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Week of September 15, 2022
DENVER, COLORADO
A publication of
VOLUME 95 | ISSUE 43
Eliminating barriers to food access
Air pollution hurts baby gut biome Particles slash good bacteria in infants, CU study says BY MICHAEL BOOTH THE COLORADO SUN
We Don’t Waste volunteers assist at the 40th Avenue Mobile Food Market in June. BY ELICIA HESSELGRAVE SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA
Food insecurity is ubiquitous. “All of us are just one poor step, one medical emergency, one financial reversal, one financial devastation away from food insecurity,” said Arland Preblund, founder and executive director of We Don’t Waste, which is a food rescue organization based in Denver. “It would be nice to wake up and not have to go to work (because) that would mean we solved the crisis of food insecurity.” As defined by Letisha Steele, executive director of Denver Food Rescue, a food rescue organization
is “any organization whose whole role is to prevent excess waste from ending up in landfill.’’ Denver Food Rescue and We Don’t Waste are just a couple of the many food rescue organizations in Denver. These organizations have a shared mission: to prevent food waste by providing meals for those suffering from food insecurity. What a waste According to Recycle Track Systems, Inc., 1.4 million tons of edible food is discarded globally, with the U.S. alone contributing 80 billion pounds annually. Edible food is thrown away for a
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number of reasons, including excessive spending behaviors, arbitrary or confusing “sell by” and “use by” dates and because of a culture of perfection — meaning, a consumer expectation of aesthetically perfect produce. Preblund used a bell pepper as an example. “At the grocery store, if a yellow bell pepper has too much green on it, it goes to landfill because it isn’t perfectly yellow,” Preblund said. He added that grocery stores will also reject a bell pepper that is considered flawed. For example, SEE BARRIERS, P10
The healthy gut “microbiome” of babies living in high pollution areas is under threat from particulates from vehicles, industrial smokestacks and wildfire smoke, leaving them more vulnerable to immune afflictions like diabetes or allergies, a new University of Colorado study says. The findings from babies involved in a mother’s milk study in Southern California go straight to the heart of a series of environmental justice and air pollution laws passed in Colorado in recent years. State lawmakers and regulators are targeting pollution concentrated in lower-income and minority neighborhoods, and overhauling permitting and transportation spending to combat what they have called historic injustice. The researchers say the study published in the August edition of the science journal “Gut Microbes,” is “the first to show a link between inhaled pollutants … and changes in infant microbial health during this critical window of development.” The new CU study bolsters previous research about the health impacts of air pollution on adults, SEE POLLUTION, P2
INSIDE: VOICES: PAGE 12 | LIFE: PAGE 14 | CALENDAR: PAGE 11
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