Prioritizing Wellness in Our Community: CCNY and Partners Mobilize to "Leave No One Behind"

Episode Transcript

Vincent Boudreau00:16

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Vince Boudreau, the president of City College of New York, and welcome to our annual discussion to commemorate World Food Day, From City to the World. And our theme this year is Leave No One Behind. So, as New York City still grapples with the effects of the COVID lockdowns, many are still out of work, unable to take on the basic needs like housing and food. Here at City College, we are doing our share to help alleviate food insecurity all during the pandemic. We had a food pantry that we opened up not just to City College students and staff and faculty, but also to our neighbors in Harlem and eventually to anyone who was affiliated with a CUNY school.

We had opened Benny's Food Pantry in 2015, and that has been the chief institution we've used to address food insecurity on this campus. I hope you also visit or have a chance to visit Market in the Heights. This is a green market that takes place on campus every Thursday and Saturday. It also has a CSA. A CSA is where you buy a share of a farm's output and you collect your share every week. Here we collect the shares on Thursday afternoons. I get mine every week. It is good, fresh, and delicious food.

The market takes place on Convent Avenue on 138th Street, right in front of the North Academic complex. You can't miss it if you're coming south from 140th street. And if you haven't been there yet, we invite you to come. It's there every Thursday from 12 to 6:00 p.m., and farmers from around the Tri-state area bring fresh food, but we also have vendors that sell fresh, homemade foods, some of it ready to eat, cookies, a fantastic Caribbean hibiscus elixir that I have bought myself and drink frequently. So, it brings healthy and fresh food to Harlem and we're really proud to be hosting it.

So, today the panel that we've assembled here will be discussing wellness in our community in the midst of inflation and COVID, with a particular emphasis on food. We'll also touch on New York City's current economic status and projections for sustainable development goals within the food and agricultural industry.

So, it's a real pleasure for me now to introduce our panelists. Richard Cox, he is the managing director of Market in the Heights, the market that I just described with enthusiasm and affection. And as I said, this is a place where fresh produce and healthy meals are sold right in front of the campus of City College every week. And the goal of the market is to provide healthy food to help decrease chronic illness in communities in and around Harlem, where the top 10 leading causes of death are 45% higher compared to New York City overall. And particularly this is chronic illnesses that are connected in some way with unhealthy food practices.

Jaclinn Tanney, pleased to have you here. She is the president of the Migrant Kitchen Initiative, and that's an organization that serve migrants who are food insecure in communities around the world.

And happy to welcome for his second consecutive appearance on From City to the World. This is unprecedented, ladies and gentlemen, Angelo Lampousis, who is the interim executive director of City College's Rangel Infrastructure Workforce Development Initiative. And apart from other generous funding that this initiative we abbreviated is RIWI, apart from generous funding from the state and the federal government, he's also recently secured a $200,000 environmental job training grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has a lot to do with topics that we're talking about today.

So, I want to welcome all three of you to the panel and to the radio show. I want to welcome the audience that we have in the studio today. And let me just start out by asking each of you in the order that I introduced you to talk a little bit about the work that you do and what brought you as a person to this work? Richard, let's start with you.

Richard Cox04:23

Well, thank you Mr. President. I would like to start out my story by letting everybody know that I was born on the 148th Street between Convent and St. Nicholas about a half century ago plus. And this place where we're sitting at and the surrounding areas was like our playground. And this playground, we used to play hide and seek in some of the older buildings. But as I come back and I look at this campus and I look at the surrounding neighborhood and I see a lot of the refurbished brownstones and some of the new fancy fusion restaurants, one thing is still consistent from the 1960s until 2022. It's really the lack of being accessible to healthy foods. I remember growing up in this neck of the woods and there was very few limited supermarkets, and it's still existing to today. And when we take a look at the definition of food desert, one of the definition talks about the inability to have access to healthy foods in addition to not being able to afford some of the locations that have moved into our community.

So, one of the dear things for our job being part of Market in the Heights is to address both, for us to obtain access to healthy foods, as well as being the ability to afford these foods when they come to our community. So, this work is very dear to me because this is my home. I was born at 465 West 148th Street, and I'll tell that to anybody. Harlem Heights, Hamilton Heights, Manhattanville, Sugar Hill, this is my community. This drives our spirit, this drives our devotion, this drives our dedication, and that's why we're glad to be partnering with CCNY and this community to make this a part of our mission.

