great research has done this, is What is the ratio of healthy to unhealthy food in a neighborhood's grocery stores?

A whole slue of other questions pertain to the issue of information and food access in America and continue to be heavily researched and hotly debated: do people in lower income neighborhoods pay more for food? Is 'junk food' really cheaper than healthier food? What is healthy and unhealthy food, anyway? Should the government define these terms?

They don't, by the way. At least not right now. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) explains why they cannot (will not?) define healthy and unhealthy food, especially in terms of restricting food stamp purchases. We will be returning to this issue, for sure.

Time to go exploring--almost. Next step will be to set up a plan for making my observations, selecting locations, and probably asking some more questions.

All for now.

Food Stamped: A Documentary

Good morning! Before continuing with my project plan today, I wanted to take a moment to introduce the "links" portion of the blog and the award-winning documentary Food Stamped.

I have been building a library of links here on Milwaukee Manna in an effort to connect with the great work that has been done regarding eating well on food stamps. From shopping and cooking tips to federal policy information, I want to build an interactive database that can be used to develop this Milwaukee case study, but also discover the most useful information for people trying to live healthfully on a tight budget. 

From time to time, I will try to highlight an exceptional resource and link you to it. Food Stamped seems like a great starter--and a must-watch for anyone interested in this subject. Shira & Yoav Potash, a certified nutritional educator and documentary filmmaker respectively, decided to see for themselves just what eating on a food stamp budget was like. Here's the trailer:

Visit the Food Stamped website to learn more about Shira & Yoav 's project.

The Incredible (edible?) Idea Egg

I started graduate school with a jumble of reasons why I was pursuing an advanced degree, but only one sincere hope: that I would do more than reach a personal achievement goal, but uncover an authentic, lasting interest that above all else would help someone. Gosh, I thought to myself, as I pondered the Peace Corps, teaching English in South Africa, I am a walking cliche. I needed to move forward with post-undergraduate life, and here I was star-gazing into the nebulous (self-righteous?) realm of 'just wanting to do something that mattered.'

Though I grew up 20 minutes outside of Milwaukee, I only say "I'm from Milwaukee" when I am out of state (and if that receives a puzzled look--"I'm from Chicago"). I am from Brookfield, a Milwaukee suburb, raised by two Milwaukee natives.

Raised, quite frankly, to be wary of Milwaukee. Trips into the city meant the resolute sound of the car doors being locked by my mother, almost urgently as though upset she forgot to do it sooner. Watching the morning news over my bowl of Cheerios meant footage of a dark street corner and the grave voice of the reporter saying. “The shooting took place at 2:15 this morning here on the corner of Locust…” and my Dad muttering, “Of course it did.” Milwaukee was frightening, full of “bad” neighborhoods and “scary” intersections. I was accepted as an undergrad at UW Milwaukee and Marquette, but I chose rural-by-comparison UW Oshkosh.

After moving to Milwaukee proper I took a good look around, comparing it to the drowsy streets of small-town Oshkosh, and decided there was absolutely nothing cliche, nothing obsolete, and nothing more needed than people motivated to make a difference. I still did not know how, where, or in what context that difference would be, but at least now I legitimized rather than lobotomized the impulse.

My own zeal for healthy eating and wellness shaped my decision to focus on Health Communication in my graduate studies. Zig-zagging around my brain, the academic interest tried to hit a nerve that would connect the dots to social impact. After awhile, it sort of clattered to the bottom of my head, exhausted and overwhelmed by the seemingly more daunting issues facing Milwaukee than I could address with my yuppie Greek yogurt and yoga.

One day, scanning for a bag of frozen cherries at Pick ‘n Save, I passed by a man filling his basket with Stoffer’s microwave dinners. I sighed internally, feeling an ugly surge of judgmental attitude oozing through my brain. No, no, I thought. Icky. Don’t do it, ok? All that processing. All that sodium. You may feel full for an hour or two, but then you’ll be clamoring for more. Well, that’s if you aren’t—

Then it happened. Light bulb zapping to life above my head. Stopped in my slushy-boot tracks.


