~Chris Boonisar, Class of 2025

A Powerful Read

Food is your body’s fuel, without food your body wants to shut down

~Ken Hill

Food fuels us for our lives. How the Other Half Eats By Priya Fielding Singh was a powerful read that was challenging at times because of the vocabulary and an overwhelming amount of stats being shared but I still kept up and had a great experience reading this book while also reflecting how fortunate I am to live in a household that doesn’t have to worry about not having enough food everyday. How the Other Half Eats By Priya Fielding Singh was a powerful read that shared lots of information and details that I didn’t know about.  The information that the author shared was beneficial for me because I got a better understanding of what life is like for families who suffer from food insecurity.

I started reading How the Other Half Eats as just a book we had to read in order to get a better understanding of our topic for this capstone project. But after I started reading and getting a few chapters done, I realized that this book is very important and shared lots of helpful information that will definitely help us through this project. The author writes about how she made a bunch of really close connections while conducting interviews and taking notes with families and children who were suffering from food insecurity or have dietary challenges because of the lack of food they can get. “I enjoyed spending time with these families. Most made me feel like I belonged, treating me like an inside rather than an intruder.”

When I first started reading this book I was curious and interested about this book but once I got a few chapters in, I at times found myself bored and not really interested in what the author was saying but I still found this to be a really interesting book. It definitely was not my favorite book to read but I started to reflect on how fortunate I am to have access to food everyday unlike millions of people who often go days without eating anything and if they do, it’s probably not a big meal. I always need to remember that not everyone has access to food as I do and I need to be mindful of that. I haven’t come across this topic in other books so I can’t think of another book that has memories like this.

Going into this book, I didn’t think it was going to be a powerful read and that it would just be a plain and simple book. But after reading How the Other Half Eats, I would say that you should take advantage of every opportunity. You may think it won’t change your perspective, but it could and that makes a big difference in life.