March 6, 2019 • 43 mins
Fresh food and clean water are necessary for human health and productivity, but many people lack access due to systemic problems with infrastructure, education, and opportunity. We skim the surface of food and water policy in New Orleans and beyond.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
It would help me all on so much, you know.
I mean, we're a wonderful city, we have so much
going on for us. But I just, you know, my
dream is it's a great city and it's not a
great city when like we're saying, I mean not every
man and woman in this community has a path to
really live American dream. Hello, and welcome to Saber. I'm
any Rest and I'm Lauren foc Obam and today we're
(00:31):
talking about issues around food access and food law, not
that kind of law or not really. The Law and
Order franchise has really neglected exploring food law. So spinoff idea.
You're welcome. We're expecting our fair share of the profits. Yes,
I somehow have defied the laws of space and time
(00:54):
and never seen an episode of Law and Order or
any of its ilk How good question. I don't know.
Suddenly I'm like, how have I managed this? But I'm
fairly certain we're going to be tackling something different than
your average Law and Order episode. The court you heard
at the top is from Dicky Brennan, whose family owns
(01:16):
fifteen restaurants in New Orleans collectively. It illustrates part of
what we're going to get into today how the food
industry and the infrastructure of food interacts with the communities
it serves or doesn't serve, and how we can change
those things, either through the law or initiatives within the industry. Specifically,
we're getting into issues around water, education, and not only
(01:39):
food access, but access to food that's good for us. UM.
These are large conversations, UM and yes are certainly happening
in New Orleans, but also nationally and globally. They're also
intensely connected to conversations around social and economic inequality at large. UM.
These are intersectional issues that have developed out of whole
(02:00):
host of variables. Lauren and I are no experts in
the law, so we found someone to speak with who
is My name is Pepper Bowen. I am a food
and water attorney in New Orleans. I'm founding director of
Culinaria Center for Food, Law, Policy and Culture. I am
also chair of the Neurons Food Policy Advisory Committee, which
(02:22):
you see official policy organization for the City of New
Orleans by resolution from the City Council. What What What What? Indeed,
Pepper is a wealth of knowledge UM, and she brought
us to a really excellent little restaurant for her interview
Cafe Porscha and Snowbar. Y'all check them out. But yes, Um,
similar to many of our other interviewees in New Orleans,
(02:45):
her path to this career was winding. I would say,
we've been talking about her childhood food memories, and then
I asked her how she came to focus on food
law and policy. So interestingly enough, I had kids in
my own and the first one, right, the one that
you take all the time with and you you well,
(03:05):
and I'm taype A. So it would have happened at
some point anyhow, but but it became really a super
important not only family uh that you know, he knew
who his family was and where he came from, because
there's a very strong sense of identity that comes with
that cohesion across generation, but also that every experience was
(03:26):
an amazing experience. Right. So there are very few things
that you actually do need to live. Food is one
of them. And there's not a whole lot that you
can do to improve the quality of a drink or
the complexities of drinks for infants. Uh there, that's all right.
Air just kind of happens to be what it is, unless,
(03:48):
of course, you live next to some sort of petroleum plant,
and that's a different conversation. But food, food is the
one thing that is across culture, gender hierarchy. Everybody eats,
and whether you are eating something that is amazing or
something that is just this side of trash itself is
(04:08):
really up to you. And so because every experience for
this little bundle of goog is going to be a
new one, I wanted for them all to be incredible, right.
So um, then I sort of stumbled back ass words
into a place that seems to be a road less traveled.
(04:31):
So more around policy and how to make the rules
as opposed to just following them and writing laws and
legislation as opposed to just figuring out which ones we
can avoid. Each choice got me closer, But I don't
really know why I was making all those choices. It's
not where I started I can relate. I am also
(04:54):
in a career I never would have predicted, y'all. I
spent a lot of my childhood like loudly informing adults
it I was not there for their entertainment, um and
that I would not put myself on display. Uh yeah,
my photoshoot on Saturday went great, but anyway, One of
the things that the Pepper works on is food access
and food security. These two are related but separate things.
(05:18):
Food access is simply or complexly, your ability to get
your hands on enough food to keep you going um
and hopefully to nourish you. This means having stores or
shops within a distance that you can easily travel to
that sell nutritious foods at a price at which you
can afford. Pepper broke down the difference between that and
food security for us. Food access, for those who don't know,
(05:43):
is the ability to get to food right. So that
would be food, healthy food that allows you to sustain
life you and your family. Of food security is the
constant access to food. Now, what people don't recognize is
that it's it's it's distinguished from food access and that
it may be cyclical. So um for those of us
who have been to UH Institutes of higher learning, think finals. Right,
(06:08):
So you are after Thanksgiving, your parents who are just like,
I'm not playing you home twice. You're getting to the
end of your meal plan, and you know, you start
pulling funds together, you and your roommate and we're really
good friends because there's not enough money that's food insecurity, right,
(06:29):
So it comes in waves. It's not that you always
don't have enough, but that at some points you just
really need to figure out some kind of way to
make ends meet. And fast forward that into an adult
life where it's you, maybe a partner, a couple of kids,
that becomes far more crucial, mainly because the money that
you're pulling with your partner, you're already pulling that money
(06:51):
where your partner and if there's not enough to feed
the family, then that becomes something that's more dire. And
that's when we find folks who have all time jobs
who were still eating at the shelters or going to
what people affectionately called soup kitchens because they're just not
making enough to to sustain themselves shelter, food, and clothing. Right.
(07:14):
So the work that is being done here is multi faceted,
and the reasons that they are multi faceted is because
we have finally gotten I hope, to a place where
we understand that food and in fact, no problem can
be addressed in a silo, and that they were all
interconnected in many, many ways. In the United States, as
(07:38):
of seen, eleven point two percent of households were food insecure.
That's forty million people, six point five million children. Seven
point three percent of households had low food security, meaning
they used various coping strategies like Federal Food Assistant programs
are community food pantries to avoid major disruption to their diet,
(07:58):
and four point five percent with very low food security
meaning one or more family members experienced disruption at different
times throughout the year due to lack of resources. The
percentage of people living with food insecurity in Louisiana is
higher than the country's average, way higher um. Between fifteen
and seventeen, around seventeen percent of Louisiana households were food
(08:23):
insecure and seven percent of households experienced very low food security.
That seven percent is higher than any other state and worse.
These numbers have been trending up over the past decade.
As you can imagine, a Hurricane Katrina did exacerbate the situation.
A continuing study out of two Lane tracked this. Existing
(08:45):
disparities between New Orleans neighborhoods widened as the city recovered
from the hurricane. Before Katrina around two thousand four, predominantly
African American neighborhoods in the city were slightly less likely
to have access to a supermarket. Around like thirty eight
percent didn't compared with around three percent in racially mixed neighborhoods.
In two thousand seven, two years after the storm, of
(09:08):
those African American neighborhoods lacked a supermarket compared with fifty
of other neighborhoods. It wasn't until four years after the
storm that access returned to normal levels, and while racially
mixed neighborhoods have been improving since then, good show um
black neighborhoods haven't really um as often. Percent of African
(09:29):
American areas still did not have supermarket access, while the
percentage for racially mixed neighborhoods without one had declined to only.
Another term that comes up a lot in this conversation
is food dessert, first used by policymakers in the UK
and the nineteen nineties. The U s d A now
divines food desert as quote parts of the country vapid
(09:51):
of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually
found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a
lack of grocery stores for mer's markets and health food providers,
So it doesn't mean there is no food, it means
there is no healthy food. A lot of areas defined
as food deserts have plenty of quickie marts and other
(10:11):
establishments that sell heavily processed, sugary, nutrient void products. This
often results in the unhealthy combo of malnutrition and obesity,
and the health risks that come with both of those.
This is sometimes called a food swamp. It probably sounds obvious,
but it bears saying here that like access to healthy
food is really key for good health and good quality
(10:34):
of life. According to a two nine study from the
National Research Council on the public health effects of food desserts,
people who live in areas with poor access to healthy
food are cent less likely to have a good quality diet.
