When we commit to protecting kids’ health with vegetables, we also stand up for their lives. Black lives matter. We stand with our Black community members to call out injustice and to take action. Food literacy is food justice. 

If you support Food Literacy Center, you have been supporting one small local solution to one piece of the national problem. You may or may not understand the connection, so over the next few weeks, we will help educate you. We hope you are interested in understanding–and in continuing to be an active part of the solution. 

We live in a county where 19% of children don’t have enough to eat. In the Sacramento schools we serve, 58% of our food and nutrition insecure students are Black. 

We live in a society where providing free food has become an acceptable solution. But it doesn’t solve the problem–it’s a bandaid. 

Consider how you would feel if what you ate many days wasn’t your choice? Someone else decides. What if the food you could regularly afford was poor quality, nutritionally devoid, and caused chronic illness? Because that’s the reality in the food deserts we serve.

But at least that food tastes good. So you learn to like it. Then, someone else decides that you should eat healthier, and your donated food starts looking unfamiliar, containing ingredients you don’t even know how to cook, like raw eggplant. You’re still hungry.

I started Food Literacy Center to try to fix this reality, to try to rebuild this part of our local food system, and to try to bring dignity to food access. 

We cannot work with food and ignore its connection to unjust policies and practices that keep hungry people hungry, the majority of whom are Black and Brown. Our broken food system is just one of the many injustices overlooked in America. 

We must do better for our kids and for our entire community. Because Black Lives Matter to Food Literacy Center. 

In solidarity,

Amber Stott
CEO & Chief Food Genius