Obstacles to Healthy Food

Rickelle Richards, a professor of nutrition at Brigham Young University who has studied homeless families, says, in general, homeless people face a number of obstacles to procuring and preparing healthy food. Although exactly what food they can access varies based on the facilities and rules at the shelter they’re living in as well as their neighborhood’s grocery stores and soup kitchens, many face short-term food insecurity that Richards says likely increases the risk of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and heart failure, down the road.

Torres says the food she eats at Reciprocity Foundation is “way better than takeout.” She likes knowing about the ingredients that have gone into the meals, and who’s cooking it. Eating here, she adds, “I’m much less tired. I’m still able to function even if I’ve had a large meal here.”

Overton says he hears this from a lot of youth: “They tell me how much better they feel or how they have a lot more energy than they’re used to, so we base our success on how the youth respond.”

Hence the second part of Reciprocity’s mission: to change youth’s eating habits beyond the meals they are served. Overton says educating youth and introducing them to new foods can go a long way.

“It’s a common misconception that you can’t eat healthy if you don’t have a lot of money, and that’s not necessarily true,” Overton explains. “Rice and beans can be very nutritious and healthy: protein and healthy carbohydrates that you can get for a reasonable price.”

Building Community

When the Foundation started serving dinner at another shelter recently, Overton made vegetables like kale and whole grains such as quinoa. “Then we saw the next week … those same youth would come back with shopping bags of healthy food,” he recalls. “That just made my whole week.”

To push that work even further, Overton helped build a community garden in the shelter. “We started them off with small plants, like celery and spinach and baby lettuce. I think we planted a couple of peppers,” he says. Then he helped the shelter residents come up with a schedule for who would weed and water the garden and when—“and it’s November and [the vegetables are] still extremely tall, which makes me happy because when we go in there to actually cook now, we use as many ingredients from the garden as possible.”

Next summer, Overton hopes to get gardens into the backyards of all the homeless youth shelters where he works. Just as the meals he serves in the shelter “brought the community together so easily and so joyously,” he says, sharing the work of caring for the garden “created even a closer-knit community vibe among the residents.”

Tonight, when dinner is served a little after five o’clock, about 15 young people gather around the table. Overton gives each a bowl full of whole-wheat couscous, corn, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and tempeh. He prepared this meal himself; the foundation staff members take turns cooking.

“They always make sure that it’s vegetarian, organic—very, very healthy food, and it’s good. It’s not like bland tofu. They season it,” Torres says. “It’s almost like sitting down to family dinner with your closest friends and family.”