In communities with good access to healthy food, we see
a reduced incidence of diabetes, and food access does impact
(10:56):
other health conditions, like cardiovascular disease and even some types
of cancer. This also disproportionately impacts communities of color. African American, Latino,
and Native Americans are twice as likely compared to white
people to develop diabetes. This is due to a history
of racist practices and barriers to entry like redlining. Redlining
(11:16):
refers to discriminatory housing practices from the nineteen thirties that
still linger to this day. The Home Owners Loan Corporation
are The h o l C made these maps of
several urban areas that depicted the level of risk associated
with lending neighborhood by neighborhood. They were graded A to D,
A being low risk and D being high risk. Areas
(11:36):
with a D were typically denoted with red marks, and
these areas were frequently determined by the number of African
Americans living in that area. This had an enormous impact
on mortgage lending and on the white flight to suburban America.
Some experts to use the term supermarket redlining as opposed
to food desert or food swamp superb Drico Dylan and
(11:59):
I recently had tended the Southern Food Ways Alliance symposium
and Birmingham, Alabama, and one of the speakers a photographer
who I couldn't find her name anywhere, but if anyone knows,
please let me know because I'm so excited about this.
She spoke about a project she was doing around redlining
in Birmingham. Yeah, So if anyone knows her name. I
looked everywhere it could not find her. Please please let
(12:19):
us know. A story I read about Atlanti's food deserts
found that for people without transportation, a trip to the
grocery store could take two hours or more walking fifteen
minutes to the buses, two transfers, and you have to
be able to carry your purchase by car. This journey
would take about twenty minutes now that you think about it.
The town I grew up in was a food desert.
(12:40):
If we hadn't had a car, we would have been
in serious trouble, very serious trouble. Like I think he
had drive thirty minutes um to get to the nearest
grocery market. Atlanta is the third worst urban food desert
in the country. Ahead of US are Chicago and New Orleans.
Food deserts are sometimes called a low supermarket areas or
(13:02):
or l says. Across the country, it's getting better overall, um.
The percentage of people who lived in lsays decreased from
about six point eight percent to uh five point six percent,
but that still means that seventeen point six million Americans
lack access to healthy food, and progress has not been
(13:23):
consistent throughout America, Louisiana has one of the highest concentrations
of food deserts. Here's Pepper again. If we would get
to a point where we understood clearly that the definition
of a food desert is that you simply do not
have direct access to fresh produce. Right, So, whether it's
(13:44):
a fruit or a vegetable on a regular basis within
a mile from about a mile from where you live,
or where like a third of your neighborhood is on
a consistent basis than if you happen to live in
a neighborhood where you have a lovely boulangerie, a boucherie,
maybe a butchery, maybe even a wine cellar. The bottom
(14:05):
line is you are still in a food desert. You're
just in a really expensive food desert with a cheesemonger
next door. So we also spoke with Dr Howard Conyers,
(14:30):
who's both a barbecue pit master and a rocket scientist,
like really so good. One of the things he's a
proponent of within the food community is the tenants of
the Slow Food movement, which is an organization that pushes
for good, clean and fair food for everyone. Yeah. This
this organization started in Italy, in the nineteen eighties and
(14:51):
spread from there um and by good, clean, and fair
they mean that they value food that's not just nutritious,
but delicious, that's locally and sustainably grown, that's produced by
people being treated and paid fairly, and yes, that's available
to everyone and and helps us celebrate our cultures. Here's
Howard it resonated to my whole upbringing of Like I
(15:14):
used to run the garden on the farm, so I
was very accustomed et and fresh and seasonal ingredients. And
I think there's immense value to that because you limit
how much preservatives, how much hormones is in your food.
So like I'm a I'm an advocate for it and
getting involved with a slow food movement. It's something like
the mission I believe is there, the antenna is there?
(15:37):
What I hope in this whole slow food movement or
in like eating better quality of foods, it becomes more
not only equitable, but I guess like racially, like I
don't really get to see a whole lot of African
Americans by stuff from farmers market. It looks like it's
very one sided. And I know it's an income thing,
but I would love to see get more inclusive. Like
(15:58):
Pepper said, we cannot address problems in a vacuum. Multitudes
of things like income and access to transportation go into
food access and food insecurity. If you're not making a
living wage, then surely you find yourself in a position
where you cannot take care of yourself. And so that
being one silo, uh, the access to food being able
(16:21):
to afford healthy food is a whole different silo where
we might find urban farmers who are faced with the
same issues. They don't make enough to sustain themselves. And yeah,
they might sell you head a lettuce or a fancy
bag of greens for six dollars, but what does it
cost them in order to actually produce it, especially on
(16:43):
a small scale. And you know, to be fair to
all concerned, they have a tendency to grow the higher
dollar items. So they're not necessarily growing bell peppers that
you'd be able to buy at a grocery store three
for a dollar. They're buying. They're growing the things that
you would spend a premium and form. And then we've
also got all of these other sort of bits and
(17:05):
pieces of components around transportation. So if you can't get
to your job how do you keep your job um
of energy, costs of electricity, costs of heating when you
have extremes and temperatures, even if you can afford which
is another silo, affordable housing, even if you can afford
somewhere to live, how do you keep the lights on
(17:26):
if it's ridiculously expensive to do so? And so a
lot of the groups that I'm working with are working
in collaboration and sharing information across sectors so that there
is a better understanding of how all of these things
tie into right your ability as a person, just as
a human walking around with inherent value to support yourself
(17:48):
and to sustain life. So one of the collaborators that
that we work with is has been working on fresh
food corner stores, where you actually bring in fresh food
two corner stores already in the neighborhoods, so that folks
who were there can have access at a lower cost
to foods that they ordinarily would not be able to
(18:10):
get to. But then, of course, even if you have
access to fresh foods or to sustainably ground foods, you
have to want to buy them, like you have to
know what to do with them and have time to
prepare them. You have to know their value. Howard spoke
to this, I think there's an education that needs to occur.
You have to educate people on why this food is
(18:33):
better because we will spend well. People will spend money
or whatever they seem valuable if they have it. But
I think there's a lack of education. Go wis better,
and so that may be an opportunity to do it better.
I think sometimes the access to it, the location of
it is New Orleans is not a big place. But
I can't expect a family who struggling with transportation the
(18:57):
better only come to the farmer's market for a few
things things and they can't get everything they need on
the grocery list. That's kind of tough. This is another
thread that cannot be separated out from the rest of
this whole conversation of where you can afford to live,
how many hours you have to work every day, what
foods your family chose when you were growing up. Access
(19:20):
to healthy food, especially among children, impacts all kinds of things,
behavior and intellectual development, education and occupation, performance, disease resistance,
and childhood mortality. All of this translates to long term
economic consequences. It's not just food either it's clean water.
We'll get into that after a quick break for word
(19:41):
from our sponsor and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
thank you. Okay, So water water is going to be
an entire and kind of depressing future episode. Um if
(20:04):
you'd like a preview, check out an episode of stuff
they don't want you to know that. I guessed it
on about Nestley and they're bottled water division. Um. Or
look up the house stuff works Now video that I
did about lead pipes killed joy Corners for days, but
yes for now. Um. Okay. Water, whether it comes to
the role it plays in the food we eat, the
(20:24):
environment we live in, or the liquid that we straight
up drink, it's a it's kind of important to every
individual within a community, like like cells in a body.
In a journalistic investigation of Environmental Protection Agency water quality
reports found that nearly one five of the United States
(20:45):
around sixty three million people have been exposed to water
that may have been unsafe more than once during the
past decade. The e p A set standards for all
sorts of harmful compounds and microorganisms in our water, but
it's large retually up to state and local governments to
uphold them, and of course poorer areas have less money
(21:06):
to do so. And while we know unsafe water can
lead to all kinds of negative physical outcomes like cancer guests,
ro intestinal distress and disease, and developmental problems for children,
we are still uncovering a world of damage that coming
into contact with unsafe water can do. One of the
things Pepper is involved with the Culinaria Water Project is
looking into this very thing. We have an opportunity to
(21:29):
not only look at what the individual impacts are on
leads and or heavy metals in water, on the soil,
but also on the food and on the people themselves.