Vincent Boudreau06:25

Thank you, Richard. Jaclinn, tell us about your work?

Jaclinn Tanney06:29

Great, thank you so much. I come from a bit of a different background, but still a New Yorker. I grew up in a family where all four of my grandparents were Holocaust survivors. They came to this country. My parents are first generation immigrants and they didn't have much when they were here and not in Manhattan, but in Brooklyn and in Queens. And no matter what, they had an open-door policy. If it was a holiday, if it was a standard weeknight meal, if there was somebody in their community that did not have access to food, they were welcomed into the home of my family. And they sat around the table and there was no difference between them, between us, and between anyone else who might come in.

And during the height of the COVID Pandemic I was part of a group of restaurant industry friends who were all shut down and we had food in excess from meals that couldn't be distributed to customers. And so, we were the first to donate those meals to the healthcare workers in the hospital where we were providing them with something outside of the PPE that was so desperately needed. And it became very clear to us very quickly that the scope of work went well beyond the four walls of a hospital and deeper into communities where food pantries were shut down, shelters were shut down. There was actually a time where it didn't matter your socioeconomic status, you didn't have access to basic necessities like toilet paper, like food.

And so, we established the Migrant Kitchen Initiative, which is a 501(c)(3) organization. We're a nonprofit and we hire migrant workers primarily who originally had experience in the restaurant industry and were out of work at the time to come into a kitchen that we sublet and to provide and cook meals for the other community members around us. And what was really special about those times is that if you've worked in the restaurant industry before, you might know that there's always something called a pre-huddle before your shift where everybody gets together and they're saying, "Okay, here's on the menu, here's what we don't have. Here's the special for the night." And during our huddles people would say, "Cook as if you're cooking for abuelita," for your grandma, because we were providing food to our own communities and the people who looked like us, who lived with us, and were just in desperate need of food.

And since then, we have distributed nearly four million prepared meals across New York City using fresh ingredients cooked right here. And so, it's really a pleasure not just to be here, but also to enter into a relationship. Starting this month, we'll be providing meals once a month to anybody who comes by the campus as well, and we're really looking forward to that.

Vincent Boudreau09:18

And we're super grateful that that's a relationship that we're entering into. Professor Lampousis, tell us about your work and its relationship to today's topic?

Angelo Lampousis09:27

Thank you, President Boudreau. I was not born in Harlem, but as an immigrant in the United States I believe that everyone who gets a one-way ticket, then that becomes his adopted country. And in this case the adopted neighborhood specifically, because I've been here through almost graduate school and then on and off in this neighborhood, also living a few blocks from campus. The Rangel Infrastructure Workforce Initiative is very new. It was launched this year. It was based on inspiration by Congressman Rangel himself, who has an office on campus and he's a regular here, through discussions with faculty. And in its current form, now, this week and last week we actually run our only our second cycle since our inception. It is focusing on providing education and technical training to students who are not traditional students in the sense of a college level program. They may have been unemployed, underemployed, they may want to change careers, they may be out of work for such a long time that the access to food is becoming one major issue, next to the housing insecurity.

The program is focusing on five areas. One of the five areas is actually food. And as it happens, and I would love to say this was by design, it was a coincidence, today we actually delivered a training on food infrastructure. And our instructor for the day is Nora Sherman, who developed this and she's with us today in the audience. And going through our own country here a few minutes ago in person, it's really brought home some of the training that we delivered.

The graduation ceremony that we have here, the commencement, we had Dr. Fauci, and he used many times the words social determinants of health. And I know personally through my own dinner table, my wife is a physician and she operates here in Manhattan. And she tells me almost every night stories of people who have different types of diseases, diabetes, other ones that require a particular diet if you want to cure it or improve it. And the food insecurity is so dire that there are stories of people who can afford one loaf of bread per day. And they have diabetes, which is the totally wrong food to have. And yet, that's the only thing they may have. Let alone the other types of disease that may require more advanced types of dieting. So, that's my role here through the education and training initiative for City College. And thank you, President Boudreau for your leadership.

Vincent Boudreau12:33

I want to start with a question for the entire panel and sort of get us all into the conversation. I wanted to start by saying something that you all know, but I think it deserves some focus. There's a difference between hunger and malnutrition, and we have communities that are hungry, and we have communities with full bellies that are malnourished. And I wonder if you could think about the work that you each do and the relationship between those two different manifestations of food insecurity, and talk about what you think the way forward, both to put food in people's bodies, but to make sure that they're also nourished by that food? And this is the free round, so whoever wants to jump in first, go ahead and jump in.

