The Federal Operation Metro Surge, launched in December, brought several thousand agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) into Minneapolis. During this period, Department of Homeland Security agents shot and killed two Minneapolis residents, 37-year-old Renee Good and 37-year-old Alex Pretti, as well as taking children into custody. The White House reports that more than 4,000 arrests were made.

Although the Trump-Vance Administration recently announced the surge’s end, many immigrant families report they still fear leaving their homes, including for school and work.

Over the last few months, Joyce Uptown Food Shelf shifted their processes to ensure that households can still access food and other necessities. For Matthew Ayres, Executive Director of Joyce Uptown, this flexibility will remain important to keep families safe. 

Ayres says he began to see the number of drop-ins decline months before the start of Operation Metro Surge, as federal agents began moving into the city. “Two years ago, we saw a huge influx of Ecuadorian families coming in… and they disappeared, starting in September, October,” he tells Food Tank.

Located within two miles from where both Good and Pretti were killed, the food shelf has become a prominent site for donations and volunteers, both locally and nationally, Ayres says. At the height of the Surge, he estimates the shelf was running at 130 percent capacity, with an approximate 120,000 pounds of food going out in February.

When asked how things changed after the killing of Good, Ayres tells Food Tank, “We started getting money and attention and volunteers and donations. Everything changed for us, but not for the people that were getting food.” 

The organization altered their model to help get food to families unable to visit in person. In the past, long-term clients came in to shop at the shelf, while others picked up pre-made bags. Today, Joyce Uptown fills emergency food bags stocked with essentials: apples, potatoes, onions, eggs, chicken, rice, beans, pasta, milk, and canned goods. 

Through a partnership with local schools, teachers come by to retrieve the bags for their students, or the food shelf delivers the bags to the schools themselves. Patrons of the food shelf and other volunteers are also bringing bags to families unable to leave their homes.

Ayres says that Joyce’s Volunteer Coordinator didn’t have a model to work off to deliver groceries at the start. “She really created this from scratch,” he says.

The food shelf also streamlined their processes to deter ICE, Ayres says. “People move through here so fast. It used to be a five to eight minute wait, now it’s one to two.” They found that if people aren’t lingering at the food shelf, ICE is less likely to use it as a staging area.

Although Ayres says the work is exhausting, he also calls it deeply rewarding. “Random people are coming up and giving us hugs or crying… this in particular is the center point of hope, but also despair.”

Ayres tells Food Tank that since the end of Operation Metro Surge, “Joyce has seen a few more Spanish-speaking shoppers come in, but [their] deliveries and school pickups are still steady or growing…You still have tons of families sheltering, classroom chairs are still empty, and people are still pretty reluctant to get out.”

But since the start of the year, organizations like Joyce Uptown and other mutual aid programs “have finally found a rhythm,” Ayres says. Processes have become streamlined and mutual aid groups have professionalized.

To food pantries across the country who may need to step up similarly in the coming months or years, Ayres shares what he’s learned: “Connection to schools is important…[so is] listening to and learning from mutual aid groups.” He also sees the importance of defining clear roles. “My lane is being able to purchase large scale eggs, beans and potatoes. Those schools need to be getting produce.”

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Photo courtesy of Joyce Uptown Food Shelf

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Wellness in the Schools (WITS), a national nonprofit educating children on healthy habits, launched CITS in partnership with the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy, the New York City Department of Education, and the Office of Food and Nutrition Services. The program aims to increase the quantity of plant-based, scratch-made, and culturally inclusive meals served in NYC schools, while decreasing the amount of processed food. They did this through developing menus, training school cooks on best practices for healthful meals, and providing nutrition and culinary education to children.

The new report shows that CITS established 44 recipes fitting their desired criteria. Food education and side-by-side training reached 1,035 public schools, hundreds of school cooks, and more than 850,000 students. Multiple training methods including side-by-side training and an off-site CookCamp training, teaching staff new skills and providing a higher level of support, collaboration with the city of New York, and student engagement, all contributed to the program’s success.

Alexina Cather, Director of Policy and Special Projects for WITS, tells Food Tank, “Our findings make clear that transforming school food requires more than swapping ingredients. It requires investing in people, training, and systems. Through Chefs in the Schools, we’ve demonstrated that when schools are supported with culinary expertise and professional development, scratch cooking becomes scalable and sustainable.”

The pilot also faced challenges. Both the high cost of fresh produce and assumptions that produce will be expensive even when it’s not created difficulties. Additionally, school cafeteria staff shortages and inadequate kitchen equipment were setbacks the program faced. Difficulty measuring and quantifying outcomes was another factor CITS needed to contend with

According to the report, these issues are not unique to New York City. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that most of the calories consumed by youth nationwide are from ultra-processed foods (UPFs). These products, prevalent in both school and packaged meals, are associated with health concerns including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. The CDC also reports that children who eat nutrient-poor diets are at increased risk of hindered cognitive development, more school days missed, academic delays, and behavioral and emotional challenges.