And the objective long term is that we will bring
the folks who are most impacted and not most often
divested to the table and so and allow them to
(21:50):
share their ideas about how it is that they want
to combat the problem, whether it be through law or legislation,
or really just by asking for people to be nicer
to the Again, the water project that we're working on
is really to avoid a similar issue that happened in Flint,
where there was enough information that could have been given
to the public in order to make a decision about
(22:13):
where the water the source that they were using, what
the implications may have been, and what the possibilities were.
What Pepper is referring to here is the water crisis
in Flint, Michigan. Of course, um this crisis began when
officials made this cost based decision to switch over the
water supply from the Detroit system to its own system,
(22:34):
which entailed temporarily switching their source of water from like
Huron over to the Flint River while a new pipeline
out to the lake was being built. But the river
water was more corrosive than the lake water had been,
especially when they started boosting the chlorine levels to control
for bacterial outbreaks. And Flint's water mains are aging, as
(22:55):
are many water pipes throughout the United States. Across the country.
At least of our high use Streak Kig water pipes
are more than forty years old, but um they were
laid back before lead was so heavily regulated, so the
water going to communities in Flint was picking up lead
from the pipes. Officials failed to adequately test the water
(23:16):
safety and overlooked and discounted concerns that were raised. Coming
into contact with this water caused hair loss, rashes, and
itchy skin. More recent studies show exposure to the water
doubled and sometimes tripled the blood levels of lead in children,
and lead is is just incredibly toxic UM. Even as
seemingly tiny levels of ingestion, lead can cause irreversible damage
(23:38):
to the liver, blood, kidneys, and brain, and in young
children and unborn babies. It's been implicated in lifelong behavior
and attention problems UM, reduced i Q, delayed growth, and
even an increase in violent behavior. Notice that these are
issues that poor communities and communities of color have been
criticized and blamed for four decades. The Michigan Civil Rights
(24:01):
Commission came to the conclusion that the Flint crisis was
a quote result of systemic racism. The long term effects
are still unknown. Also in UH, these are modern times
of all kinds of exciting chemical and materials technologies. A
harmful product can proliferate far faster than regulations can keep up,
especially when a natural disaster brings those products into unexpected
(24:25):
contact with our groundwater and the sources of our drinking water.
Here's pepper again. Especially post Katrina, we've had a number
of challenges UM. There had been some studies that came
out about toxicity and the soil. So many people when
they saw the waters rise didn't seem to quiet realize
that wasn't pool water. But just as soon as those
(24:49):
stories came out, they seemed to have disappeared. There was
no follow up with what happened to the possibility that
there was contamination of the soil by the waters that
were contaminated and of themselves, Um, what happened, because it's
not like they know when he came along with buckets
and just you know, dumped the water back into the river,
(25:10):
that the it's subsided, it was absorbed by the soil,
and there had there was a small study that was
done and folks were told that there were elevated levels
of leads and heavy metals, and you know, there were
some toxins, but it was nothing that was going to
kill you. Right. But the migitality of the circumstances is
that we have had a number of really peculiar rises.
(25:33):
Now these have correlated with rises in public health over
the country. Right, So if you look at the school children,
there has been a rise in the numbers of black
and brown children who have been suspended and expelled from schools.
This has given traction to the whole idea of the
school to prison pipeline. UM there has also simultaneously been
(25:55):
a rise in the number of children who are irritable,
who are unable to sit still for long periods of time,
who may have difficulty learning, who may even need additional attention,
and by happenstance, these are the same reasons that these
black and brown children are being suspended. So what happened,
(26:19):
we don't really know. But what we do know for
sure is that UM lead levels, when they present early onset,
those those are all the markers. And so I'm not
saying that we that all of our children are contaminated
with lead. What I am saying is that it just
doesn't make sense that out of the blue, after fifty
(26:42):
seventy years of educating children, that all of a sudden,
that black and brown children should have such a large
propensity of these same characteristics. But we're not doing anything
to fix it. We're incarcerating them, and we're putting them out,
(27:02):
and we're out of schools, out of support areas. We're
creating a different problem. It doesn't fix anything, and we
continue to send them through in this way that again
deserves another look. We need to start investigating how these
things are coming about and how it is that will
make more sense to unpack them because that creates a
(27:27):
more sustainable ecosystem as opposed to attempting to continue to
approach it in a silo. And yeah, researchers still don't
know why these effects happen. The leading idea is that
atoms of of lead displace other atoms in some proteins
and our selves, which can like seriously reduce or change
(27:50):
enzymes efficiency in our bodies, causing chains of problems from
the cellular level up. I have to say I travel
a lot, and one of the things I have realized
that I take super for granted in the United States
is um in general having easy access to drinkable water,
hopefully healthy drinkable water. So this is a global issue absolutely.
(28:15):
Another global issue that ties into food access is climate
and specifically climate change. As Howard and the slow food
movement in general preach, eating locally and seasonally is more sustainable,
it requires less transportation, saving money and preventing pollution, and
it can also be delicious and is perhaps especially important
(28:37):
to New Orleans cuisines. Here's Dicky Brennan again. You know
what I love about New Orleans, um one our climate.
We can farm you around, so there's always something coming
in the seed. So that played a lot of what
you need at home as well as what was on
the rest of menu. The other thing is is we're
(28:58):
at the mouth Mississippi, wherever it's most little fish grounds
in the world. So I mean, we have so much
a bounty of seafood, and it's all seasonal, and some
of it's in the marsh, some of it's in the
in the coastal waters, and a lot of its inland.
So I mean like when our blue crabs are going
out of season, crawfish are coming in the season. There's
(29:18):
always something that's gonna peak at different times of the year.
And really, I mean our FLOSSI in the restaurants and
it's the same thing at homes. We're eating what's in season,
what's peaking and uh and it you know, there's a
lot of options there. So what happens when that climate
is disrupted by something like global warming? So if you
(29:41):
don't know when it's gonna rain or if it's suddenly
too hot this summer, um, it was everybody I know
who is growing corn? There was no corn. Um, the
squash leaves burnt up in the heat. I can produce
watermelons for whatever reason the ogre took off. But ye
know this is just a little garden. Right, So, I
mean worse comes to worse. There's a grocery store or
(30:02):
three grocery stores within five miles because I live uptown. Um,
what about those folks who are relying upon the weather
and the soil in order to actually produce for a living.
And then things become slightly more complex, right, Um, A
lot of folks who are working on climate change are
looking at it from a metropolitan boo. Right, So municipalities
are suffering with stormwater management and rising waters, and globally
(30:28):
we're increasing the temperatures and there's not really or rather
there's not often a clear line that is drawn to
what does that mean? All right? So, so what we've
got an extra four degrees two degrees? What does that mean?
I'm just turning up the heat, I'm turning up the air.
What does this look like? Well, for food, it is
(30:50):
clear that food is being impacted, right, And you know,
even if you're not let's not even talk about food
let's discuss your wine. Yes, let's and of course, like
being able to buy a bottle of wine is perhaps
less critical than being able to like make yourself a sandwich.
But all parts of the food industry affect each other.
(31:11):
What farmers can produce, what makers and restaurants can create
and sell, what what consumers can buy, and the quality
of life of everyone involved um is based on these
and other factors in our sprawling economy. Yes, so suddenly
those cool temperatures that you need in order to produce
just the right balance, that's off. And so instead of
(31:34):
being able to charge twenty of wine because twenty dollars
a bottle, you're having to drop it because now it's swill.
It's three four dollars a bottle. Now the two buck
chuck that was a great thing was one off. But
that's a different conversation. These are folks who are generally young,
they are well educated, they're from suburbs, and they're often white,
(31:55):
middle class or or something that somewhere in the vicinity. Right,
So think suburban kid who has just grown up watching
things on TV and not necessarily being out there on
the front lines. Conversely, folks who have been living in
the inner cities, for generations who could not afford to
leave when the white flight happened, who have scratched out
(32:18):
a living for you know, the past twenty years. They
are on the front lines of issues around food security
and food equity because they are the ones who are
most impacted. And what they're not seeing is that there
is a clear common ground. And as soon as we
get to a place where we understand that there is
a common ground, we can move mountains together by building
(32:41):
communities and organizing grassroots movements, entire movements that allow us
to see change that is beyond just having a grocery store.