Hey, wait! He’s not at the drive-thru. He’s not at KFC, consuming a day and a half’s worth of calories and six months worth of fat in a single sitting.  You have to meet people where they are. Baby steps. Baby steps to good health and better choices. He’s already got a great start!

I wanted to hug this man. Maybe I should have. He was the vehicle to the revelation that changed my ‘it’s-hopeless-trying-to-make-a-difference-with-nutrition communication’ attitude. Realizing that I didn’t have to bring people from the bottom of the Krispy Kreme box to diet super-stardom, I saw the absolute pure beauty in transforming over time. Dropping an anchor to the bottom of my own resolve, I assert: This is a matter worth pursuing. People are capable of changing. I’ve sure changed.

We don’t need to leap, bound, and turn locavore vegan to succeed. No! We don’t need to demolish and rebuild people. We don’t need to morph them so drastically out of their own life they do not recognize themselves.

We nudge. Nudge along to better choices.

But. And there are lots of ‘buts’. What about people who cannot afford to shop at a place as luxuriously laden with choices as a Pick ‘n Save? My mind turned to news reports—the ‘more Americans than ever are applying for food stamps’ stories of a struggling economy. As I sat in my house filled with fresh fruit, ample greens, and a few boxes of quinoa, the rare high-protein grain from Bolivia (which, by the way, due to increased American consumption, Bolivians can no longer afford), I thought—“Post-racial, post-class society? Yeah right.”

Food, still subject to imperialism apparently, probably always has been and certainly right now serves as a measure of wealth, status, and privilege.

I began to read. There is…a lot to read out there on these ideas. CNN reporters and congressional leaders alike have taken the 'food stamp budget' challenge, raising awareness of this issue in our country and asking a crucial question: Can you eat well on food stamps?

From Lancaster to the Chicago Tribune, Detroit to the California Food Policy Advocates the issue of food equality, availability, cost, and government assistance has produced endless investigations using a plethora of methods. To the best of my knowledge, no such case studies have been done in Milwaukee.

The idea egg hatched. What if I did it? Started the Milwaukee case study, exploring neighborhood grocery stores, and finding out what information is readily available on healthy eating?

In my next post, I will pose some research questions and continue laying out my plan for this ongoing project.

All for now!

The Nutritional Divide: An Introduction

I have never known hunger.

Sure, my stomach rumbles when I skip a meal—perhaps too busy in a day to stop for lunch—but that is the experience of appetite, not hunger.

I have never worried about where my next meal was coming from, or if it would come at all. Food insecurity, as the USDA (2009) defines it, has never been a remote reality for me.

Growing up in a suburb of Milwaukee, I knew when I got home from school I would find a stocked pantry, an overflowing fridge, and a family dinner that would produce a few rounds of leftovers. Every day. Without fail. In fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't even know anyone whose life didn't resemble the well-nourished, comfortable existence I took for granted. My parents took care that I understood my fortune and the fact that other people in the world went to bed hungry, suffering chronically from the gnawing clamor of a hollow stomach. 

Now as an adult living in Milwaukee proper, and studying Health Communication at Marquette University, I see clearly the many critical divisions in our city: rich and poor, black and white, sheltered and homeless.

Hungry and fed. 

Milwaukee Manna is my embarkation to discover the state of nutrition and information availability in our city. As part of this health communication project, I will explore and document what health information is available to the people of Milwaukee who receive food stamps. What resources guide food choices, meal planning, and cooking? Gathering together journalistic, academic, and grass-roots sources, I hope to create a hub of valuable information on what it means to rely on food stamps in Milwaukee, America, and how it can be done healthfully.

According to the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, one in five Milwaukee residents rely on the average $120 per month stipend to help cover the costs of food (2010). Milwaukee county's food stamp program enrollment is consistently higher than the national average, and grew 29% between 2008 and 2009, compared to the nation's 24% growth (UW Milwaukee Employment & Training Institute, 2010).

It is my hope that Milwaukee Manna will become far more than a graduate school project, but the basis for providing, exchanging, and improving the information available to those who need help--a vehicle for sharing more equitably in one of the most basic things we all have in common:

We eat.