Food is one thing that everyone has in common. It provides comfort, and it is so nice to hear Jose Andres helped out so much with the situation in Puerto Rico. "I saw children ride their bikes behind his food trucks, happy to get their only hot meal of the day." After their homes and town has been destroyed by this terrible natural disaster, it is inspiring to hear that they are so grateful to have just one hot meal. Think about how different the world would be if there were more people willing to help those in need.
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I spent 62 days at Standing Rock and appreciated all the meals that were prepared for the water protectors. Thanks.
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Thanks very much for your reporting. Anecdotes about “making red beans and rice on the streets” offer important lessons for feeding undernourished people everywhere. I’m struck by how, with the best intentions, shoppers pack unhealthy food in the donation boxes that spring up in supermarkets at this time of the year. Instead of high-sodium mac-and-cheese “dinners” and sugary cereals, how much better to donate bags of dried beans and rice, lentils and bulgur wheat, chickpeas and millet.
I’d love to see a story in the future about food banks that are steering people to healthier, low-cost, unprocessed foods, and just as importantly, are teaching patrons the basics of how to cook them.
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....and who are you to decide who is and isn't 'undernourished' and where do you find those 'healthier, low-cost, unprocessed foods' in food banks.......This is or was America and we don't force-feed people on your command and opinion on what is or isn't 'healthy'.......yes, 'patrons' is correct in your world, because all you do it patronize them as do all the liberal 'lady bountiful s' .
You missed the entire point which was to simply make highly nutritious food available It is an excellent idea.
Of course bags of brown rice, lentils, and other low cost foods are more nutritious and should be given instead of high sodium, high calorie foods. However, it is my experience that many people in need do not have either the knowledge to cook dried beans, for instance, and neither do they have the resources to do so, e.g., a large pot, even a cooking appliance. So dinner is a popped open a can of spaghetti-os or a bowl of cereal for your hungry child and yourself.
Let's be clear, real vegans don't wear Uggs.
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@ El Swa
Indeed, they do not. True vegans should imitate the dress of their dietary predecessors, the Manicheans and Cathars.
"More often than not, food offers a powerful, surprising and sometimes uplifting path through difficult news events". -- How very, very true!
Intake of metabolizable energy through food is undoubtedly the base of staying alive. But, beyond this first need, food has evolved into a pleasure, an inspiration of human spirit, and a means of human friendly interactions.
Apart for the latter, one should never have meals where pleasure is mixed with business: each detracts from the attention required by the other.
Regenerative agriculture (Regeneration International, Carbon Underground) improves soil health with every crop grown. This increases the soil's water holding capacity and sequesters carbon. Plants convert CO2 to Carbon and Oxygen through photosynthesis. More plants = more carbon taken out of the atmosphere and stored in the soil. Simple. Proven. Please, more reporting on this is vital. We can change deserts back into grasslands and farms, and we can reverse climate change,
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I've urged reforestation for years; but it seems like Liberal Democrats only want to regulate industrial emissions....sound science on reducing CO2 has been hijacked by Marxists and their class warfare.
Remember Ocean forests work year round, so plant 'kelp' too!
What are you talking about?
Thank you for doing the work you do.
Recently, I saw an Italian documentary, "Pane & Partigiani" ("Bread & the Resistance"). During WWII, in the rugged Umbrian countryside, women risked everything to get food and bread to the resistance fighters. In the words of the men, the women were just as courageous as the men and nothing would have been accomplished without that daily bread. Food stories are so powerful because everyone can relate to needing to eat.
But that was real bread. Not the stuff that passes for bread today in the USA.
Nice story but there are so many additional dimensions to food-related stories beyond recipes and restaurant reviews. For example, the continuing struggle to bring healthy options to "food deserts" where people without transportation are limited to purchases from convenience stores geared around salt or sugar-infused foods offering little in the way of nutrition. Or you might want to do some investigative reporting on which companies deeply-invested in the junk food market consistently oppose limitations on using food stamps (sorry, SNAP) to purchase high calorie-low nutrition products. Or perhaps a discussion on the struggles to create and maintain community gardens in the face of competing uses for urban land. Then you might transition to the potential problems for American farmers as the flight from NAFTA leads Mexico to turn away from American corn purchases in favor of Brazil and Ukraine. How about some in-depth reporting on issues of country-of-origin labeling and manipulation of WTO processes? it would be great to see some serious analysis as to why American taxpayers are hit annually for billions in subsidies to the dairy sector while somehow Canadians, working under less favorable conditions, provide almost nothing in the way of subsidies to their dairy farmers. Or you might look into the implications of undercutting the scientific basis for American food safety regulations by putting unqualified people in charge. So much to nosh on, so few food writers doing so.
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To say "Nice story but ..." completely discounts the point of this article. The Times, and Kim, have committed to publishing many food-related stories along these lines, maybe not all of them, or to your liking. But this article makes EXACTLY the same point you do: that "there are so many additional dimensions to food-related stories beyond recipes and restaurant reviews."
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Jose Andres is my hero! What he accomplished - feeding literally thousands in Puerto Rico is an example of what makes this country great. An immigrant, BTW.
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Hungry people don't need a "chef". They need food. Rice, beans, tomatoes, tortillas. They can cook them themselves.
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and if their kitchen and everything in it has been blown away...?
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you sound like a person who's never lived through a disaster without running water, functioning stoves, or electricity in order to cook said meal themselves. when infrastructure is completely out, as per PR thanks to our government's lack of assistance to fellow americans, you need cooks willing to leverage limited resources to maximize mouths fed.
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It is true that they can cook for themselves, but think about it, when you've just gone through a huge natural disaster and so much of what you have is gone or destroyed, would you really be very willing to cook? It is not a matter of whether or not they can cook themselves, but rather that they are being given a free meal, eliminating the time it would take to make a meal themselves.
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This was really touching. It's not just that we all need to eat, but food is also so meaningful--both universal and personal. "There is no sincerer love than the love of food," wrote Mark Twain. How can we know about people without knowing how they eat?
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you touch on something that I have been thinking about for awhile now. Food trucks are an answer to disasters. I lived through Sandy and there was a guy with his truck from Boston there giving out breakfast every morning, later another one started coming and I thought, this is what you need to bring in after these kinds of events, a self contained way to get hot meals to people. I hope as disaster planning continues across the country, they begin to factor this into their thinking.
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