It is really more about having a an echo system
that is supportive for all of us. Climate change has
(33:13):
also led to an increase of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.
We'll get into that after one more quick break for
a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
thank you, and yes, Hurricane Katrina. We purposefully didn't ask
(33:37):
our interview subjects about Katrina. I think folks are like
understandably tired of outsiders coming in and quizzing them about
this one ugly nationally broadcasted time in their lives. But
nearly everyone who we spoke with brought it up, which
we're grateful for because as um enormous and traumatic as
it was, it brought the city together in some ways
that do tie into everything we've been talking abou out. Today,
(34:01):
we spoke with Amy Sins, the founder of Langois, a
culinary entertainment company. Um. She lives in New Orleans and
is active in disaster relief, and I realized that the
New Orleans restaurant community is incredibly generous and willing to
give back, and I think other communities around the country
are the same way. We've built really a cool formula
(34:24):
at how we've been able to efficiently feed people during
disasters here and used it in Florida and used it
in Texas, and so my goal is that I'll be
able to share that formula with people around the country,
because with forest fires and floods and things that are happening,
there's no reason we should all be recreating the wheel
(34:46):
trying to scramble. So I'd love to be teaching more
people how to go rogue and really you know, pulled
together a group and motivate a group of volunteers from
the food community. Because we on understand food safety and
as much as people want to cook for others to
make them feel better, there are some rules we have
(35:10):
to follow. And then a disaster situation with no water,
no electricity, you have to really be careful. And my
goal is to teach more people how they can do
that on a massive scale. So she also talked about
a factor we hadn't considered about natural disasters, like this
(35:31):
recipe loss. I read a book called Baby Slippers cookbook
Life After Katrina. My house was on the levee break
of the seventeenth Street now, so if you watched any
of the coverage, there was like a big hole and
helicopter with obany sandbags trying to fill the hole that
was right behind our house. So um, we had about
(35:52):
eight feet of water in the house. But New Orleans
is a collection of neighborhoods, and people don't all is
live or move outside of the neighborhood they grew up in.
So my husband and I lived a block from the
house my mom grew up in, where my grandfather lived.
All of our aunt's uncles, everybody was in the same
(36:13):
neighborhood and all affected. One of the things I realized
was that we lost all of our family recipes because
you couldn't call your aunt or your uncle or your
grandfather to get a copy of them. And my mother
in law and I would try to like dry the
recipe cards out in the sun. And I decided, you
(36:36):
know what, next time this happens, I need a book
that has everything that I love to cook all in
one place, and I can evacuate it with with it.
And I started just meeting people in New Orleans. You
can stand in line at a grocery store and ask
people what they're cooking, and you will get the recipe.
And I met people along the way and just saw
(36:57):
the resilience and the spirit in the love of our
culture and food that the book just took on a
life of its own, and I released it about what
on the first anniversary of Katrina's One thing we noticed
as we conducted our eighteen interviews is a certain hesitation
(37:18):
when we would ask the question are you from New Orleans?
The answer used to largely be based on the hospital
you were born in and the high school you went to.
But if you came to New Orleans after Katrina to
help rebuild and stay, you're a local now, or as
Pepper said, they'll promise you that you will be someday. Right.
Everyone was so careful to specify if their family is
(37:40):
from like fifteen minutes out of town or whatever. But
but everyone we spoke to seemed united in their passion
for for seeing what can be improved about the city
and for actually doing something. I think it's lucky that
it's a place that inspires such loyalty. Like no one
is ambivalent about New Orleans. One project heard about is
(38:00):
on the education side, not consumer education, but professional education
within the restaurant industry. The New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality
Institute are no G or n O c h I
in downtown New Orleans hopes to address barriers to that
education and therefore to improve the quality of life for
the hard work and kitchen staffs who makes the thriving
restaurant scene possible. Here's Dickie again. You can make hollandais
(38:26):
as like a Michael Jordan playing basketball. But if you
don't know the word emulsify and in the chemistry behind
what you do and why it works, I think it
keeps you from having confidence. And that lack of confidence
is where these men and women don't go to the
next level, because there's so many I've worked with over
the years and I've said, come on, want you take
(38:47):
a little responsibility now, I'm I'm I'm good doing what
I'm doing. And then I've seen young men and women
from out of state that have graduated from these wonderful
programs and so many album I want to cook in
New Orleans. And so it's his young confident. You know,
someone just graduated Coastchood's coming in and they're getting the
(39:08):
sex chef position and then they become the chef's I mean,
I'm certainly not knocking the animal. Look Gosspin. I mean,
it couldn't be a greater example of you know, animal
came in, started working my family and you know, look
look where he's gone. So I really hope this institute
because in New Orleans, you know, we have certainly have
our challenges when it comes to I'll just say it's
(39:31):
racial relationships and so and a lot of people leadership
on both sides. When you're having a conversation, you know,
a lot of time the leadership will say, well, I
don't see anybody out of the African American community being
the chef or being the business owner. You know, you
know at some point you know that has to evolve.
And so I think this is an opportunity for our
(39:54):
industry instead of people being you know, stock and can't
get some X level that this should open that door.
And if because we have the talent, it's like musicians,
jazz musicians a worldwide. We have athletes that are just
incredibly probably have more on them in the NFL than anywhere.
(40:14):
We had the same talent that can cook, they just
don't have that education to where they're going to go
be a chef. My hope is in a short period
of time there'll be men and women this community that
will be a chef in New York City, the East
Coast of West Coast and really changing that path that
hadn't really been here in New Orleans. It's that kind
(40:38):
of work, and then dozens of other things, improving public
education at large, bringing fresh food into neighborhoods either with
new or existing infrastructure, and making sure people can afford
to buy it by paying workers a living wage, rooting
out corruption and prejudice in the governing bodies, recognizing that
these issues are systemic, and supporting the mints that are
(41:00):
trying to change that working on larger policies that will
allow people to be able to will And then Jesus
there's a farm bill, which is another thirty minute conversation.
If that that allows us to understand how it is
that we can make life farm poor. Oh and uh
that then ore, then our lunch came. But we we
(41:21):
got back to the conversation eventually. Eventually, so we can
make food of food access far more sustainable for folks
who are working a living wage. So joining with people
who are doing or leading the charge on the fight
for fifteen so that folks will have money in order
to spend um. And I know that we've got some
folks who are very well meaning, and I respect that
(41:43):
they want to help and do things that are right
and just and equitable for all. The problem is that
until we accept that many of the ways that we
discuss inequality and um inequity being some not necessarily meaning
that we all have you the same, but that we
(42:06):
are treated on a level that is give us. Giving
us justice in court systems and everywhere we go is
usually through a lens of color. Patriarchy and all of
the things that we that we have been really against
as a society for at least the past two years
for reasons unknown. Then Um, then we will continue to
(42:30):
walk down these paths where we are simply confused. We
hope that in discussing all of this, and it was
a lot that we touched on, um, and all of
it we could have gone into and I hope that
we will get to in the future. Yes, yes, um,
but yeah, we hope that we're helping further the conversation,
even just a little bit. Um. But for now, that
(42:51):
about brings us the end of this episode. You can
email us at Hello at saberpod dot com. You can
also find us on social media. We are on at
our Facebook and Instagram at savor Pod. We do hope
to hear from you. Thank you as always to our
super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard, our executive producer
Christopher Hasiotis, and all of our interviewees and the good
(43:12):
folks who put us in touch with those interviewees. Thanks
to you for listening, and we hope that lots more
good things are coming your way. I did like the
thing that if you were from New Orleans too, for
people to like really verify if you were from New
Orance they'd be like, where'd you go to high school?
