Food Injustice Hits Home
As a San Francisco native, my whole life has revolved around the fact that there are many differences in my community but those differences are what make San Francisco an embracing sanctuary. The districts of San Francisco give out their unique taste, one of the tastiest being The Mission District which I grew up in. Back then, around 2005, The Mission was known for its richness in culture and tradition. There were supermarkets every two blocks because Hispanics love their fresh food. As a child, I would never pay attention to what other people ate, specifically their products. My mother worked in an organic store and I was fed organic food all the time. There was organic milk in the fridge, organic or vegan cookies in the kitchen's shelves, and organic fruit never ran out. I didn't know it then, but I was living the rich kid life, the "white kid" lunch I pulled out during lunch time was shameful as I watched my Latino friends eat chips and cafeteria food. It made me remember the days when I'd eat cafeteria food everyday and everyday I would see all the white kids pull out expensive organic food. One time I asked one of them what unpasteurized milk cheese meant and he threw it at me saying "it means it's better than your cafeteria food", it hurt so much to feel the statement "poor"  be written across my forehead. Every night since then, I started to make my own lunch, my lunch was always organic fruit because my parents couldn't afford to buy me lunch. When I did have lunch with me, it would be leftovers or expired food my mother had brought from the store. In high school I had made it, I no longer felt like an outsider because I had a full organic lunch almost everyday but as my parents divorced and the expired organic food stopped coming every night, I went back to my middle school days. High school days were the days were I saw the injustice be displayed out on the cafeteria tables. They were statements no one cared for and were almost invisible. I now attend Notre Dame de Namur University and their cafeteria is served by Bon Appetit and their food is very healthy and mostly home made. When I get my meal, my childhood self roams in wishing the San Francisco Unified School District would have had meals like those of NDNU, but I forget that in our country the school district isn't a priority.


Food Inequality has existed for a while and it simply means that low income communities don't have access to fresh food groceries and often if there are a couple, the residents can't afford to buy the fresh food. Which is why they have no choice but to resort to unhealthy food which leads them to have physical problems such as diabetes and heart problems.
I now work at an organic store as well and it sadness me to see how certain people part of a community can't afford everything and I wish I could do something but I'm only a kid with ideas and not enough money to start making a change. I look forward to the day when SF replaces "food inequality" to "food equality".