As our community continues to become more diverse, our food and nutrition program, Chicken Soup Brigade, has been hard at work to provide more culturally-relevant meal options. We’ve been listening and working with local partner organizations to develop authentic recipes for Native and Indigenous, Latinx, Vietnamese, and other cultural groups to better support our community, including immigrant and refugee populations.
To ensure a delicious and nutritious launch of our new menu to clients, we recently hosted a multicourse tasting of the latest medically-tailored options being offered to the thousands of people that we serve each year.
“It is important for our meals to reflect the culturally rich community we are feeding,” said Lifelong Sous Chef Janet Becerra at the event. “We believe that food is medicine, and it should be inclusive to all.”
Research shows immigrants to the US often experience deteriorating health caused in part by the Standard American Diet (SAD*). This diet is not culturally appropriate or supportive of good health and increases risk for SAD-related conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension.
At the event, representatives from our partner organizations, who specialize in supporting some of the same diverse, medically vulnerable communities that we serve, tasted and provided honest feedback on six of the new delicious dishes, and their comments were incorporated into the final recipes. Guests savored traditional favorites like Roast Yam & Mushroom Congee, Chicken Amarillo, Suugo Suqaar, and Chicken Pho Ga (bringing chicken soup for the first time to Chicken Soup Brigade’s menu!).
In addition to our new menu, we’ve committed to prioritizing partnerships with local BIPOC, female, and queer-owned farms to purchase more than 20% of the produce for our nutritious, culturally-relevant grocery bags, and continually listen to our community for feedback to ensure our cultural food choices reflect the needs of the people we’re serving.
We are so grateful to our community partnerships, and donors like you, who allow us to focus our efforts on creating a more culturally inclusive and equitable food environment.