Yeah yeah, high school? Yeah yeah, And multiple people brought
(43:34):
that up. Oh yeah yeah. And then because we would
ask like, oh, are you from here, they would go, well,
and from about an hour away, like immediately on the defense,
It would help me all on so much, you know.
I mean, we're a wonderful city, we have so much
going on for us. But I just, you know, my
dream is it's a great city and it's not a
great city when like we're saying, I mean not every
man and woman in this community has a path to
really live American dream. Hello, and welcome to Saber. I'm
any Rest and I'm Lauren foc Obam and today we're
(00:31):
talking about issues around food access and food law, not
that kind of law or not really. The Law and
Order franchise has really neglected exploring food law. So spinoff idea.
You're welcome. We're expecting our fair share of the profits. Yes,
I somehow have defied the laws of space and time
(00:54):
and never seen an episode of Law and Order or
any of its ilk How good question. I don't know.
Suddenly I'm like, how have I managed this? But I'm
fairly certain we're going to be tackling something different than
your average Law and Order episode. The court you heard
at the top is from Dicky Brennan, whose family owns
(01:16):
fifteen restaurants in New Orleans collectively. It illustrates part of
what we're going to get into today how the food
industry and the infrastructure of food interacts with the communities
it serves or doesn't serve, and how we can change
those things, either through the law or initiatives within the industry. Specifically,
we're getting into issues around water, education, and not only
(01:39):
food access, but access to food that's good for us. UM.
These are large conversations, UM and yes are certainly happening
in New Orleans, but also nationally and globally. They're also
intensely connected to conversations around social and economic inequality at large. UM.
These are intersectional issues that have developed out of whole
(02:00):
host of variables. Lauren and I are no experts in
the law, so we found someone to speak with who
is My name is Pepper Bowen. I am a food
and water attorney in New Orleans. I'm founding director of
Culinaria Center for Food, Law, Policy and Culture. I am
also chair of the Neurons Food Policy Advisory Committee, which
(02:22):
you see official policy organization for the City of New
Orleans by resolution from the City Council. What What What What? Indeed,
Pepper is a wealth of knowledge UM, and she brought
us to a really excellent little restaurant for her interview
Cafe Porscha and Snowbar. Y'all check them out. But yes, Um,
similar to many of our other interviewees in New Orleans,
(02:45):
her path to this career was winding. I would say,
we've been talking about her childhood food memories, and then
I asked her how she came to focus on food
law and policy. So interestingly enough, I had kids in
my own and the first one, right, the one that
you take all the time with and you you well,
(03:05):
and I'm taype A. So it would have happened at
some point anyhow, but but it became really a super
important not only family uh that you know, he knew
who his family was and where he came from, because
there's a very strong sense of identity that comes with
that cohesion across generation, but also that every experience was
(03:26):
an amazing experience. Right. So there are very few things
that you actually do need to live. Food is one
of them. And there's not a whole lot that you
can do to improve the quality of a drink or
the complexities of drinks for infants. Uh there, that's all right.
Air just kind of happens to be what it is, unless,
(03:48):
of course, you live next to some sort of petroleum plant,
and that's a different conversation. But food, food is the
one thing that is across culture, gender hierarchy. Everybody eats,
and whether you are eating something that is amazing or
something that is just this side of trash itself is
(04:08):
really up to you. And so because every experience for
this little bundle of goog is going to be a
new one, I wanted for them all to be incredible, right.
So um, then I sort of stumbled back ass words
into a place that seems to be a road less traveled.
(04:31):
So more around policy and how to make the rules
as opposed to just following them and writing laws and
legislation as opposed to just figuring out which ones we
can avoid. Each choice got me closer, But I don't
really know why I was making all those choices. It's
not where I started I can relate. I am also
(04:54):
in a career I never would have predicted, y'all. I
spent a lot of my childhood like loudly informing adults
it I was not there for their entertainment, um and
that I would not put myself on display. Uh yeah,
my photoshoot on Saturday went great, but anyway, One of
the things that the Pepper works on is food access
and food security. These two are related but separate things.
(05:18):
Food access is simply or complexly, your ability to get
your hands on enough food to keep you going um
and hopefully to nourish you. This means having stores or
shops within a distance that you can easily travel to
that sell nutritious foods at a price at which you
can afford. Pepper broke down the difference between that and
food security for us. Food access, for those who don't know,
(05:43):
is the ability to get to food right. So that
would be food, healthy food that allows you to sustain
life you and your family. Of food security is the
constant access to food. Now, what people don't recognize is
that it's it's it's distinguished from food access and that
it may be cyclical. So um for those of us
who have been to UH Institutes of higher learning, think finals. Right,
(06:08):
So you are after Thanksgiving, your parents who are just like,
I'm not playing you home twice. You're getting to the
end of your meal plan, and you know, you start
pulling funds together, you and your roommate and we're really
good friends because there's not enough money that's food insecurity, right,
(06:29):
So it comes in waves. It's not that you always
don't have enough, but that at some points you just
really need to figure out some kind of way to
make ends meet. And fast forward that into an adult
life where it's you, maybe a partner, a couple of kids,
that becomes far more crucial, mainly because the money that
you're pulling with your partner, you're already pulling that money
(06:51):
where your partner and if there's not enough to feed
the family, then that becomes something that's more dire. And
that's when we find folks who have all time jobs
who were still eating at the shelters or going to
what people affectionately called soup kitchens because they're just not
making enough to to sustain themselves shelter, food, and clothing. Right.
(07:14):
So the work that is being done here is multi faceted,
and the reasons that they are multi faceted is because
we have finally gotten I hope, to a place where
we understand that food and in fact, no problem can
be addressed in a silo, and that they were all
interconnected in many, many ways. In the United States, as
(07:38):
of seen, eleven point two percent of households were food insecure.
That's forty million people, six point five million children. Seven
point three percent of households had low food security, meaning
they used various coping strategies like Federal Food Assistant programs
are community food pantries to avoid major disruption to their diet,
(07:58):
and four point five percent with very low food security
meaning one or more family members experienced disruption at different
times throughout the year due to lack of resources. The
percentage of people living with food insecurity in Louisiana is
higher than the country's average, way higher um. Between fifteen
and seventeen, around seventeen percent of Louisiana households were food
(08:23):
insecure and seven percent of households experienced very low food security.
That seven percent is higher than any other state and worse.
These numbers have been trending up over the past decade.
As you can imagine, a Hurricane Katrina did exacerbate the situation.
A continuing study out of two Lane tracked this. Existing
(08:45):
disparities between New Orleans neighborhoods widened as the city recovered
from the hurricane. Before Katrina around two thousand four, predominantly
African American neighborhoods in the city were slightly less likely
to have access to a supermarket. Around like thirty eight
percent didn't compared with around three percent in racially mixed neighborhoods.
In two thousand seven, two years after the storm, of
(09:08):
those African American neighborhoods lacked a supermarket compared with fifty
of other neighborhoods. It wasn't until four years after the
storm that access returned to normal levels, and while racially
mixed neighborhoods have been improving since then, good show um
black neighborhoods haven't really um as often. Percent of African
(09:29):
American areas still did not have supermarket access, while the
percentage for racially mixed neighborhoods without one had declined to only.
Another term that comes up a lot in this conversation
is food dessert, first used by policymakers in the UK
and the nineteen nineties. The U s d A now
divines food desert as quote parts of the country vapid
(09:51):
of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually
found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a
lack of grocery stores for mer's markets and health food providers,
So it doesn't mean there is no food, it means
there is no healthy food. A lot of areas defined
as food deserts have plenty of quickie marts and other
(10:11):
establishments that sell heavily processed, sugary, nutrient void products. This
often results in the unhealthy combo of malnutrition and obesity,
and the health risks that come with both of those.
This is sometimes called a food swamp. It probably sounds obvious,
but it bears saying here that like access to healthy
food is really key for good health and good quality
(10:34):
of life. According to a two nine study from the
National Research Council on the public health effects of food desserts,
people who live in areas with poor access to healthy
food are cent less likely to have a good quality diet.
