Essay Example on Building a Kitchen in Brooklyn: A Project to Alleviate Poverty With Healthy Meals

Meals form an integral part of our lives and are the major determinants of our health both physically, psychologically and mentally. The eating behaviour therefore determines the health of a person based on the kind of food one takes. It has been proved that healthy diets also can alleviate poverty in several ways. A project is suggested for the building of a kitchen in Brooklyn where low-income locals can learn to prepare healthy meals in an attempt to alleviate poverty. This kitchen project has several benefits and also plays a role in reducing poverty.

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The first and foremost benefit of the kitchen is that it will encourage people to make use of the available resources in the neighbourhood. The problem of some societies is not that they do not have the proper food; the problem is that they may not know how to use the resources they have around them to prepare meals. There may be come ingredients that are good for health, but people do not know their use. This lessons will, therefore, teach the people how to use them.

Healthy cooking will bring about good health for the people. There are various diseases that are associated with poor eating. Such include diabetes, heart diseases, cancer among others especially the adults, and in children, diseases such as kwashiorkor are rampant (Tarry-Adkins & Susan, 2017, pg100). These contribute to poverty as resources are spent in treating these illnesses. If people learn to prevent such through healthy eating, then the resources can be channelled to wealth creation and therefore reducing poverty. The project will thus be very vital because people will learn to prepare healthy diets for the good of their medical health.

Physical and mental health are also attributed to the kind of food than an individual eats. The development of the brain and the body largely depends on some nutrients (Velardo, 2015, pg386). Deficiency of such will lead to poor development of mental and physical health - the productivity of the individual good down. Therefore, even the performance of students and workers goes down. For example, having a lot of sugar in the body as a result of junk food is not healthy.

Similarly, the concentration levels for a hungry person is very low and therefore eating is very important. The performance of students and people at workplaces can, therefore, be improved through healthy eating. This would reduce poverty as the country would be productive at the individual level.

The other advantage of the locals of Brooklyn learning to cook is that people will save money from buying food in food outlets and hotels. Less money will be used to buy uncooked food, and then the person can prepare the food themselves (Darmon & Drewnowski, 2015, pg652). This will save money, and people can utilize it in other activities, for example, investing the money and therefore reduce poverty in the neighbourhood.

The last benefit is that the locals can borrow the kitchen equipment to use especially when there are no classes. This mostly would include that equipment that the poor can't afford to buy. It will help as they will be able to prepare the rare food which they initially use a lot of money to buy. The money saved can be used for other better things.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the kitchen project in Brooklyn will be of benefit to the locals in several ways. It promotes mental and physical health which increases the productivity of people. Money is also saved from various spending such as on hospital bills and on buying food which could have been bought. This would thus promote good health and alleviate poverty.

Works Cited

Darmon, Nicole, and Adam Drewnowski. "Contribution of food prices and diet cost to socioeconomic disparities in diet quality and health: a systematic review and analysis." Nutrition reviews 73.10 (2015): 643-660.

Tarry-Adkins, Jane L., and Susan E. Ozanne. "Nutrition in early life and age-associated diseases." Aging research reviews 39 (2017): 96-105.

Velardo, Stefania. "The nuances of health literacy, nutrition literacy, and food literacy." Journal of nutrition education and behavior 47.4 (2015): 385-389.