food insecure – Memphis Flyer

A local chef has transformed her passion for cooking into a mission to address food insecurity in Memphis.

Twenty-four year old Kaya Lewis is the owner of Kaya’s Kitchen. Lewis transformed her private catering company into a volunteer project with which she and her team have delivered more than 300 meals to families in need.

“I’ve been very aware of food insecurity my whole life,” Lewis said. “As a kid my family was food insecure, so I experienced that first-hand.”

Lewis remembers volunteering in community gardens and at food pantries when she was in middle and high school. Through her experiences as an educator in Memphis she was able to see how much the issue affected her students.

“The school lunch might’ve been their only meal — or the food that our school was serving some days was not a proper meal, nutrition-wise,” Lewis said.

She added that these problems would trickle down and affect different areas of their health, including physical issues such as stomach issues, and mental issues such as emotional regulation.

During her time teaching, Lewis began to cook and prepare meals for her co-workers. Shortly after her teaching contract ended, she attended a Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE) conference that helped her learn to effectively organize people.

She took those skills to her Instagram, @kayas_kitchen_, and offered volunteer opportunities for the free meals she would be providing – whether it was to cook meals, buy groceries, or contribute in other ways.

Kaya’s Kitchen volunteers. Photo Credit: Kaya Lewis

Those in need can reach out to Lewis via email at Kayaskitcheninfo@gmail.com. She and other volunteers buy groceries and assemble meals at Memphis Kitchen Co-Op.

Feeding America, a nonprofit that seeks to address food accessibility, found 128,190 Shelby County residents to be food insecure in 2020.

While Lewis acknowledges that the work she is doing is addressing the problem, she advocates for more programs and policies that address the root of food insecurity.

“Raise the minimum wage,” Lewis said. “If people can afford their living expenses, that makes food more accessible. Improving public transportation — if people who do not have access to a car can get on public transport, that helps with food insecurity.”

Lewis also mentioned inequities in where grocery stores are located, citing an article by Ryan Jones entitled The Roots of Food Deserts, that makes it clear that those living in areas such as South Memphis, Orange Mound, and Binghamton have a harder time accessing full-service grocery stores than those living in, say, Collierville.

“In some neighborhoods you have five grocery stores within a mile radius,” Lewis said. “In others there are no grocery stores to be found — only corner stores and liquor stores.”

Although food insecurity exists as a systemic issue, Lewis said the community can help intervene by volunteering with her service, or even by sharing food with neighbors. She hopes her social media account and resources can inspire people to not only address the problem, but to reach out for assistance.

“Nobody’s judging you,” Lewis said. “I’ve been there myself and that’s why I really emphasize there’s no shame in asking for help [or] support. Culturally there’s a lot of shame placed around food insecurity and that shame is not meant to be on the people who are hungry. It’s meant to be on the systems that are causing inequities in the first place.”

Kroger

Justin Fox Burks

Food waste is in the crosshairs of city officials and local environmental leaders with a plan to reduce it by 50 percent by 2030.

The Memphis Food Waste Project is led by the nonprofit Clean Memphis and joined by a coalition of private and public partners, including the City of Memphis, the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Sustainability and Resilience, Memphis Transformed, Project Green Fork, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Compost Fairy, Epicenter, Kroger, the Mid-South Food Bank, and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. Together, the groups will push to reduce food waste to save money, improve the environment, and help ensure fewer Memphians go hungry.

Clean Memphis executive director Janet Boscarino said food waste and packaging now comprise 30 percent of landfill volume. It also produces the most methane gas (the most harmful gas), she said. These reductions will aid city leaders to meet goals detailed in the Memphis Area Climate Action Plan.

“The City of Memphis can service as a leader in developing a more sustainable food systems approach, reducing wasted food, and the resulting wasted labor, land, and money, as well as increased pollutants by supporting waste diversion and generating useful products such as finished compost with this diverted food waste,” reads a December proclamation from Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland.

Justin Fox Burks

Dirty work: the BFI landfill near Millington

Food waste can be diverted from restaurants, hospitality providers, and other food producers in the city, according to the proclamation. Food from those sources has “great rescue potential” for food “that would otherwise go to waste.” The food could be retrieved and donated to those in need, Strickland said in the proclamation.

Boscarino said the United States spends $218 billion (or about 1.3 percent of the gross domestic product) growing, transporting, and disposing of food that is never eaten. She said the waste numbers are staggering given that one in eight Americans are food insecure — lack reliable access to food because of money and other concerns — and that one in five Memphians are food insecure.

Waste occurs along nearly every stop in the food supply chain here, Boscarino said. Some food spoils as farmers can’t move it to market quickly enough. Some food is tossed as it may not meet cosmetic standards, even though it has the same taste or nutritional value. Food continues to spoil as it moves through the supply chain to grocery stores, restaurants, and hospitality venues, she said. But the largest food-waste sector “by far,” she said, is in homes.

“We over-purchase, we don’t store things rights, we don’t eat leftovers, we don’t use all parts of the food, and we’re not composting at a level we need to,” Boscarino said.

To combat all of this, Project Green Fork will be working with restaurants, hospitality venues like hotels, and event spaces like FedExForum to donate their food and avoid waste. Memphis Food Waste Project members will educate residents on how to more sustainably shop for groceries, how to store food, how to freeze food, and how to “fall in love with leftovers,” Boscarino said.

Test your food waste knowledge with an online quiz at www.cleanmemphis.org.

Read Strickland’s proclamation here:
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