In communities with good access to healthy food, we see
a reduced incidence of diabetes, and food access does impact
(10:56):
other health conditions, like cardiovascular disease and even some types
of cancer. This also disproportionately impacts communities of color. African American, Latino,
and Native Americans are twice as likely compared to white
people to develop diabetes. This is due to a history
of racist practices and barriers to entry like redlining. Redlining
(11:16):
refers to discriminatory housing practices from the nineteen thirties that
still linger to this day. The Home Owners Loan Corporation
are The h o l C made these maps of
several urban areas that depicted the level of risk associated
with lending neighborhood by neighborhood. They were graded A to D,
A being low risk and D being high risk. Areas
(11:36):
with a D were typically denoted with red marks, and
these areas were frequently determined by the number of African
Americans living in that area. This had an enormous impact
on mortgage lending and on the white flight to suburban America.
Some experts to use the term supermarket redlining as opposed
to food desert or food swamp superb Drico Dylan and
(11:59):
I recently had tended the Southern Food Ways Alliance symposium
and Birmingham, Alabama, and one of the speakers a photographer
who I couldn't find her name anywhere, but if anyone knows,
please let me know because I'm so excited about this.
She spoke about a project she was doing around redlining
in Birmingham. Yeah, So if anyone knows her name. I
looked everywhere it could not find her. Please please let
(12:19):
us know. A story I read about Atlanti's food deserts
found that for people without transportation, a trip to the
grocery store could take two hours or more walking fifteen
minutes to the buses, two transfers, and you have to
be able to carry your purchase by car. This journey
would take about twenty minutes now that you think about it.
The town I grew up in was a food desert.
(12:40):
If we hadn't had a car, we would have been
in serious trouble, very serious trouble. Like I think he
had drive thirty minutes um to get to the nearest
grocery market. Atlanta is the third worst urban food desert
in the country. Ahead of US are Chicago and New Orleans.
Food deserts are sometimes called a low supermarket areas or
(13:02):
or l says. Across the country, it's getting better overall, um.
The percentage of people who lived in lsays decreased from
about six point eight percent to uh five point six percent,
but that still means that seventeen point six million Americans
lack access to healthy food, and progress has not been
(13:23):
consistent throughout America, Louisiana has one of the highest concentrations
of food deserts. Here's Pepper again. If we would get
to a point where we understood clearly that the definition
of a food desert is that you simply do not
have direct access to fresh produce. Right, So, whether it's
(13:44):
a fruit or a vegetable on a regular basis within
a mile from about a mile from where you live,
or where like a third of your neighborhood is on
a consistent basis than if you happen to live in
a neighborhood where you have a lovely boulangerie, a boucherie,
maybe a butchery, maybe even a wine cellar. The bottom
(14:05):
line is you are still in a food desert. You're
just in a really expensive food desert with a cheesemonger
next door. So we also spoke with Dr Howard Conyers,
(14:30):
who's both a barbecue pit master and a rocket scientist,
like really so good. One of the things he's a
proponent of within the food community is the tenants of
the Slow Food movement, which is an organization that pushes
for good, clean and fair food for everyone. Yeah. This
this organization started in Italy, in the nineteen eighties and
(14:51):
spread from there um and by good, clean, and fair
they mean that they value food that's not just nutritious,
but delicious, that's locally and sustainably grown, that's produced by
people being treated and paid fairly, and yes, that's available
to everyone and and helps us celebrate our cultures. Here's
Howard it resonated to my whole upbringing of Like I
(15:14):
used to run the garden on the farm, so I
was very accustomed et and fresh and seasonal ingredients. And
I think there's immense value to that because you limit
how much preservatives, how much hormones is in your food.
So like I'm a I'm an advocate for it and
getting involved with a slow food movement. It's something like
the mission I believe is there, the antenna is there?
(15:37):
What I hope in this whole slow food movement or
in like eating better quality of foods, it becomes more
not only equitable, but I guess like racially, like I
don't really get to see a whole lot of African
Americans by stuff from farmers market. It looks like it's
very one sided. And I know it's an income thing,
but I would love to see get more inclusive. Like
(15:58):
Pepper said, we cannot address problems in a vacuum. Multitudes
of things like income and access to transportation go into
food access and food insecurity. If you're not making a
living wage, then surely you find yourself in a position
where you cannot take care of yourself. And so that
being one silo, uh, the access to food being able
(16:21):
to afford healthy food is a whole different silo where
we might find urban farmers who are faced with the
same issues. They don't make enough to sustain themselves. And yeah,
they might sell you head a lettuce or a fancy
bag of greens for six dollars, but what does it
cost them in order to actually produce it, especially on
(16:43):
a small scale. And you know, to be fair to
all concerned, they have a tendency to grow the higher
dollar items. So they're not necessarily growing bell peppers that
you'd be able to buy at a grocery store three
for a dollar. They're buying. They're growing the things that
you would spend a premium and form. And then we've
also got all of these other sort of bits and
(17:05):
pieces of components around transportation. So if you can't get
to your job how do you keep your job um
of energy, costs of electricity, costs of heating when you
have extremes and temperatures, even if you can afford which
is another silo, affordable housing, even if you can afford
somewhere to live, how do you keep the lights on
(17:26):
if it's ridiculously expensive to do so? And so a
lot of the groups that I'm working with are working
in collaboration and sharing information across sectors so that there
is a better understanding of how all of these things
tie into right your ability as a person, just as
a human walking around with inherent value to support yourself
(17:48):
and to sustain life. So one of the collaborators that
that we work with is has been working on fresh
food corner stores, where you actually bring in fresh food
two corner stores already in the neighborhoods, so that folks
who were there can have access at a lower cost
to foods that they ordinarily would not be able to
(18:10):
get to. But then, of course, even if you have
access to fresh foods or to sustainably ground foods, you
have to want to buy them, like you have to
know what to do with them and have time to
prepare them. You have to know their value. Howard spoke
to this, I think there's an education that needs to occur.
You have to educate people on why this food is
(18:33):
better because we will spend well. People will spend money
or whatever they seem valuable if they have it. But
I think there's a lack of education. Go wis better,
and so that may be an opportunity to do it better.
I think sometimes the access to it, the location of
it is New Orleans is not a big place. But
I can't expect a family who struggling with transportation the
(18:57):
better only come to the farmer's market for a few
things things and they can't get everything they need on
the grocery list. That's kind of tough. This is another
thread that cannot be separated out from the rest of
this whole conversation of where you can afford to live,
how many hours you have to work every day, what
foods your family chose when you were growing up. Access
(19:20):
to healthy food, especially among children, impacts all kinds of things,
behavior and intellectual development, education and occupation, performance, disease resistance,
and childhood mortality. All of this translates to long term
economic consequences. It's not just food either it's clean water.
We'll get into that after a quick break for word
(19:41):
from our sponsor and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
thank you. Okay, So water water is going to be
an entire and kind of depressing future episode. Um if
(20:04):
you'd like a preview, check out an episode of stuff
they don't want you to know that. I guessed it
on about Nestley and they're bottled water division. Um. Or
look up the house stuff works Now video that I
did about lead pipes killed joy Corners for days, but
yes for now. Um. Okay. Water, whether it comes to
the role it plays in the food we eat, the
(20:24):
environment we live in, or the liquid that we straight
up drink, it's a it's kind of important to every
individual within a community, like like cells in a body.
In a journalistic investigation of Environmental Protection Agency water quality
reports found that nearly one five of the United States
(20:45):
around sixty three million people have been exposed to water
that may have been unsafe more than once during the
past decade. The e p A set standards for all
sorts of harmful compounds and microorganisms in our water, but
it's large retually up to state and local governments to
uphold them, and of course poorer areas have less money
(21:06):
to do so. And while we know unsafe water can
lead to all kinds of negative physical outcomes like cancer guests,
ro intestinal distress and disease, and developmental problems for children,
we are still uncovering a world of damage that coming
into contact with unsafe water can do. One of the
things Pepper is involved with the Culinaria Water Project is
looking into this very thing. We have an opportunity to
(21:29):
not only look at what the individual impacts are on
leads and or heavy metals in water, on the soil,
but also on the food and on the people themselves.