Richard Cox13:23

Yeah, one of the great things, Mr. President is that when we opened Market in the Heights, we were approached by several vendors throughout the state who wanted to participate here on campus. And we actually went through a screening process in terms of what were they actually serving. And we had to honestly tell you that those who came out and had high sodium food, fried foods, those who had very sugary foods, we had to eliminate them from the list because of that. Because we didn't want the students or around the community to have a full belly, but then lacking the natural nutrients that they need in order to keep themselves sustained.

So, we agree with the whole process. There's a difference between hunger and malnutrition, because there is a lot of people walking around, like you said, with full bellies, but they have the wrong ingredients in their bodies. What does that lead to? That leads to the hypertension. That leads to the diabetes. So, we make sure that when we had this market, we made sure that we are only bringing in vendors that have natural, organic products, homemade products that are actually nutritious for those who come and we serve. So yes, there is a huge difference between hungry and malnutrition.

Vincent Boudreau14:37

Anyone else?

Jaclinn Tanney14:39

I totally agree with that. And when you look at diseases, what we now know is things are reversible. And if somebody has diabetes, that could go into remission if they change their eating habits, and it quite frankly is very expensive for communities to do that. And when you live in a food desert and you look at where you could use your funds and how far they could go, a lot of food that isn't as good for you is much more affordable. And so, it's about changing that dichotomy and also the offerings and providing the right opportunities for people when we look at meals, at least in our case at prepared meals and making sure that those are balanced and that we're putting that in front of folks. Because otherwise it just becomes quite unaffordable. And so, it's up to us and I think there's a real opportunity between public, private partnerships and allowing the government and private businesses and nonprofits to work together to try to resolve that. Otherwise, there's no way that we'll be able to start making that change.

Angelo Lampousis15:43

Perhaps I can say something from via the education and training perspective on this issue. As far as I'm aware, there is a revolution right now unfolding in terms of the dietary needs, the established ones versus the ones that perhaps we should at least look into. One of that is the traditional difference, the low-calorie diets, the low-fat diets, and it seems like everybody forgot the sugars and the high syrup fructose and the actual elements that are there. Then we have the expiration dates that as far as I know, again, they're a little bit unregulated. It's based on manufacturers' predictions and things like that. Many times, they don't correspond to the actual expiration date that things go bad. And so, there is a whole host of issues that I think we can be better educated in regarding food and its nutrition and value. And I think that's where City College perhaps can play a role, including for that matter, food waste. As Nora mentioned today in the class, there are billions, literally billions of dollar spending food waste because we want to get this reward of going to the supermarket and everything is plentiful, everything looks gorgeous. But then there are this other fruit that may not look so good, but it's equally nutritious and healthy to eat, and yet it gets discarded. So, things of food management, the transportation of food, this so-called last mile to the destination, the labeling.

And finally, I know of at least one author, his name is Jason Fang, He wrote a book called Unlocking the Obesity Epidemic, who talks about food in terms of the big food as we were a few decades ago, referred to Big Tobacco. And there is advertisement of course, and relentless promotion of snacks and things like this, but there's also a little bit more insidious type of advertising that is called sponsorship. And all of the medical journals, the most reputable one, the New England Journal of Medicine are the other ones, at the end of the publications there's a half a page of financial disclosures of where this research was sponsored from. And so, I think we have a mission as an institution to look into these things, educate ourselves, and in turn educate the community.

Vincent Boudreau18:23

Thank you for that. Now a couple questions targeted to specific members of the panel. Richard, let me start with you. I taught a book once that made the observation that when they put the Chiquita banana sticker on the banana in the 1930s, let's say, it was the first time that an agricultural product acquired a brand, right? In the same way that Nike is a shoe brand, right? It wasn't just a banana from a tree, a company was giving you a specific banana, and that was new. And we've gone a long way down that road, and you of course are doing the opposite thing. You are putting consumers into a physical relationship with the people that grow the food. There's no labels on your celery. You don't have a brand for your tomatoes. And can you talk just a little bit about what you see in people when they have that contact with a grower of food?

