The Child and the Cheetos
I heard the two young women before I saw them. Their voices full of life, I looked over and noted a third person with them, a cinnamon-brown toddler. Thinking the young Black mother brave, I also wondered where the women elders were to guide her on her womanhood journey. In a time and a place when and where pregnancy is too often viewed as an inconvenience, when children are abused, abducted, and worse, this woman-child had chosen life. My eyes drawn to a jumbo-sized bag of Cheetos cheese curls nearly the size of the adorable little boy, I wondered quietly if that snack comprised his breakfast. His fingers smeared bright orange, the tot had big, brown eyes that registered his relish.
Suddenly, the power of poverty to make a human being vulnerable to hunger struck me still. Was the bag of Cheetos a clue that the young Black mother is struggling to feed herself and her young son? Indeed, this was not the first time I had witnessed small African American children consuming popular snack items like chips and soda early in the morning in the city. This time seemed different because the bag of Cheetos stood nearly as big as the toddler was tall. It was huge! Silently, I wondered how empty it was. The Black Africana woman scholar in me almost immediately began to compose in her head data on Black maternal health, pediatrics, and nutrition in the African American community. Who hasn’t heard of food deserts in some predominantly African American neighborhoods? Sadly, far too many Black people go hungry. Hunger rates vary according to the circumstances, but the fact remains that there is a dearth of affordable grocery store options where most African Americans live. It’s a problem across the nation and not just in Northern cities. Here in the Deep South, Black residents often struggle just to find quality, wholesome food and to buy it to feed themselves and their families. What you will find in some predominantly African American neighborhoods include fast food chains, liquor stores, and a plethora of Asian-owned convenience stores selling beer, cigarettes, lottery tickets, and sodas. I have sometimes remarked in conversations with my African American sister-friends how easy it must be to apply for a business loan for a beauty supply store, crab shack, liquor store, or convenience store if it’s going to be erected smack in the middle of a Black community. Need I ponder how accessible financing will be if you as the said business owner are not African American?
This is not mythology. The reality of food deserts in African American and Indigenous communities can be found nationwide. According to a recent story by Vic Micolucci online on news4jax.com, as noted by the USDA, “Houston has 100 areas considered to be food deserts. San Antonio has 70. Detroit has 45. Jacksonville and Orlando have 40 each.” Mika Hardison-Carr, one community leader addressing the food crisis, notes that “it has consequences beyond that dinner table. It impacts children’s ability to grow and thrive.” Local Florida churches and nonprofits such as Feeding Northeast Florida which serves eight counties address the issue through food banks. Feeding America, “the largest hunger-relief organization in the United States…helped provide 6.6 billion meals to tens of millions of people in the last year” (https://www.feedingamerica.org). The food bank model offers hunger relief in communities as long as donations roll in. During the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, they ingeniously found ways to give out food to struggling individuals and families.
However, the larger issue of the lack of grocery stores and farmer’s markets located geographically where more African Americans reside remains. Bike, drive, or walk through any main thoroughfare on Jacksonville’s Northside and you are sure to find several Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar stores. These chains promise low-cost products in their signage, but a closer look inside exposes the real dearth of fresh produce and lean meat offerings. You cannot go to any of these major, multimillion dollar store locations and find enough fruit and vegetables to make a decent salad. Uh uh. You won’t be able to buy lettuce, tomato, carrots, cucumber, or onions at any of these stores with “dollar” in their names. Real talk: the Dollar Tree now requires $1.25 per item from its customers!
I once asked students in my college classroom to name exactly what you can buy for a dollar in the United States, and their answers were telling. The average cost of a 20-ounce Coca Cola brand soda is around $2. A bag of potato chips—any flavor—averaging over 2.5 ounces averages over $2. The 400-calorie McDouble at the McDonalds’ fast food chain costs about $3.
Since 2020, major toilet tissue brands with four or more rolls cost consumers approximately $6 per pack. Fifteen sticks of sugar-free gum costs between $1.19 and $1.99. A loaf of bread costs about $3-$4.
Again, I ask what can you buy for $1 in America?