And the objective long term is that we will bring
the folks who are most impacted and not most often
divested to the table and so and allow them to
(21:50):
share their ideas about how it is that they want
to combat the problem, whether it be through law or legislation,
or really just by asking for people to be nicer
to the Again, the water project that we're working on
is really to avoid a similar issue that happened in Flint,
where there was enough information that could have been given
to the public in order to make a decision about
(22:13):
where the water the source that they were using, what
the implications may have been, and what the possibilities were.
What Pepper is referring to here is the water crisis
in Flint, Michigan. Of course, um this crisis began when
officials made this cost based decision to switch over the
water supply from the Detroit system to its own system,
(22:34):
which entailed temporarily switching their source of water from like
Huron over to the Flint River while a new pipeline
out to the lake was being built. But the river
water was more corrosive than the lake water had been,
especially when they started boosting the chlorine levels to control
for bacterial outbreaks. And Flint's water mains are aging, as
(22:55):
are many water pipes throughout the United States. Across the country.
At least of our high use Streak Kig water pipes
are more than forty years old, but um they were
laid back before lead was so heavily regulated, so the
water going to communities in Flint was picking up lead
from the pipes. Officials failed to adequately test the water
(23:16):
safety and overlooked and discounted concerns that were raised. Coming
into contact with this water caused hair loss, rashes, and
itchy skin. More recent studies show exposure to the water
doubled and sometimes tripled the blood levels of lead in children,
and lead is is just incredibly toxic UM. Even as
seemingly tiny levels of ingestion, lead can cause irreversible damage
(23:38):
to the liver, blood, kidneys, and brain, and in young
children and unborn babies. It's been implicated in lifelong behavior
and attention problems UM, reduced i Q, delayed growth, and
even an increase in violent behavior. Notice that these are
issues that poor communities and communities of color have been
criticized and blamed for four decades. The Michigan Civil Rights
(24:01):
Commission came to the conclusion that the Flint crisis was
a quote result of systemic racism. The long term effects
are still unknown. Also in UH, these are modern times
of all kinds of exciting chemical and materials technologies. A
harmful product can proliferate far faster than regulations can keep up,
especially when a natural disaster brings those products into unexpected
(24:25):
contact with our groundwater and the sources of our drinking water.
Here's pepper again. Especially post Katrina, we've had a number
of challenges UM. There had been some studies that came
out about toxicity and the soil. So many people when
they saw the waters rise didn't seem to quiet realize
that wasn't pool water. But just as soon as those
(24:49):
stories came out, they seemed to have disappeared. There was
no follow up with what happened to the possibility that
there was contamination of the soil by the waters that
were contaminated and of themselves, Um, what happened, because it's
not like they know when he came along with buckets
and just you know, dumped the water back into the river,
(25:10):
that the it's subsided, it was absorbed by the soil,
and there had there was a small study that was
done and folks were told that there were elevated levels
of leads and heavy metals, and you know, there were
some toxins, but it was nothing that was going to
kill you. Right. But the migitality of the circumstances is
that we have had a number of really peculiar rises.
(25:33):
Now these have correlated with rises in public health over
the country. Right, So if you look at the school children,
there has been a rise in the numbers of black
and brown children who have been suspended and expelled from schools.
This has given traction to the whole idea of the
school to prison pipeline. UM there has also simultaneously been
(25:55):
a rise in the number of children who are irritable,
who are unable to sit still for long periods of time,
who may have difficulty learning, who may even need additional attention,
and by happenstance, these are the same reasons that these
black and brown children are being suspended. So what happened,
(26:19):
we don't really know. But what we do know for
sure is that UM lead levels, when they present early onset,
those those are all the markers. And so I'm not
saying that we that all of our children are contaminated
with lead. What I am saying is that it just
doesn't make sense that out of the blue, after fifty
(26:42):
seventy years of educating children, that all of a sudden,
that black and brown children should have such a large
propensity of these same characteristics. But we're not doing anything
to fix it. We're incarcerating them, and we're putting them out,
(27:02):
and we're out of schools, out of support areas. We're
creating a different problem. It doesn't fix anything, and we
continue to send them through in this way that again
deserves another look. We need to start investigating how these
things are coming about and how it is that will
make more sense to unpack them because that creates a
(27:27):
more sustainable ecosystem as opposed to attempting to continue to
approach it in a silo. And yeah, researchers still don't
know why these effects happen. The leading idea is that
atoms of of lead displace other atoms in some proteins
and our selves, which can like seriously reduce or change
(27:50):
enzymes efficiency in our bodies, causing chains of problems from
the cellular level up. I have to say I travel
a lot, and one of the things I have realized
that I take super for granted in the United States
is um in general having easy access to drinkable water,
hopefully healthy drinkable water. So this is a global issue absolutely.
(28:15):
Another global issue that ties into food access is climate
and specifically climate change. As Howard and the slow food
movement in general preach, eating locally and seasonally is more sustainable,
it requires less transportation, saving money and preventing pollution, and
it can also be delicious and is perhaps especially important
(28:37):
to New Orleans cuisines. Here's Dicky Brennan again. You know
what I love about New Orleans, um one our climate.
We can farm you around, so there's always something coming
in the seed. So that played a lot of what
you need at home as well as what was on
the rest of menu. The other thing is is we're
(28:58):
at the mouth Mississippi, wherever it's most little fish grounds
in the world. So I mean, we have so much
a bounty of seafood, and it's all seasonal, and some
of it's in the marsh, some of it's in the
in the coastal waters, and a lot of its inland.
So I mean like when our blue crabs are going
out of season, crawfish are coming in the season. There's
(29:18):
always something that's gonna peak at different times of the year.
And really, I mean our FLOSSI in the restaurants and
it's the same thing at homes. We're eating what's in season,
what's peaking and uh and it you know, there's a
lot of options there. So what happens when that climate
is disrupted by something like global warming? So if you
(29:41):
don't know when it's gonna rain or if it's suddenly
too hot this summer, um, it was everybody I know
who is growing corn? There was no corn. Um, the
squash leaves burnt up in the heat. I can produce
watermelons for whatever reason the ogre took off. But ye
know this is just a little garden. Right, So, I
mean worse comes to worse. There's a grocery store or
(30:02):
three grocery stores within five miles because I live uptown. Um,
what about those folks who are relying upon the weather
and the soil in order to actually produce for a living.
And then things become slightly more complex, right, Um, A
lot of folks who are working on climate change are
looking at it from a metropolitan boo. Right, So municipalities
are suffering with stormwater management and rising waters, and globally
(30:28):
we're increasing the temperatures and there's not really or rather
there's not often a clear line that is drawn to
what does that mean? All right? So, so what we've
got an extra four degrees two degrees? What does that mean?
I'm just turning up the heat, I'm turning up the air.
What does this look like? Well, for food, it is
(30:50):
clear that food is being impacted, right, And you know,
even if you're not let's not even talk about food
let's discuss your wine. Yes, let's and of course, like
being able to buy a bottle of wine is perhaps
less critical than being able to like make yourself a sandwich.
But all parts of the food industry affect each other.
(31:11):
What farmers can produce, what makers and restaurants can create
and sell, what what consumers can buy, and the quality
of life of everyone involved um is based on these
and other factors in our sprawling economy. Yes, so suddenly
those cool temperatures that you need in order to produce
just the right balance, that's off. And so instead of
(31:34):
being able to charge twenty of wine because twenty dollars
a bottle, you're having to drop it because now it's swill.
It's three four dollars a bottle. Now the two buck
chuck that was a great thing was one off. But
that's a different conversation. These are folks who are generally young,
they are well educated, they're from suburbs, and they're often white,
(31:55):
middle class or or something that somewhere in the vicinity. Right,
So think suburban kid who has just grown up watching
things on TV and not necessarily being out there on
the front lines. Conversely, folks who have been living in
the inner cities, for generations who could not afford to
leave when the white flight happened, who have scratched out
(32:18):
a living for you know, the past twenty years. They
are on the front lines of issues around food security
and food equity because they are the ones who are
most impacted. And what they're not seeing is that there
is a clear common ground. And as soon as we
get to a place where we understand that there is
a common ground, we can move mountains together by building
(32:41):
communities and organizing grassroots movements, entire movements that allow us
to see change that is beyond just having a grocery store.