Richard Cox19:24

Yes, I mean, it is always great to have a relationship with your farmer, or a relationship with your supplier. And you're right, there are no labels on anything that we have at Market in the Heights. One of the best parts that we love is that when we receive everything from the farm, it's really an education process, because all of our farmers say to us, "Bring the people to us. We come down here on Thursdays and Saturdays, but Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, take a bus load, bring them to our farm, and we will show them exactly how our products are put together, how we farm, how we treat the soil." That's very important. So, this way we don't have to worry about labels, because every time you put a label on something becomes that inaffordability, that was just talked about.

Have you gone to some of these supermarkets in our community and tried to buy squash, or try to buy lettuce, or try to buy carrots? That label has really separated us in terms what we can afford and what we also trust. You can actually have that relationship with the farmer in our market in this community. It is something that everyone could take advantage of. You can actually know where your food is being grown, who's doing it. You can track them on a weekly basis, and they can also teach you to do it on your own. All you need, like we always said, is a plot of land and a heart to go along with it, and you can have your own market experience as well.

Vincent Boudreau20:51

Nice, Nice. Jaclinn, question for you. I thought I was going to ask this question in relationship to the consumers of food, but you told such a nice story about who's cooking your food that I want to let you address it to whichever constituency you want to, but I know that culturally relevant food is very important to you. And I'd like you first to kind of unpack that concept, what does it mean when you say food is culturally relevant? And then talk about how that operates in, I guess specifically in the migrant community, but why it's important to the work that you do?

Jaclinn Tanney21:27

Thank you. When you think about food, you think about sustenance, but there's also part of your brain that thinks about food as a core memory. And so, if you think about what you've done with people around you, we're getting close to Thanksgiving season. So, people around the table, what does that feel like? You have a meal that's part of that memory. Going out to dinner, celebrating holidays. And food, it's not just about your physical health, it's also about your mental health and sort of getting that hug, that comfort, a taste of home is really important. And so, when you are in a country, you're a migrant, you've come here in a community, even if you're on a college campus and you're away from home, you crave that taste of home and it gives you this real sense of community and mental capacity that you might not have had otherwise.

And so, when we talk about cultural relevancy of food, for us it's providing people with that taste of home. So, right now, if you are accessing food through a pantry or a shelter, for example, you might go in and you might see on the shelf rice, or you might see macaroni and cheese. And that's great because it's shelf stable and it's not to take anything away from that, but it means that the people who are accessing it need a pot to be able to boil that water for their rice. Or when it comes to macaroni and cheese, which is something you often see, you need milk and you need a place to prepare that. And so, it's taking you not just away from your culture, but also, it's putting up barriers for you to actually access that food.

And so, when we think about cultural relevancy, and the reason why this was so important to the Migrant Kitchen Initiative when we first started, it's because we wanted to combine this effort of providing a taste of home that people might not have access to otherwise, and pairing it with accessibility. And so now when we go to a Caribbean community, our menu is jerk chicken and rice and beans and colors and a mango salsa. And when we're going to a Muslim community, we're providing Halal meals and maybe a date for dessert that someone might not have.

And we're using spices. When you think about food insecurity, we often forget that even something like salt and pepper that we may have in our pantries aren't something that somebody's spending money on in the supermarket along with their fresh produce. And so, cultural relevancy for us is something that's a mandate. There are a lot of communities that struggle and they won't accept the meals that the city and other groups are providing, just because they look at it. If you have kids, I have two kids at home, they'll look at something and say, "I'm not eating that."

And people will do the same thing even as adults. And what happens when we're providing food that looks like something that they grew up eating and that they want to eat, because its restaurant quality and its flavors that they know and they love, everybody starts talking. And so, we go into a community. For us it's about partnering with the communities that we're in, finding out what do people want to eat, and then preparing that. And then now all of a sudden, we have lines coming around the block because people are collecting for their neighbors and those around them so that they all can share this taste of home.

Vincent Boudreau24:49

Part of being a migrant worker is you're separated from your home culture. And it's also the truth that dominant society doesn't always value the new arrival. And so, I don't think there's a place in the world I've gone where people weren't proud to share their food and to be able to share your food in an environment that you have migrated to where people, where you may not always feel appreciated, your culture may not always feel acknowledged. To be able to center that in your interaction with people must be precious for folks?

Jaclinn Tanney25:23

Absolutely. And also, to show it. And so, when we are producing our food labels in Bengali, people, that's just a sign. And certainly, the folks that we have in our kitchen, we're nearly a 100% migrant workers preparing the meals, and we're just continuing to grow that community so that we can continue to offer variety as well.

