Judith Cruz on A Holistic Approach to Food Insecurity

Every day, Cruz and the hard-working employees and volunteers at TCFB aim to help the most vulnerable, including children, seniors and people facing costly medical bills, underemployment or other economic struggles. Through partnerships with local farmers, ranchers and retailers, the organization provides access to fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as dairy and protein options. TCFB collaborates with agencies, local governments and other nonprofits to take healthy sustenance into at-risk neighborhoods, including hard-to-reach rural communities, through mobile pantries.

Why did you decide to work with nonprofits?

I haven’t always been in the nonprofit world. I have an extensive business background, having worked for a now-defunct corporation in New York City, as well as with Cracker Barrel Corporation. I transitioned into nonprofit after what happened at the World Trade Center in 2001. I wanted to do something more meaningful with my life than just meeting quarterly goals. Real-life problems were happening for people, and I felt like I had a lot to give in that area.

In what way is running a food bank like a business?

Although there are different accounting and reporting dynamics because of donor regulations, the day-to-day is a lot like a business. It’s the accountability that is more critical when it comes to accepting money from people that are depending on you to fulfill their expectations. Just like in business, we have key performance indicators—outcomes and objectives that the team are required to meet. When we’re planning for the year, we look at year-over-year numbers to see where we were in prior years, and then we map out our anticipated budget for food purchasing and distribution. Everything is really the same. The one difference is we don’t sell anything. The team is reminded to be frugal with their expenditures in their respective department budgets. If there is no return on the investment, then we do what can to improve on it. We’re streamlining as much as possible, but we’re also making sure that we’re impacting our programs in the best way possible.

Could you define food insecurity?

It’s a condition where people don’t have reliable access to healthy, affordable food on an ongoing basis. They might not know where their next meal is coming from. They might have limitations as to how many times a day or per week they can eat. Folks that are struggling with food insecurity might have only one meal a day and have limitations on what that would be. It might not be the most healthy meal. It could be low-quality food, and all of that has a negative impact on their overall physical and mental health and well-being.

How prevalent is food insecurity?

One in four people, including children, are food insecure on the Treasure Coast of Florida. Nationally, one in five people are food insecure, and certain groups are more vulnerable. When we talk about people struggling to put food on their table, it’s natural to visualize the commercials of families in other countries that are starving. In the United States, people are starving in a different way. They are being filled with empty calories, creating a host of health issues and health disparities that accompany empty calories, including obesity. For children, eating poorly can result in disciplinary struggles.

What are the most common causes of food insecurity?

Many things contribute to it, including poverty and food deserts. People living in low-income areas more than likely don’t have access to grocery stores or markets with healthy foods, so they’re eating empty calories. There are people struggling with underemployment, unemployment, the high cost of living, health issues or high medical bills. Here in Florida, rental housing has become unaffordable. And then there are the racial and ethnic disparities that people experience.

How does a food bank help people struggling with food insecurity?

This food bank is a bit of an innovator with more of a holistic approach. We take the person that is in need of assistance and look at the other areas where they’re struggling. It’s not just about providing food, but it’s providing those wraparound services that they may need to make it easier for them to lift themselves up out of the situation that they’re in.

Obviously, our core mission is to provide food now. In collaboration with partner agencies and emergency organizations, we supply food for distribution at soup kitchens and pantries, and also do our own distributions through mobile and pop-up pantries. But in addition, we also provide SNAP [food stamp] assistance and connect them to all kinds of social services through our benefits outreach programs and community partners. It’s kind of a one-stop shop for folks.

If you’re coming to us for food assistance, you can meet with our case manager and get information about housing, health care and other services in one sitting without having to go to different agencies. We also offer job training programs for people that need new training or a career path that can pay them a better living wage than what they’re currently earning. The goal is to reduce hunger not just by providing food, but by helping people with the different services and providing other essential items that they might need, like shampoo and cleaning products.

What is food rescue and how does it benefit the community?

We spend a significant amount of money each year to purchase food, with a focus on fresh produce and prepared meals. We also rely heavily on donations from retail partners like Publix, Walmart, Winn Dixie and Aldi for products that are not sellable by their dating standards yet still consumable by the dating standards that they put in place for us, giving us access to proteins, dairy and packaged goods. If they have meat on the shelf with a sell-by date of four days from now, they donate it to the food bank. We pick it up frozen and distribute it. After the holidays, any leftover products that were packaged for the holiday also come to us. There’s a separate network for prepared food rescue from restaurants that we work with to connect those meals to our soup kitchens and agency partners, making sure to follow safe food handling methods.

All of this reduces food waste and lessens the impact on landfills. We recycle as much as we can, finding alternate uses for items that might be beyond their consumable life. If we get produce from a farmer that is too far gone to distribute to a family, we send it out to a rancher or pig farmer for feed.

How do you treat hunger as a health issue?

Health and hunger go hand in hand. Certain conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease are affected severely by poor diet, so helping people understand the impact of what they’re putting in their mouths is critical to their overall health and well-being. A lot of people don’t realize that certain dyes in food affect children, and removing them from their diet can improve their behavior and overall learning in school.

Through our nutrition education programs, we teach people basic cooking skills so they can create balanced meals and stretch their dollars. We show them how to roast a chicken for dinner, use the leftovers for chicken pot pie and then take the bones and make soup for additional meals. We teach them how to read nutritional labels at the grocery store.

We also have a medically tailored meal program where we work with medical facilities, doctors’ offices and insurance companies to create a prescription diet for people that are diagnosed with things like high blood pressure or diabetes. We either prepare meals for them or our registered dietitian helps patients with menu planning so they make healthy choices.

How important is the contribution of volunteers?

Volunteers are critical to every piece of our operation—without them, we couldn’t do it. Last year, we had just over 11,000 volunteers that provided over 45,000 hours of service working in food distribution, special events, the office and in the food production kitchen where we prepare meals every day.

Some volunteers come out almost every day. They love it. We have volunteers that only want to do the hot, sweaty stuff at mobile pantries in the summertime because that’s their workout for the day. It’s just amazing the impact that one person can make. If everybody can give a little bit of themselves to something that they’re passionate about or that they believe in, the world would be so much better. Volunteers are the happiest people I’ve ever met. They never seem to have a bad day.

What is your biggest challenge?

The challenges are that there’s never enough food and we can’t get to everybody that needs assistance. We do the best that we can. We rely on our partners and our volunteers, but there’s always a gap, and until we can eliminate hunger or greatly reduce it, there will always be that gap.

What are your biggest joys in this work?

I’m really proud of my team of dedicated people that want to make an impact in their community. It’s amazing to see how hard they work, and I know that every day we’re making a significant impact on people’s lives, which is very fulfilling.

Do you have hope?

I have hope because of the volunteers. After a natural disaster or at the worst time in someone’s life, there’s always someone here doing what they can to make it better. Humanity always surprises me because we step up. I would encourage everybody to give their time, talent or treasure to any organization they care about. Nonprofits can’t do it alone. They need help from the community, and if folks have time or some money to give, that’s the best thing they can do for any organization, whether it’s a food bank, the arts or a children’s charity.

Sandra Yeyati is the national editor of Natural Awakenings magazine.

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