Elissa Miolene
Community Issue
1,050 words
Veronica Martinez sifts through cans at New Bethany Ministries, helping to sort leftovers
after a crowd leaves the food pantry. An earphone humming in one ear, she wears a pale
brown sweater under her apron, the result of a clothing donation a few weeks before.
Martinez is young, and her demeanor is mellow. She reveals none of the food collection
havoc she just dealt with, and none of the chaos of the four children who wait for her at
home. Her voice is firm, repeating, “When God puts you somewhere, he wants you to be
there.”
Martinez’s time at New Bethany Ministries is two-pronged. One, she is a client of the
organization. Two, she will be working there for the next four weeks, a component of the
program she is enrolled in that secures her with cash assistance from welfare. Martinez is
one of the 21.6 percent of south Bethlehem residents who live below the poverty line —
those who rely on food pantries, soup kitchens and food stamps to sustain themselves and
their families.
“Food — and being able to get that food — is so important,” said Fiona Byrne, food
pantry coordinator at New Bethany Ministries. “It’s our basic need. And there’s a huge
number of people who lack that need on the South Side.”
Food insecurity: the basics
Living below the poverty line typically is an indicator of food insecurity — a lack of
access to enough food for a healthy lifestyle. According to a study by Lehigh professor
Judith Lasker, almost two-thirds of south Bethlehem residents are food insecure.
The study reports that there are a multitude of factors contributing to this situation,
including low income or unemployment, lack of education, lack of transportation and a
high number of children.
Whatever the cause, the effect is severe: those who cannot eat cannot operate. And
Lasker found that those who cannot operate can sink deeper into a detrimental chronic
state, such as homelessness, mental illness or unemployability.
These states are all part of a cycle, and each one can be the cause or effect of another.
“Even with the addition of C-Town, the new grocery store on the South Side, Bethlehem
is still defined as a food desert,” said Elena Martin, a Lehigh junior who works with local
food pantries.
A food desert is an urban area with a lack of affordable and quality foods, an added
challenge for an area already struggling socioeconomically.
The help – and the struggles within the help
Bethlehem has a number of organizations attempting to combat food insecurity. New
Bethany Ministries provides a food pantry and soup kitchen for the poor, homeless, and
mentally ill in the area. The food pantry serves over 360 households a month, and the
soup kitchen feeds around 220 people a day. The Hispanic Center, another community
organization with a food pantry, serves about 50 people a month.
These are just two of 17 like organizations, but since they span across both sides of
Bethlehem, getting to these locations without a car can be very difficult.
To get funding from the federal government, organizations first need to demonstrate the
need is there: that people are hungry. Once an initial grant is given, a whirlwind of
technicalities must be addressed — how to receive donations and additional funding,
attaining enough space and proper utilities, and ensuring food quality.
“We try to give our clients balanced meals,” Byrne said as she hauls a box of butter into a
freezer, sliding it next to endless bags of frozen onion rings. “What makes that difficult is
we can’t really control what we get. We don’t have much freezer space, but we have so
many French fries.”
“And people will take anything they can get,” Martinez added.
One of the aims of a food pantry is to give people a financial buffer so the money they
would have spent on food goes toward housing or medication. Most food pantries have a
policy of one collection every 30 days, with each collection lasting approximately three
days.
That leaves 28 days unaccounted for, and 28 days of foodlessness.
Instead of facing the stigma of going to a soup kitchen, many choose to stock up on
cheaper products like canned vegetables, soups and meat.
This is especially problematic when it comes to dealing with chronic diseases like
diabetes and obesity, and cholesterol and sodium issues.
“It’s hard to put restrictions on food in terms of nutrition-value, because we don’t want
food donations to go down and we don’t want people to go hungry,” said Sherri
Penchishen, director of Chronic Disease Programs at the Bethlehem Bureau of Health.
“But if a person with diabetes is relying on food pantries, they’re getting exactly the type
of foods we’re telling them not to eat.”
The study done by Lasker reported only 11 percent of South Bethlehem residents have a
college education. Without that degree, it can be impossible to make enough money to
exercise a healthy lifestyle.
Lasker found that 48 percent of residents make below $1,500 a month. The average
American income, as stated by the federal census in 2011, is $3,769 a month.
Though people like Martinez can become involved in programs that enable you for
higher education, qualifying for such an opportunity requires working at minimum wage
for an extended period of time.
