Monthly Book Club
Each month we will highlight a new book that will give us insight into how to understand food deserts and combat them. Join us to get a better perspective of what’s going on in the world around us and find out how you can get involved to be the change you want to see.
August – More Than Just Food by Garrett M. Broad
The industrial food system has created a crisis in the United States that is characterized by abundant food for privileged citizens and “food deserts” for the historically marginalized. In response, food justice activists based in low-income communities of color have developed community-based solutions, arguing that activities like urban agriculture, nutrition education, and food-related social enterprises can drive systemic social change. Focusing on the work of several food justice groups—including Community Services Unlimited, a South Los Angeles organization founded as the nonprofit arm of the Southern California Black Panther Party—More Than Just Food explores the possibilities and limitations of the community-based approach, offering a networked examination of the food justice movement in the age of the nonprofit industrial complex.
Our Book Club
To understand a problem you must get to the source. Our book club helps you to get better insight as to what’s really going on in food desert communities and how we can do something about them.
Feb.- Franchise: The Golden Arches In Black America
By Marcia Chatelain
A nuanced account of the complicated role the fast-food industry plays in African-American communities, a portrait of race and capitalism that masterfully illustrates how the fight for civil rights and health disparities have been intertwined with the fate of Black communities.
April- The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food and Flavor
By Mark schatzker
We are in the grip of a food crisis. Obesity has become a leading cause of preventable death, after only smoking. For nearly half a century we’ve been trying to pin the blame somewhere—fat, carbs, sugar, wheat, high-fructose corn syrup. But that search has been in vain, because the food problem that’s killing us is not a nutrient problem. It’s a behavioral problem, and it’s caused by the changing flavor of the food we eat.
March-Food and Poverty By Leslie Hossfield, E. Brooke Kelly, Julia F. Waity
Food insecurity rates, which skyrocketed with the Great Recession, have yet to fall to pre-recession levels. Food pantries are stretched thin, and states are imposing new restrictions on programs like SNAP that are preventing people from getting crucial government assistance. At the same time, we see an increase in obesity that results from lack of access to healthy foods. The poor face a daily choice between paying bills and paying for food.
May- Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability (Food, Health, and the Environment)
By Allison Hope Alkon
A growing food movement urges us to support sustainable agriculture by eating fresh food produced on local family farms. But many low-income neighborhoods and communities of color have been systematically deprived of access to healthy and sustainable food. These communities have been actively prevented from producing their own food and often live in “food deserts” where fast food is more common than fresh food. Cultivating Food Justice describes their efforts to envision and create environmentally sustainable and socially just alternatives to the food system.
June- Overcoming Food Deserts in Your Community
BY CATHY HARRIS
This book not only lays out several action plans to gain access to good, clean, organic foods, but it will help all family members gain access to job and business opportunities, while they eliminate food deserts in their communities.
July - Black Food Matters -Racial Justice In The Wake Of Food Justice
For Black Americans, the food system is broken. When it comes to nutrition, Black consumers experience an unjust and inequitable distribution of resources. A comprehensive look at Black food culture and the various forms of violence that threaten the future of this cuisine, Black Food Matters centers Blackness in a field that has too often framed Black issues through a white-centric lens, offering new ways to think about access, privilege, equity, and justice.