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All In Recipe4Health Highlighted at Congressional Hearing
Dr. Steven Chen discusses how access to healthy food can improve health outcomes for people with diet-related chronic health conditions
On September 1, 2021, Dr. Steven Chen, ALL IN Alameda County Chief Medical Officer presented an overview of ALL IN’s Recipe4Health initiative and the importance of working across siloed governmental and community sectors and agencies to better coordinate food as medicine strategies. Dr. Chen elevated the importance of the sourcing of the food, the quality of food, the need for clinical nutrition education for healthcare providers, and the role a circular food economy can play in providing the supply for food as medicine interventions in health systems.
The roundtable was hosted by Rules Committee Chairman James P. McGovern (D-MA). He has also called for a substantive, policy-focused White House hunger conference to create the roadmap to end hunger by 2030, which the United Nations has called for.
“What we eat plays a major role in our overall health. Prioritizing healthy meals can help prevent costly hospital visits and expensive prescription drugs while lowering hospital admissions, improving outcomes, and saving money. As we work to end the hunger crisis in this country and make a White House hunger conference a reality, we must do more to ensure that policymakers understand that food is medicine,” said Chairman McGovern.
The roundtable was seventh in a series of committee events highlighting the reality of food insecurity in America and examining the steps that Congress and the Biden administration could take to equitably combat it. The roundtable can be viewed on the House Rules website. Dr. Chen’s remarks begin at the 46th minute mark and he provides comments throughout the discussion.
 Making Our Vision of Equity and Inclusion a Reality
The August Working Group meeting focused on building an equitable and inclusive farm program. It was facilitated by Larissa Estes White. There was also a check in on legislation facilitated by Sara Lamnin.
Supporting and Developing Critical Food Policy
Changing the paradigm around food policy is a key part of the work ALL IN Eats is charged with.
The All In Eats Working Group recently adopted procedures to develop, track and support select state, federal and local policy. ALL IN Alameda County and ALL IN Eats brings a unique perspective to policy impacting environmentally sound farming, agriculture related job development, medically supportive food, and food recovery. You can read more about the process here ALL IN Eats Policy Working Group Guiding Principles We will have an update on key legislation in the next issue of the newsletter.
 Vegetables distributed by Daily Bowl
Partner Spotlight:
Daily Bowl and Food Recovery – A simple and direct approach
By Paddy Iyer, Co-Founder
Food waste is a serious issue. The USDA estimates that 30-40% of the nations’ food supply-roughly 133 billion pounds-is discarded. Billions of pounds of healthy food that could have fed food insecure families is regularly sent to landfills. Meanwhile, food insecurity is a growing crisis. During the pandemic, estimates are that Food Insecurity has risen by nearly 45%. Food waste also contributes to greenhouse gases.
Since its inception in 2016, Daily Bowl has helped divert more than 3.5 million pounds of edible food to agencies that help the food insecure.
Items that we pick up may be blemished, a little bruised or worse for wear, but still perfectly edible. It could also have a sell by date that has recently passed, but is still perfectly good. After all, we embrace the age-old adage, “Looks good, smells good, tastes good, it’s good”.
Our mission is simple: Volunteers recover edible food that would otherwise go to waste and deliver it to local agencies to feed needy families. Our donors include grocery stores, farmers markets, produce markets, restaurant and wholesale distributors, restaurant and institutional kitchens. We pick up surplus available food and distressed/blemished but perfectly edible produce and deliver it to a network of food pantries, social service agencies, soup kitchens and places of worship where it is put to good use before the food spoils.
Collaboration
Collaboration is the key to our success, and it became more critical during the early days of the pandemic. Collaboration not only reinforces mutual trust, strengthening the fabric that ties our community, but mainly, it helps in addressing food waste and food insecurity in the county.
We work with our partners such as DSAL and Food Shift, sharing the gains of food recovered across the county. We also work with StopWaste (our funders and great mentors) and local municipalities to identify donors with food surplus and agencies needing food help.
Co-founders Lance Nishihira and Paddy Iyer started attending ALL IN and ALL IN Eats meetings, networking with professionals and seasoned veterans in the public and private sector. They had embarked on a pilot project of food recovery for Southern Alameda County, and this gave rise to Daily Bowl.
While our core area of operations is Southern Alameda County, we are active all over the county because of such collaborations
How Daily Bowl started
Business owner Paddy Iyer was volunteering at a food pantry, and he saw that the people at the food pantry were a true reflection of the diversity of the area. Although they were grateful for the food, the people waiting in line asked Paddy if there was a way to get food from their own cultures.
“I’ll see what I can do”, ne’er has truer words been spoken and that one sentence laid the seeds for the formation of Daily Bowl. It led Paddy to start diving deeper into issues of food cultural sensitivity, insecurity and waste. Thus the seed that became Daily Bowl was planted.
Are you interested in spotlighting your organization in the newsletter? Please reach out to Rachel Richman, All In Eats Coordinator at rachel.richman@acgov.org
Looking for Black Urban Farmers
 Planning the next crops at Dig Deep Farms
Are you or someone you know a local farmer or interested in becoming one? ALL IN Eats wants to hear from you! Please complete this quick survey and we’ll be in touch.
https://forms.gle/6mMFQUR2YkT17MHG7
Dig Deep Farms Presents on Food Recovery at State Conference
Hilary Bass, Senior Program Specialist with the Alameda County Sherriffs' Office presented at the 45th annual CA Resource Recovery Association conference; Destination: Zero last month. As a panelist in the Edible Food Recovery: Myths, Misconceptions & Emerging Opportunities workshop, Hillary described the ALL IN Eats circular food economy, the work of Dig Deep Farms and emerging opportunities to rescue food that would otherwise go to waste. Hillary is a member of the Executive Team of ALL IN Eats.
Other presenters at the conference included Alameda County Supervisor Richard Valle, StopWaste and other local organizations.
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