Vincent Boudreau25:46

Right, right. So, Angelo, here's what I'd like you to think about. The moment for the Rangel Center, the reason why it's really taken off on this campus is that we're in a moment when we are rebuilding the infrastructure of America, and that has something to do with legislation. But years before that legislation Congressman Rangel said, "It's coming. We know that maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but we are going to need to rebuild America's infrastructure." And three years later, here we are. And so, part of that isn't just getting a bridge that's dangerous to be safe, it's also looking at the way the old infrastructure serves our communities and figuring out how to make it better, more efficient, more sustainable, more democratic. And so, if you think about the infrastructure that we have and the infrastructure that we want in relationship to food delivery, what are the most important changes that have to happen?

Angelo Lampousis26:45

I think that everything that we talk about in infrastructure goes back to making things available. And that's the democratic approach, of course, trying to be equitable. There are many studies that show for food specifically the association of poverty to obesity, and I would like to use what Jaclinn just said about the core memory that sometimes food evokes. And there's, similar to that there's of course the sense of reward that we're eating a good meal sometimes to feast, or it represents a reward. Now, we can ask ourselves, "How does that reward looks like for different communities, or for different economic levels?" It can look like lobster and a steak, or it can look refined carbohydrates and processed food, depending on the access.

So, there's very clear evidence that shows that the poorest, I think the poorest state or region in the United States is Mississippi, and it happens that it has the highest rate of obesity, so it's a very clear association. To the extent that the work we do in infrastructure and related training addresses some of these disadvantaged communities. In the process I believe it solves some of the food issues that we have.

Vincent Boudreau28:22

I want to kind of ask the panel a big question about food deserts, because each one of you has a kind of way into thinking about a food desert. Is a food desert a food desert for everybody? Are there ways that migrant communities through their social bonds are able to pull food together in ways that may not be evident? Does our infrastructure create food deserts by moving goods and people around certain communities? And it is a food desert may not mean that there's no food at all. It may mean you can't find a fresh vegetable, or a fresh piece of fruit. So, how does the concept of a food desert kind of structure the way you approach your work? And how does your work attempt to eat away at the margins of these deserts and provide access to healthier food? And again, any order you all want to jump in would be fine with me.

Jaclinn Tanney29:23

I'm happy to start. We map everything out. We speak to communities; we are looking at food deserts and areas where it's impossible to get the meals of the type that we're providing. But what I think is really fascinating is that as communities in New York we've also taken a step to address them. And so, one of the other great benefits of COVID is this movement around community refrigerators. And it's people who have identified within their own communities that there is a food desert and there is a need for communal sharing and to provide free access to foods you otherwise might not be able to have that access to.

So, for us, we are weekly filling community refrigerators across the city, but I think it definitely trickles down to the activists within the community who are partnering with local restaurants, they're partnering with local bodegas and they're trying to do what they can to at least introduce foods and make it accessible. But they certainly exist and we're mindful of that, and trying to create opportunity where there's a level of trust so that you don't just have the access, but that you are also welcomed into the community to start changing the mindset.

Richard Cox30:42

Yeah, I can jump in, exactly what she just said. In addition, one of the things that we try to do is really shorten that supply chain. We have accessible food within the tri-state area, within New York State, that can be easily transported into our communities. It just really, like we said about mapping things out, connecting the farmers and connecting those to where the food needs to go. And sometimes it's an ignorant process. They don't know where they need to bring the food to because of other stipulations, and sometimes we don't know where to go. So, just making that connection work addresses the food desert problem. And like I said earlier, just because a certain supermarket moved into your community and you still cannot afford to shop at that supermarket, guess what? The food desert's still there, because that's part of the definition. Now, you know who I might be talking about, we'll just leave that part alone. But still, we have to make those connections work in order to eliminate the food deserts in our community.

Vincent Boudreau31:45

So, Angelo, I'm going to circle back to you on the question of food deserts. I'm struck by the fact that in both of your answers to food deserts you've both suggested that the path forward is a kind of bottom-up approach. In fact, Jaclinn, you actually said it's the activists that are doing this. And so, I wonder, and absolutely shortening the supply chain basically means putting producers and consumers together. Does this mean that in the larger food industry, and I use the word industry advisedly, is there not a path forward to systematically, even working within the currents of capitalism and industry and industrial, is there not a way forward to solve these problems? Or is it really up to activists and communities to fix what's broken in our food system?