Food insecurity is also a justice issue. Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities are more impacted by the health concerns caused by lack of access to sufficient nutrition, experiencing diabetes at a 1.5 times greater rate than white populations. 

But WITS sees schools as uniquely situated to transform the systemic challenges facing food and agriculture systems into an opportunity for societal change. Their report provides a series of policy recommendations with the aim of scaling nutritious, culturally-relevant, and sustainable school meals.

 One recommendation is to eliminate ultra-processed food from school menus. California, for example, made progress towards this through its passing of Assembly Bill 1264, known as the Real Food, Healthy Kids Act. This law will phase-out ultra-processed food from school meals, eliminating them entirely by 2035.

WITS also advocates for the alignment of federal policy with public health goals. They argue that subsidies for fruits and vegetables would create greater incentive for schools to use them in their meals.

Additionally, the report advocates for reform in school food procurement, encouraging schools to invest in local supply chains that can provide healthy and whole ingredients. They also stress the importance of kitchen infrastructure that is well-suited to scratch-cooking, and the importance of opportunities for professional development for school food workers.

True-cost accounting, healthy school meals for all legislation, and higher federal reimbursement rates for school lunches are amongst the other policy avenues the report recommends.

Cather tells Food Tank, “This report is both a celebration of what’s possible and a call to policymakers and funders to prioritize school food as a cornerstone of health equity.”

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Photo courtesy of Wellness in the Schools 

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The Food is Medicine Community Action Plan includes case studies, collaborative knowledge sharing, a community action framework, and partner resources and toolkits. It provides a blueprint for communities to take Food is Medicine from concept into practice.

“This resource is designed for organizations at any stage of their Food is Medicine journey…by sharing proven strategies and community-centered approaches, the Action Plan aims to speed up the growth of Food is Medicine programs nationwide,” Corby Kummer, Food & Society’s Executive Director, tells Food Tank.

The Community Action Plan is rooted in community needs, and created through partnerships with organizations across the U.S. Through three convenings, in Boston, Tulsa, and Tucson, Food & Society heard from practitioners and community leaders about their experience implementing Food is Medicine principles in their work.

At these convenings, participants brought their on-the-ground expertise with them, collaborating honestly and openly to create the Action Plan. Faith-based groups, food banks, health care providers, and medically tailored meal providers, are among those the plan convened and hopes to reach.

But scaling Food is Medicine is not without its hurdles, Kummer says. “The biggest challenge, which we explored at our convening in Boston, highlighted inconsistent resources to implement these programs.”

Kummer says that funding, and the interests of various stakeholders, are essential to keep in mind when working to scale Food is Medicine initiatives. During community convenings, one participant pushed back on the idea that Food is Medicine is linked to poverty and hunger. 

While Kummer believes Food is Medicine and food security are “inextricably intertwined,” he understands that making the case to some stakeholders requires advocates to couch arguments “in terms of health.” Until payers—those responsible for medical care’s cost—understand the cost savings that come when eaters’ wellbeing improves, they “are not going to be convinced or interested” he says.

The Action Plan is coming at a time where Food is Medicine is gaining greater national political traction, and Kummer believes the focus from Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission offers an opportunity. He does not agree with all recommendations from MAHA, citing issues with their guidance on saturated fats as an example. U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently called for an end to the “war on saturated fats,” stating that past dietary guidelines wrongly discouraged their consumption. 

But Kummer tells Food Tank this is a moment worth seizing: “Nutrition and fewer ultra-processed foods and more whole foods have the attention of the very top policymakers in government.” It’s important to look at the bigger picture, he says, and push for funding for things like getting ultra-processed foods out of school lunches.

Scaling Food is Medicine also requires intermediaries between CBOs and health care companies—a need that Kummer says everyone can agree on. A large health care payer does not have the capacity or vested interest to pay attention to many small organizations. That’s why intermediary organizations work to unite small CBOs across an area, which allows the organizations to be more visible to a larger healthcare payer. This is already happening in New York City, with the 1115 Medicaid waiver, which enables healthcare money to go towards food, and Social Emergency Medicine networks (SEM) that serve as “in-between” organizations.

The Food is Medicine Community Action Plan hopes to serve as its own kind of bridge, bringing practical steps to communities that need them. For an organization that wants to implement its own Food is Medicine program to support the local community, Kummer paraphrases Amy Headings and Jennifer Parsons of the Mid-Ohio Food Collective. “Start with leadership commitment, build broad coalitions, integrate across your organization, keep it simple, and focus on progress over perfection.”

“Nutrition and food are part of the national conversation, in a way they haven’t been,” Kummer tells Food Tank. “It’s a really exciting moment with a lot of potential.”

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Photo Courtesy of Zoe Richardson, Unsplash 

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