By Aaron Dorman
Indiana doesn’t have any mountain ranges but for many Hoosiers – nearly one million – the “benefits cliff” is too steep to afford proper food and nutrition.
The latter term is the subject of a new documentary on food insecurity in Indiana. On Wednesday the NWI Food Council hosted a screening and panel discussion to explain how that applies within the Region.
“We have sophisticated systems in place, but we’re still unable to meet everyone’s needs,” said panel speaker Ryan Elinkowski, CEO of Meals on Wheels Northwest Indiana.
The documentary, “Food, Insecure,” focuses on individuals who had fallen off the aforementioned “cliff”: a result of earning too much income to qualify for programs like food stamps, but not enough to provide proper nutrition for one’s family.
“It almost feels like we are being punished,” said Kayla Justice, one of the documentary subjects, who broke down in tears describing how she skipped meals so her kids could eat.
The film also tried to push back on the stereotype of lazy, entitled SNAP beneficiaries — “buying bonbons off government dollars,” one interviewee explained — with examples of Hoosiers who have tried, but often failed, to get off benefits, working multiple jobs and/or eating unhealthy, processed meals.
Both the film and panelists highlighted the systemic economic issues that trap people in a cycle of food insecurity, defined by the US Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion as having “limited or uncertain access to food” at the household level.
“Food insecurity is not about food,” Fred Glass, president and CEO of Indianapolis-based hunger relief organization Gleaners, said in the video. “It’s about poverty.”
It’s also costly. According to the documentary, the cascading effects of food insecurity, from poor nutrition in schoolchildren to bad teeth in adults, cost the state $1.8 billion annually.
One way that Northwest Indiana organizations have tried to address such cycles of poverty and poor nutrition was to educate and partner with local schools.
“We need to start (nutrition education) from a very young age,” said panelist Veronica Jalomo, farm to school coordinator with the NWI Food Council. “How can we make sure students are learning about where food comes from? And how can we make those changes within schools?”
The panelists described a plethora of solutions being deployed throughout Northwest Indiana to tackle food insecurity, from food lockers to WIC clinics to nutritional counseling for women before, during and after pregnancies.
However, all the panelists cited the need for regional efforts to move from emergency food assistance, no matter how robust, to long-term solutions that could alleviate food insecurity in the Region once and for all.
Both the filmmakers and the Northwest Indiana panel noted that some federal programs, such as the pandemic-era child tax credit, showed results in providing essential needs to residents. However, the Trump Administration has been cutting support for food distribution funding, including roughly $1 billion earmarked for schools and food banks to receive local produce. The panel steered mostly clear of politics, although Jalomo made note of the now-eliminated $14.7 million in funding Indiana was set to receive for farm-to-school programs.
In addition to Elinkowski and Jalomo, the other panelists were Jennifer Trowbridge, CEO of NWI community assistance agency CoAction; and Tricia Speaks, vice president of operations and community impact with the Food Bank of NWI. The discussion was moderated by NWI Food Council Farm to Food Access Coordinator Becca Tuholski.
“Food, Insecurity” first aired last month on PBS. For more information on the documentary and the production team’s previous work, interested readers can go to workinghungry.org.