Richard Cox32:37

Well, you know my answer, it's the activists. It's really the folks on the ground that's going to make this work. It's the people who actually go out there and relate to the community, communicate with the community, actually sit down with the folks and say, "This is what needs to be done." And put everything in place to make it done. When you're in the nonprofit world, your mission is really to do a lot of the things that others won't. And this is one of the areas where you have to address. Food insecurity is really a big issue. From my vantage point it's the activist. Putting the activists on the ground, getting that message out there, and really connecting those dots, bringing those farmers into the community and making those things work.

Jaclinn Tanney33:17

I would agree, coming from our perspective, we are so thankful of the government agencies that have supported our work and have made our work possible. But at the same time, we see that every meal comes with a price. And so, we are trying to work with our partners and our supply chain to be able to work within the parameters of that and provide people with food that is good for them that they will like, that is healthy, but it has to change somewhere. And I think there is a lot of responsibility for all of us to start that change and to speak for people who are not speaking up for themselves.

I mentioned earlier that we do a lot of meals for Muslim communities, and those are Halal meals, and that's because what they were getting was pork and ham product, and because of the sense of gratefulness and in some communities across the city as well, the sense of shame in asking for food, people don't want to speak for themselves. And so, if you're the one who's on the ground and you're understanding where the needs are and what people are looking for, then to some extent we hold the responsibility. And I think there's certainly opportunities for large brands and businesses to continue to be successful and make their money and also try to do what they can through their own CSR platforms and philanthropic efforts. But it really takes a village in this instance.

Vincent Boudreau34:37

It sounds like the activists will lead the way and both. That's really powerful. Thank you both for that. Angelo, I want to now come back to you on this question of food deserts and infrastructure. As you think about the way infrastructure leads and guides us, I mean, how does it happen that our existing infrastructure has contributed to food deserts, and what's the way forward?

Angelo Lampousis35:03

There's first of all the reality that we all know of, of macroeconomics, someone has to make a profit for that business, even a non-profit to be sustainable, their expenses. So, it has to make sense financially speaking from a macroeconomic point of view that from the moment someone is putting something into the ground or in these days, hydroponics and other methods to the time that it grows and harvested and gets harvested and delivered, there is a cost associated with that. But I think where infrastructure come in very strong, and listening to the last couple of responses I was thinking, this what if, I'm always dreaming sometimes. And I say, "What if we have this donor who will just deliver to everybody fresh produce?" There's still a factor there that we have to consider. Some people call it the carbon footprint. I don't really like the term, maybe we can call it the environmental impact.

So, we can deliver food in the desert, in the actual desert, in the Sahara Desert. It can be fresh. It's going to produce so much damage to the environment that at some point it will affect the Earth that we cannot make any more of, that gives us these plants in the first place. So, there's an environmental impact factor that mirrors the entire process from beginning to end and calculations about energy efficiency and transportation routes and options and modes and timing, they have to play in so we reduce as much as possible the environmental impact, especially the negative one. Because we do have, I know personally of many instances for environmental cleanup efforts that people overspent, because there was a community for whatever reason they had a lot of political or otherwise. And it is perhaps money not so well spent after a point. So, I think that's the area that infrastructure and the training and education around it can do wonders to reduce the environmental impact of the food production chain and delivery.

Vincent Boudreau37:22

We've talked a lot about where you get food, where you buy it from, but I want to talk just a bit about the relationship between cooking for yourself and buying food that someone else has cooked for you. And Jaclinn, we'll give you a pass on this because you're actually talking about communities in a way cooking for themselves. So, if you're cooking for your abuelita, you're doing home cooked meals, but we've talked about the accessibility of food. In passing people have mentioned all of the various health consequences of food with saturated fats, or high sodium, or lots and lots of carbohydrates. Can we talk a little bit about the preparation end of it? What role does that have in the work that you do? Anyone? This is the jump in round.

Richard Cox38:18

One of the things that we've learned throughout our mission is that we have some real talented folks that come to our CSA and that comes to our market. You would not believe just by speaking to how many different ways they know how to prepare potatoes and onions. And there were two things that I learned this year that I've never had a chance to experience my own personal cooking with. That was Swiss chard and leeks, and some of you looking at me saying, "What are Swiss chard and leeks?" Believe me, before this year had come along, I did not know what these vegetables were as well. But the amount of home recipes that folks have been delivering to my inbox on what they can do with Swiss chards and leeks, and it doesn't include anything in terms of fatty oils or in terms of, or amount of salt or any other type of spices, it's just that tradition, that nurturing, things that they've experienced in their own lives. Some of them have gone back to when they were in college and undergrad and some of the struggles they had to do to make things work.

