By Delaney Newhouse | Focus Editor
In a country demanding to be made healthy again, nutrition remains a major issue.
In Waco, diabetes, obesity, heart conditions and high blood pressure make up the majority of residents’ health concerns, according to the 2023 Waco-McLennan County Community Health Needs Assessment. Feeding America Research says that 33,000 adults in the county are food insecure, meaning that they lack access to sufficient nutritious foods.
Rebecca Meraz is an assistant professor at the Louise Herrington School of Nursing. She spoke about the impact poor nutrition can have, especially on older adults.
“I see a lot of heart failure in people in the hospital, and they’re very similar,” Meraz said. “They just struggle with the task of buying the food and cooking the food, so they just want something quick and easy and accessible. So they are even doing things like highly processed meats, buying already cooked meals and then just heating those up in the microwave, microwavable meals, things like that.”
Meraz said that lack of mobility or even loss of taste often drive older adults and people with physical disabilities –– many of whom live alone –– towards processed foods very high in sodium. High fructose corn syrup and aspartame, both used as substitutes for table sugar in many prepackaged foods, also create health risks. Meraz said that aspartame makes sodas more addictive, and corn syrup is heavily linked to insulin resistance.
Services like InstaCart and UberEats may offer a partial solution to obtaining fresh groceries, but many older adults are unfamiliar with the technology and struggle to use it.
Elijah Tanner, a strategic partnership specialist at the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, said that while the technological gap these apps present can be overcome, the challenges of moving large items into and through the house still presents a barrier for people with mobility limitations.
“They’re great innovations, and they certainly solve a lot of problems,” Tanner said. “But there’s still a lot of pieces of the puzzle that have to come together.”
The Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty is a nonprofit branch of Baylor University that aims to address hunger both locally and around the world through a combination of research, policy and public service. It identifies scalable solutions by helping various community coalitions coordinate efforts to end hunger in its seven field offices around Texas.
Tanner discussed how the field offices allow the collaborative to identify gaps in the networks of social services in each area. Different organizations often serve one group, but lack the ability to serve problems without the connection to another group in the community.
“Unless there is someone thinking about that community, communicating with grocers, raising awareness, then that issue is not going to be addressed,” Tanner said.
While food banks and delivery services look to solve the symptoms of food insecurity, Meraz said that poor nutrition is often linked to a lack of internal motivation. This, in turn, is caused by the increasing social isolation felt by many adults. According to the CDC, one in three report feeling lonely, and one in four say they lack social and emotional support.
“A lot of self care comes from internal motivation,” she said. “Who has the most ability to make an impact? It’s going to be family members.”
Meraz said she often provides family-centered care for older adults, involving family members in appointments to create a network of support and accountability for people experiencing issues adhering to medicine or maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Still, the U.S. Census marked only 4.7% of households as multigenerational in 2020.
Tanner named Meals on Wheels as a helpful organization in aiding food-insecure citizens in large part because of the community bonds built through its implementation. Volunteers often learn about the lives of the people they are helping, and this can dissolve the barriers extant in current for-profit delivery services. While the collaborative has helped in administering some programs itself, including piloting the Meals-to-You program with the USDA, its main work is providing a backbone of support for already extant community organizations.
Tanner said Meals on Wheels founder Jeremy Everett was able to develop this collective impact model after living in a low-income area of San Antonio and seeing the successes and failures of various efforts to alleviate hunger there.
“What these coalitions address is gaps that arise from siloed efforts and redundancy,” he said.
The collaborative also connects with researchers at Baylor and around the world to identify advances in topics as varied as sustainable agriculture and policy analysis to support global aims to resolve hunger. Their Together at the Table summit, which will happen April 9-11, will feature multiple expert speakers as well as breakout sessions to allow for connection and collaboration.
On campus, the organization works with SOAR to help fight student food insecurity. Tanner emphasized the reality that even at Baylor, college food insecurity is still a growing issue.
Students can join advocacy groups, organize a food drive, donate unused meal swipes or volunteer at the Store through the Student Basic Needs Center.
