Episode 69: Obsessing about What You Eat and How It Relates to Food Insecurity
About the Podcast
Kimi Ceridon is a freelance writer in food and technology. Her researched essays about food insecurity, childhood trauma, grief, and women in technology have been shared in large national publications. Clancy and Kimi discuss their own experiences with food insecurity and how letting go of certainty, judgement and comparison can help us all be better toward each other.
About Kimi Cierdon
Kimi Ceridon is a freelance writer in food and technology in Medford, Massachusetts. Her researched essays about food insecurity, childhood trauma, grief, and women in technology have been published in Bon Appetit, Dreamers Creative Writing, HerStory, and For Women Who Roar. She has master's degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Food Studies.
Discussion Takeaways
- Kimi is a freelance writer focusing on food insecurity and food access as the root of some people’s eating disorders. She brings firsthand experience into this realm.
- Middle class families are struggling to make ends meet. Even though they can put food on the table, they regularly worry about affording healthy, wholesome foods.
- Hording food and eating secretly has become a norm for many food insecure families.
- The chronic stress and worry about getting healthful food, saving money, or cutting corners has been missing in the dialogue within the realm of food insecurity. This calls for change. The impact of this struggle needs to be brought to light.
- Kimi believes that fixing food insecurity can actually heal eating disorders for many. People should dig deeper into why long-lasting hunger, survival mechanisms, and weight fluctuation coexist.
- Society has a lot of work to do in this realm. We need to change our perception of who’s allowed to eat well, who can purchase nourishing foods, what boundaries are hindering people from nourishing themselves, and what people look like as they eat this food.
- Eating cheap dried noodle bowls day-in-and-day-out is not a rite of passage. It’s food insecurity. Just because you are paying your way through school or meeting the demands of your bills, it doesn’t mean you have to eat poorly.
- We need to lower our expectation of being right, so we can reduce our judgements toward others.
- How do we remove ourselves from our lived experience, so we can learn more about others?
- Food pantry guests can choose whatever they want to eat, and they deserve to be selective. Just because they are suffering doesn’t mean they can’t eat well.
#1 tip to improve access to healthy food
Kimi has two recommendations: (1) Show up to volunteer for hunger relief. (2) Talk to your legislators about improving poverty supports.
Each week on the Food Dignity® Podcast, the Food Dignity® Movement's Clancy Harrison hosts a wide variety of hunger experts and other people making changes on the frontlines. Join us as we dive deep into conversations that will change the way you think about food insecurity.
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