Learning to Cook Won’t Solve Hunger

Americans love to judge what people are eating. We have complicated and contradictory expectations about what and how people experiencing hunger should eat. One of the dominant assumptions I hear far too often is that people living in poverty make poor food choices, and that different decisions would improve both their budget and health. A common solution to this assumption is to teach people to cook.

Identifying a lack of cooking skills as a root cause of hunger transforms it into an individual rather than a systemic problem. It shifts the responsibility of solving hunger from policy-level to one of individual responsibility.

It’s also completely wrong. Hunger has very little to do with the individual choices anyone makes.

People experiencing hunger do not have worse cooking skills or nutritional knowledge than individuals who are food secure. They face greater barriers to accessing and cooking healthier foods.

Every day at my food pantry, I engage with clients who admire our fresh produce but then explain how their 16-hour workday, or lack of refrigeration in their apartment, or disability that keeps them from standing too long, prevents them from utilizing these foods.

When people aren’t using emergency food assistance programs, fresh produce is more expensive and primarily available at larger grocery stores. It can be hard for low-income communities inundated with gas stations and convenience stores to find fresh options, and what is available is often more costly.

Even when whole foods are accessible, cooking from scratch is time-consuming. Many households experiencing food insecurity work long hours and/or multiple jobs, which limits both time and physical capacity to prepare fresh meals. Anyone who has worked a long day knows how hard it can be to get home and assemble a labor- and time-intensive meal.

Cooking Education is a Solution to the Wrong Problem

Many anti-hunger organizations host or facilitate cooking classes. I love to cook and believe that everyone benefits from being comfortable in the kitchen. However, it is important to not foster the narrative that better cooking skills can end hunger. Teaching a family how to prepare dry beans does not help them escape poverty.  Even if this saves a couple dollars, it is unlikely to make a meaningful impact on anyone’s budget (Millennials tired of avocado toast condemnation will sympathize).

And far too often, cooking classes focus on foods and meals familiar to program leadership, which may not be the same as their clients. Creating a culinary curriculum intended to save money or improve health can easily dismiss the practices and foods important to the community being served.

Most people know the essentials of healthy eating, but face enormous systemic barriers to actually changing how they eat.

How to effectively partner cooking education with anti-hunger advocacy:

• Present cooking classes as a community activity, a social event, and an effort to help people have fun in the kitchen. Improved skills and confidence in the kitchen can greatly increase quality of life, but they are not an anti-hunger solution. Organizations that present cooking classes as budget savers should tread carefully, recognizing the tradeoffs in time spent and cultural relevance. (Learning to cook with dry beans is a dominant theme of anti-hunger cooking classes, but it requires extra time that people might not have and neglects the fact that many cultures don’t eat beans. It’s great for people to try new foods, but we never want to dismiss them as less valuable than what people are already comfortable eating.)
• Practice community leadership. Ask food pantry clients to teach how to make culturally relevant dishes. Celebrate their traditional preparation methods. Make sure the foods available are appropriate, useful, and accessible to participants.
• Don’t ever waiver from the concept that hunger is a systemic problem and that it requires systemic solutions. Our individual efforts can make an individual impact, but they don’t change how inequality is structured. Cooking classes should be treated as a supplemental option, rather than a targeted solution.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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