“Where is the quality of life in $7.50 an hour?” Byrne said. “Our clients who are working
are doing so for very few rewards, just to achieve basic survival.”
The study by Lasker reported that nutrition deprivation has detrimental effects on mental
health. Anxiety can spike, depression can deepen and stress can soar once individuals
cannot attain the nourishment they need.
This creates the chronic states that are so hard for those affected to get out of. Hunger
coexists with the deterioration of all different aspects of life, pushing individuals toward
drug abuse, alcoholism and homelessness, Byrne said.
“It’s all circumstance,” Byrne said. “Some of them just don’t get out of it. And if you
already have hunger and then throw in mental illness, or drug abuse – that’s because they
want a vacation from their lives. They’re not going to the Caribbean, to Spain, to London
or France. They want to get out of their current situation and away from where they are.
So we do what we can to make where they are a little easier.”
Elissa Miolene
Community Issue: Sidebar
642 words
RJ’s Mini Mart lies on the corner of East 4th and Polk streets. Behind four gas pumps, it
serves as the station’s base — a place people can pay for their fuel and stock up on
tobacco, snacks and groceries.
Nestled between the Doritos chips and the Tostito’s salsa lay a bed of apples. They seem
out of place, the shine of their red skin glinting off the fluorescent lights in the ceiling.
These apples, along with boxes of flavored oatmeal, are a new addition to the mini mart,
and a result of the Healthy Corner Store Initiative.
Working in collaboration with the Food Trust and the Pennsylvania Department of
Health, the Healthy Corner Store Initiative, or HCSI, hopes to bring healthier food into
local stores where many south Bethlehem residents shop.
The HCSI provides a $100 incentive check for local bodegas to sell food that will benefit
the community, and stop people from merely buying the cheapest foods with abandon to
health risks.
“Cheap food is generally not as nutritious,” said Fiona Byrne, food pantry director at
New Bethany Ministries, “and low income families can only afford inexpensive food.
Healthier foods and fresh produce will be secondary to larger quantities and dollar
amount.”
Basing a diet solely on canned or packaged foods can lead to health problems or amplify
an existing one, said Sherri Penchishen, director of Chronic Disease Programs at the
Bethlehem Bureau of Health. Diabetes and obesity are the most prominent chronic
diseases in the area, as reported by the bureau.
“They are found across all income and education levels, but it’s harder for those with low
income to control their diabetes and decrease their obesity status because they don’t have
access to fruits and vegetables,” Penchishen said.
In fact, according to a study done by Judith Lasker at Lehigh University, less than half of
South Bethlehem residents are satisfied by their household consumption of fruits and
vegetables. And 27 percent of residents were very dissatisfied in the same regard.
Especially when people don’t have access to a valid form of transportation, families can
come to rely wholly on these corner stores for their sustenance.
Prior to partnering with the HCSI, bodegas like RJ’s Mini Mart, Nieves Grocery, and La
Favorita only stocked snack foods, canned foods and sodas.
The HCSI attempts to sneak healthier options, steadily but subtly, into the selection of
foods a local store already offers. The switch can range from replacing regular Cheetos
with baked Cheetos to introducing a new food entirely, like blueberries or peaches.
Though the initiative tries to encourage stores to make these changes, something vital is
still missing: getting customers to actually purchase them.
Rashid Jamshed, RJ of RJ’s Mini Mart, said that a lot of the time the healthy food they
stock doesn’t sell.
“People who come in here aren’t exactly health conscious,” Jamshed said.
In the last shipment, only about half the apples were sold by the time they went bad.
Jamshed had difficulty remembering what other products had been introduced because he
hadn’t noticed much of a purchasing change in his customers.
Much of it comes down to the fact that regardless of whether the food is provided,
healthier foods will always be more expensive than unhealthy ones. And cheaper, canned
foods will always be easier to cook than fresh ones.
People working multiple jobs at minimum wage, like south Bethlehem residents, have
less time to cook healthier dinners. It’s much easier to pop open a can of Chef Boyardee
than to follow recipe books and instructions.
It’s an issue not only with cheap buying at local bodegas, but in food pantries as well.
“Say we give someone green beans,” Elena Martin said, a Lehigh student who works
with local food pantries. “If you don’t know how to cook them that’s a major problem.
It’s wasteful, and it’s discouraging.”