It is really more about having a an echo system
that is supportive for all of us. Climate change has
(33:13):
also led to an increase of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.
We'll get into that after one more quick break for
a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
thank you, and yes, Hurricane Katrina. We purposefully didn't ask
(33:37):
our interview subjects about Katrina. I think folks are like
understandably tired of outsiders coming in and quizzing them about
this one ugly nationally broadcasted time in their lives. But
nearly everyone who we spoke with brought it up, which
we're grateful for because as um enormous and traumatic as
it was, it brought the city together in some ways
that do tie into everything we've been talking abou out. Today,
(34:01):
we spoke with Amy Sins, the founder of Langois, a
culinary entertainment company. Um. She lives in New Orleans and
is active in disaster relief, and I realized that the
New Orleans restaurant community is incredibly generous and willing to
give back, and I think other communities around the country
are the same way. We've built really a cool formula
(34:24):
at how we've been able to efficiently feed people during
disasters here and used it in Florida and used it
in Texas, and so my goal is that I'll be
able to share that formula with people around the country,
because with forest fires and floods and things that are happening,
there's no reason we should all be recreating the wheel
(34:46):
trying to scramble. So I'd love to be teaching more
people how to go rogue and really you know, pulled
together a group and motivate a group of volunteers from
the food community. Because we on understand food safety and
as much as people want to cook for others to
make them feel better, there are some rules we have
(35:10):
to follow. And then a disaster situation with no water,
no electricity, you have to really be careful. And my
goal is to teach more people how they can do
that on a massive scale. So she also talked about
a factor we hadn't considered about natural disasters, like this
(35:31):
recipe loss. I read a book called Baby Slippers cookbook
Life After Katrina. My house was on the levee break
of the seventeenth Street now, so if you watched any
of the coverage, there was like a big hole and
helicopter with obany sandbags trying to fill the hole that
was right behind our house. So um, we had about
(35:52):
eight feet of water in the house. But New Orleans
is a collection of neighborhoods, and people don't all is
live or move outside of the neighborhood they grew up in.
So my husband and I lived a block from the
house my mom grew up in, where my grandfather lived.
All of our aunt's uncles, everybody was in the same
(36:13):
neighborhood and all affected. One of the things I realized
was that we lost all of our family recipes because
you couldn't call your aunt or your uncle or your
grandfather to get a copy of them. And my mother
in law and I would try to like dry the
recipe cards out in the sun. And I decided, you
(36:36):
know what, next time this happens, I need a book
that has everything that I love to cook all in
one place, and I can evacuate it with with it.
And I started just meeting people in New Orleans. You
can stand in line at a grocery store and ask
people what they're cooking, and you will get the recipe.
And I met people along the way and just saw
(36:57):
the resilience and the spirit in the love of our
culture and food that the book just took on a
life of its own, and I released it about what
on the first anniversary of Katrina's One thing we noticed
as we conducted our eighteen interviews is a certain hesitation
(37:18):
when we would ask the question are you from New Orleans?
The answer used to largely be based on the hospital
you were born in and the high school you went to.
But if you came to New Orleans after Katrina to
help rebuild and stay, you're a local now, or as
Pepper said, they'll promise you that you will be someday. Right.
Everyone was so careful to specify if their family is
(37:40):
from like fifteen minutes out of town or whatever. But
but everyone we spoke to seemed united in their passion
for for seeing what can be improved about the city
and for actually doing something. I think it's lucky that
it's a place that inspires such loyalty. Like no one
is ambivalent about New Orleans. One project heard about is
(38:00):
on the education side, not consumer education, but professional education
within the restaurant industry. The New Orleans Culinary and Hospitality
Institute are no G or n O c h I
in downtown New Orleans hopes to address barriers to that
education and therefore to improve the quality of life for
the hard work and kitchen staffs who makes the thriving
restaurant scene possible. Here's Dickie again. You can make hollandais
(38:26):
as like a Michael Jordan playing basketball. But if you
don't know the word emulsify and in the chemistry behind
what you do and why it works, I think it
keeps you from having confidence. And that lack of confidence
is where these men and women don't go to the
next level, because there's so many I've worked with over
the years and I've said, come on, want you take
(38:47):
a little responsibility now, I'm I'm I'm good doing what
I'm doing. And then I've seen young men and women
from out of state that have graduated from these wonderful
programs and so many album I want to cook in
New Orleans. And so it's his young confident. You know,
someone just graduated Coastchood's coming in and they're getting the
(39:08):
sex chef position and then they become the chef's I mean,
I'm certainly not knocking the animal. Look Gosspin. I mean,
it couldn't be a greater example of you know, animal
came in, started working my family and you know, look
look where he's gone. So I really hope this institute
because in New Orleans, you know, we have certainly have
our challenges when it comes to I'll just say it's
(39:31):
racial relationships and so and a lot of people leadership
on both sides. When you're having a conversation, you know,
a lot of time the leadership will say, well, I
don't see anybody out of the African American community being
the chef or being the business owner. You know, you
know at some point you know that has to evolve.
And so I think this is an opportunity for our
(39:54):
industry instead of people being you know, stock and can't
get some X level that this should open that door.
And if because we have the talent, it's like musicians,
jazz musicians a worldwide. We have athletes that are just
incredibly probably have more on them in the NFL than anywhere.
(40:14):
We had the same talent that can cook, they just
don't have that education to where they're going to go
be a chef. My hope is in a short period
of time there'll be men and women this community that
will be a chef in New York City, the East
Coast of West Coast and really changing that path that
hadn't really been here in New Orleans. It's that kind
(40:38):
of work, and then dozens of other things, improving public
education at large, bringing fresh food into neighborhoods either with
new or existing infrastructure, and making sure people can afford
to buy it by paying workers a living wage, rooting
out corruption and prejudice in the governing bodies, recognizing that
these issues are systemic, and supporting the mints that are
(41:00):
trying to change that working on larger policies that will
allow people to be able to will And then Jesus
there's a farm bill, which is another thirty minute conversation.
If that that allows us to understand how it is
that we can make life farm poor. Oh and uh
that then ore, then our lunch came. But we we
(41:21):
got back to the conversation eventually. Eventually, so we can
make food of food access far more sustainable for folks
who are working a living wage. So joining with people
who are doing or leading the charge on the fight
for fifteen so that folks will have money in order
to spend um. And I know that we've got some
folks who are very well meaning, and I respect that
(41:43):
they want to help and do things that are right
and just and equitable for all. The problem is that
until we accept that many of the ways that we
discuss inequality and um inequity being some not necessarily meaning
that we all have you the same, but that we
(42:06):
are treated on a level that is give us. Giving
us justice in court systems and everywhere we go is
usually through a lens of color. Patriarchy and all of
the things that we that we have been really against
as a society for at least the past two years
for reasons unknown. Then Um, then we will continue to
(42:30):
walk down these paths where we are simply confused. We
hope that in discussing all of this, and it was
a lot that we touched on, um, and all of
it we could have gone into and I hope that
we will get to in the future. Yes, yes, um,
but yeah, we hope that we're helping further the conversation,
even just a little bit. Um. But for now, that
(42:51):
about brings us the end of this episode. You can
email us at Hello at saberpod dot com. You can
also find us on social media. We are on at
our Facebook and Instagram at savor Pod. We do hope
to hear from you. Thank you as always to our
super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard, our executive producer
Christopher Hasiotis, and all of our interviewees and the good
(43:12):
folks who put us in touch with those interviewees. Thanks
to you for listening, and we hope that lots more
good things are coming your way. I did like the
thing that if you were from New Orleans too, for
people to like really verify if you were from New
Orance they'd be like, where'd you go to high school?
Yeah yeah, high school? Yeah yeah, And multiple people brought
(43:34):
that up. Oh yeah yeah. And then because we would
ask like, oh, are you from here, they would go, well,
and from about an hour away, like immediately on the defense,
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