Penn State hospitality management students have come up with a new way for food-insecure people to find out where they can get free food in Centre County.
Recently, the Penn State School of Hospitality Management’s Food Decisions Research Laboratory launched a project that aids in addressing food insecurity in the county. The project is directed by Amit Sharma, the Edward Friedman and Stuart Mann Professor in Hospitality Management and associate director and professor-in-charge of undergraduate programs in the School of Hospitality Management.
Sharma talks about how the project came to be.
“During the COVID pandemic, the Food Decisions Research Laboratory—at the School of Hospitality Management—students were engaged in working on research and service-learning projects related to food insecurity. Working with our community partners—YMCA free food drives and food banks—we realized there was a lack of information of places where free food was available for people who were food insecure. We therefore came up with the idea of creating a local free-food map that would capture this information and visually display it on a spatial map,” Sharma says.
What exactly is food insecurity? Food insecurity is defined as a lack of, or limited access to, adequate food to meet the nutrition needs of an active, healthy person. It means access to adequate calories but also access to fruits and vegetables.
Government officials map food insecurity by measuring many different metrics. Among them are the number of food pantries in a location, how opening hours affect access, how regulations on who can use a food pantry and what documentation they must provide affect access, how far residents must travel to reach a food pantry, what other options exist for charitable food outside of food pantries (school breakfast and lunch programs, SNAP, and other federal programs that can be used at grocery and convenience stores), and how the food products and aid programs available at various locations (food pantries compared to grocery stores and convenience stores) affect access to healthy food like fresh produce.
Around thirteen percent of Centre County residents experience food insecurity, Sharma says.
According to the professor, the FDRL Free Food Map—produced in collaboration with the YMCA of Centre County—identifies locations throughout Centre County and others across the state that offer free food to those in need. These food pantries are often the first place that students and families living through food insecurity turn for help.
“Our primary responsibility is to educate students and provide them experiential learning opportunities. This project creates those learning and experiential opportunities for our students. Through research and teaching, it provides students an opportunity to learn about food insecurity and to take constructive action in helping reduce the incidence of food insecurity,” Sharma says.
He says the project helps fulfill Penn State’s mission.
“As a land-grant university, our responsibility is also towards our communities, to share and provide them with the knowledge that is generated at Penn State. This project is therefore highly relevant for our community as it reduces that information gap for people who are food insecure and those who need to know where they can find free food,” he says.
As Sharma points out, food insecurity occurs throughout Centre County and among Penn State students.
“There is food insecurity on college campuses across the country, and Penn State is unfortunately also not immune to this challenge. While the incidence of food insecurity, which is a broad and complex idea, is not always easily quantifiable, it is safe to say that not every student on our campuses is food secure,” he says.
According to Sharma, there are many layers to the project. He knows that Centre County and Pennsylvania are just a part of the overall picture. Food insecurity, he says, is everywhere.
Sharma is proud of the project and the fact that it is all-encompassing.
“This project also embraces the core ideas of sustainable development, especially contributing to accomplishing sustainable development goal No. 2 of the United Nations. Penn State has committed to sustainability, and we are glad to be part of finding solutions to reduce world hunger, starting with our local community,” he says.
Sharma says that being on the ground floor of a project like this is very rewarding.
“It is extremely gratifying to see how students have become so passionate about working on this crucial project. We are also very proud of our students [for] taking leadership in this important initiative. As importantly, we are glad that our local community members who are in need will have access to this information on the free food map,” Sharma says. T&G
Chris Morelli is the managing editor of The Centre County Gazette.