Planning nutritious meals takes knowledge, money, and time. All of these are in short supply in far too many households around the country. In the middle of the Information Age, facts fly everywhere, but, when it comes to nutrition, truth is stranger than fiction. After reading a news article on how inflation has impacted families at the grocery store, I cringed at a father of five children’s dilemma between buying sky-high, raw chicken to cook at home or a hot pizza.
It’s the kind of choice millions of working and poor Americans make more frequently these days when every cent counts.
Once, I decided to take down ignorance and malnutrition by starting an application to earn a graduate degree in nutritional science. No lie! Perhaps because the core requirements included lots of chemistry which, compared to biology and physics, is not my best suit, I ditched my statement of purpose essay and dream of another degree. The larger deterrent was the amount of time I believed it would take to tackle malnutrition the academic way.
I’m not a caped crusader.
Understanding that the global problem of hunger did not appear overnight, I have come to realize what a sad paradox it is that so many millions of Americans do not have enough clean water—remember Flint!—to drink and nutritious food to eat. In this land of plenty, that seems terribly unjust. How do you run a democracy on empty?
Whether the issue is an empty stomach or an empty gas tank, the harsh reality is, in a city where there are several markets boasting nutritious and organic food including Sprouts, Target Superstore, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods, I witnessed a child consume a tiny fistful of Cheetos for breakfast. You see, none of the aforementioned health food alternatives think it feasible to locate stores in the ‘hood. They point to “demographics” when the definitive research on African Americans, economics, and nutrition has really yet to be done. What it’s really about is “the bottom line” and perceptions of African Americans and Indigenous people as “other.”
No, Southern-based grocers like Publix and Southeast Grocers who owns Harvey’s and Winn-Dixie don’t get a pass, either. They, too, must assume responsibility for not offering customers in certain zip codes the option of healthy, affordable groceries. Word to the wise: everybody eats. How tragic that racialized stereotypes, hate, fear, and indifference play a role in 2022 on what one finds at the American dinner table.
The Cree Indian prophecy warns, “Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” Before it gets any worse, African American and Indigenous leaders as well as our allies must equip the younger generation to make wiser decisions about nutrition and overall health. This is not the time to be in despair or distracted. Since this is the only time we have—the present–, let’s agree that, as civil rights leader Mahatma Gandhi maintained, “poverty is the worst form of violence.” We need healthy young people—future husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, leaders and thinkers—to survive and thrive as the human race. While we must not neglect their intellectual development, we need to remind ourselves that children cannot learn well on empty stomachs. If we as Americans are ever to be respected in the world, then we must fight food deserts and hunger by any means necessary. There has been renewed interest in urban farms, farmer’s markets, bee colonies, and growing vegetable gardens at home. All of these are steps forward. It is also imperative that medical schools teach students about nutrition and health disparities in various communities. This will empower doctors to engage their patients about eating habits and traditions and to better equip them to eat to live. Real talk: food is not entertainment.
As a survivor of anorexia, I understand that how we view ourselves and how we think about food can be a matter of life or death. I was once a size 2-4. As a practical optimist, I truly believe we have tools readily available to make better choices about our physical health. One critique I have of my African American people is that we often go anywhere we want to go. We must add to that list travelling to non-Black communities to purchase quality food and even going to Washington, DC to demand that Congress tackle the issue of the lack of whole food options in the places where marginalized people of color and working-class folks tend to live.
It takes courage and much love for a young African American woman to decide to give birth to a child, especially when so many pundits—some of them female!—are swearing that she should have had an abortion or will face poverty all of her life in the wake of the Roe v. Wade reversal. Let’s support our childbearing-age sisters with making nutritious choices for themselves and their children. This is a task for the historic Black church, for every African American sorority, their brother fraternities, HBCUs, tribal colleges, and for Black and Indigenous business owners. Teach the youth to care for their temples with healthy choices—good nutrition, physical exercise, and proper rest. Our future depends on our choosing right.
Works Cited
“Feeding America.” https://www.feedingamerica.org. Accessed 5 July 2022.
Micolucci, Vic. “Fighting food deserts: Urban farming a solution for a lack of fresh food.”
https://www.news4jax.com. 3 July 2022.
