Ownership: Minority, woman
Self reported impact: Has made a demonstrable impact on suburban health.
One sentence summary:
KC Dearson Inc (DBA Beautifully Fed Food) is a women of color led corporation celebrating diaspora cuisines, nourishing our communities one delicious bite at a time, through plant-forward culinary classes and food-justice education, in Brooklyn, NY currently but in all 5 boroughs by the end of 2021 and throughout the US and beyond by 2025
Description of impact:
Our folks are dying disproportionately of diseases that are largely preventable, like COVID-19 and diabetes. Fortunately, research has shown that interventions like ours, focused on increasing access to quality foods and promoting behavior change are successful and sustainable.
Often food education spaces shame people of color, and folks living on low to moderate incomes for their health challenges and ignore the systemic injustices, such as the saturation of fast-food restaurants. This is why we offer cooking skills development and culturally relevant nutrition education alongside ways to get involved with local food activism so that together we can make changes that will collectively have a positive impact on our health, our families, our communities and ultimately our world.
The impacts we have already seen from participants in our programs include: a recognition that many of the trends they are seeing in the world today around eating: farm to table, bone broth etc., is not NEW after all, it’s part of their ancestral and cultural foodways that they had simply forgotten; weight that was difficult for some people to lose before our programs are dropping off now, and with very little effort; decreased reliance on medication to lower blood pressure and blood sugar, cooking more and eating out less and having FUN in the process!
Our model also includes building “community wellness centers” with a farm, communal kitchen & a retail food store and franchising it in POC areas.