So, like I said, we have some real talented people that come to our markets and share what they're doing. But overall, it really shows the passion that they have when it comes to preparing their own meals is something inside that takes over when you're actually cooking for yourself that you cannot experience by going out to any restaurant anywhere in the world. So, that's really my position when it comes to eating your own good stuff.

Vincent Boudreau39:50

Jaclinn?

Jaclinn Tanney39:50

Yeah, I would just add that I think that's true in so many instances, but there are also instances where people don't have the luxury of a kitchen and a luxury of being able to cook for themselves. So, something that's really great about what we're doing is we're not only distributing meals into a community, but sometimes for those people who are home bound, whether they're elderly or disabled, we're bringing the food directly to their door. And so, the first time that I had one distribution to a community like this, I knocked on the door and I'm waiting and nobody's there. And then I start walking away and all of a sudden you hear someone scurrying to the door, and they get there eventually. But we are feeding people who struggle to get from your couch to the front door. And so, in those instances, they can't cook for themselves.

And in the instance, tonight we're feeding 200 people who are migrants who are coming off the buses to Penn Station, they don't have anywhere to go. And so, in that case they rely on those meals and somebody to give them that taste of home and to cook for them. I had my experience with Kohlrabi, so I get you on the Swiss chard, but to be able to provide that. So many migrants here don't have the luxury of home, they're living in communal spaces. There are people who are living in homeless shelters and other shelters, and if you're lucky, you have a microwave. And so, we also are adding that element to be able to provide people with the ability to eat food that tastes like they've cooked it, even though they haven't themselves.

I think I have too many stories to share, so I'm not going to say any, because food is almost a religion for Greek people. And when you enter the kitchen area, you're almost feeling like you enter a temple and you have to behave according to the cook's wishes. Maybe I can say one example from the academic world that is not so academic. Professor Miaoulis, who was the director of the Boston Science Museum for many years, and he's also of Greek descent. Somehow, he convinced this big high-caliber kitchen appliances companies to donate to the university he was working for cooking equipment. And he taught a thermodynamics graduate course cooking the entire semester. And people were explaining how the turkey after it gets cooked a little bit, because it changes color it changes properties, and it went on and on. It was very rigorous and very educational about cooking. So, we probably have to replicate this example and I hope he's still accessible. If you approve, maybe we can-

Vincent Boudreau42:22

Cook our turkey at the next episode of the show, possibly. Listen, it sounds like, oh, what's really nice about this conversation, yes, we talk about infrastructure, we're talking about making it more efficient, more modern. And in that efficiency and in that modernity more democratic, making sure that it reaches into every neighborhood. That we analyze where a food desert is, and we're at least sure that we're delivering products or providing for mobility in and out of those areas. But you bracket that part of the conversation. And most of what we've heard comes down to, cook like you're cooking for abuelita, shop like your grandfather shopped at the market on Saturday morning. And a kind of encouragement that in the activation of grassroots connections, people to people, particularly in times of COVID, particularly when you are a migrant on a bus and you don't know anybody in New York, the way forward for food is to think about how we did it when we were more connected. And to think about the way it happens today in communities that remain connected.

And those are not always the small town communities miles and miles from the city. It may be the Jamaican neighborhood where everybody's aunt on knows who that kid is who's acting up on the street. So, I want to thank the three of you for coming and talking about food and the sociology and the politics and the engineering of food. As an educational institution it is our duty to cook and to teach about food, but also to pay attention to the needs of our community. And by that, I mean both faculty, staff, and students, and the people that are on the margins of our community, wandering through campus, coming to the Market in the Heights, I hope more and more of you will discover it if you don't know about it. This is a tremendous addition to our campus life, as is the partnership with the Migrant-

Jaclinn Tanney44:31

Migrant Kitchen.

Vincent Boudreau44:32

... Kitchen and the Rangel Center Initiative. These are tremendous initiatives, and there's no better moment to celebrate them than on World Food Days.

I want to thank you for listening to From City to the World. I want especially to thank Anthony Achille, Sheldon Neverson, and Seamus Campbell for technical support on that day. I am your host, Vince Boudreau, the president of the City College of New York. Thank you.