Re-Thinking Soup

Re-Thinking Soup with Fresh Moves

Re-Thinking Soup takes place every Tuesday at the UIC Hull House and is a modern day soup kitchen where people can come share some deliciously, healthy soup and discuss current cultural, economic, social, and environmental food issues in our society today. Recently, I was able to check out a discussion  on Fresh Moves, a mobile produce market, and enjoy a great organic lunch.

Walking into the Hull House dining hall, I was among a crowd just arriving, as others were already waiting in line for their soup. I claimed a spot at one of the front dining tables as everyone else settled into their seats and relished in their warm soup. On today's menu was a mixture of collard greens, black eyed peas, and mushrooms with a solid hint of something spicy that really hit the spot for me. They also gave out mini corn bread rolls that perfectly complimented the soup. The topic of the day was on a grass roots effort called, Fresh Moves. Activist, Dara Cooper, informed us about the Fresh Moves mission. Fresh Moves is a grass roots effort to get fresh food to dozens of Chicago neighborhoods lacking healthy sources of food.

Fresh moves uses both technical and cultural rationality to help their cause. They started out by pleading their case to the CTA and managed to get them to sell an old CTA bus for $1! They constructed a risk assessment on nutrition and health of people living in poor areas where they lack basic grocery stores and sources to a variety of foods, not just processed junk! This causes a serious risk for these people such as obesity, diabetes, stress and heart disease, to just name a few. Additionally, they used cultural rationality to really get their message out to people and spread social justice to the low income neighborhoods of Chicago. Fresh Moves is aware that these health problems arent just due to poor geographical mapping of grocery stores. Chicago is notorious for being a racially divided city and although red lining has become illegal, businesses still don't want to be in bad neighborhoods. Fresh Moves is taking an initiative to not only bring resources to these areas, but also really educate their consumers. It's not about the money to them. "I'll trade a kid a bag of grapes for a bag of hot cheetos, if it means he's making an independent choice to eat healthy.", Cooper explained in her discussion. "It's not that these kids don't want fruit, it's that they don't have access to buy it".

To find out more about Fresh Moves visit their website: Fresh Moves

To find out more about ReThinking Soup visit the Hull House website: ReThinking Soup