The Power of Personal Connections - Winnie Huston
Winnie Huston, Policy Strategist at DC Greens, discusses the importance of relationship building in the work of food justice and shares her personal journey to the work. Through wisdom garnered being on the ground in DC, Winnie speaks to the power of connecting personally with community members in food spaces and bringing community members and policymakers together to collaborate in the fight against inequitable outcomes due to sugary drinks and other unhealthy foods. Centering the ways sugar sweetened beverages inequitably impact communities of color through targeted marketing and disparate resource access, Winnie affirms the need to direct SSB tax funds back to those most impacted for nutritional services and educational initiatives. She makes the case for innovative and grounded ways to communicate the negative health impacts of SSBs to these communities.
This episode of In Praxis is a part of Season 2: Sugar Sweetened Beverage Taxes. Learn more about Praxis’ work around SSB taxes on our Centering Community & Equity Through Sugary Drink Tax Investments page.
The information, opinions, views, and conclusions proposed in this episode are those of our podcast guests.
You can also tune into this episode on Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher. Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability. You can also watch this episode on YouTube with subtitles for accessibility.
The Power of Personal Connections - Winnie Huston
Podcast Transcription
You build relationship with someone over time and during the course of your discussion you start to talk about life, and you can offer information but it's in the normal course of the relationship building. It's not about talking to people about, “Well, don't use a lot of sodium in your cooking,” or, “I noticed your kid was drinking a soda the other day. Well, you know, that's not a good idea.” That approach, particularly in underserved communities–I mean, historically Black and Brown people have been talked at our entire lives, so people want opportunity to try different things, but they also want to be treated with respect. It's about giving people the opportunity and taking people where they are.
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[In Praxis Intro] You are listening to In Praxis, a podcast by The Praxis Project created to support, hear from, and uplift the stories coming out of the ecosystem of basebuilding organizing. An ecosystem that includes frontline basebuilding groups and the folks who help support their important work. In this season of In Praxis, our hosts, Julian Johnson and Kourtney Nham, focus on sugar sweetened beverage taxes. We have compiled interviews from advocates working on issues surrounding the reduction of sweet and sugary beverages as well as the taxation of these products. Participants of this podcast are community members, public health practitioners, health department representatives, and concerned parents that span across the country. In each episode, you will hear about their phenomenal work as well as their perspective on the health effects of sugary consumption, and in what ways policy can be used to combat this and lead to reinvestment in our communities.
Julian Johnson: Hi everyone, today we are being joined by Winnie Huston! Winnie, would you mind just introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Winnie Huston: Hi, I’m Winnie Huston. I work for an organization in Washington DC called DC Greens. I am the Food Policy Strategist for DC Greens, and we are an organization that works to promote food justice and health equity in the nation's capital, and I’m really looking forward to this discussion today.
Julian Johnson: Likewise, and so I have a bunch of questions for you, so we're just gonna go ahead and jump right in. So, more on a broad basis, I’d love to hear about how you first got involved in working on issues related to health in general.
Winnie Huston: It's funny in a way. I retired early and basically sat on my butt and let my health go to pot, if you will, and I was starting to have some health issues and finally went to the doctor and the first thing out of my doctor's mouth: she wanted to put me on medication. My blood pressure was really high, my body fat index was high, I was overweight, all of the sort of chronic conditions that a woman… at the time, I had just turned 61–and her approach scared me. I said, “Look, there's got to be another approach then starting on medication,” and I tried to negotiate some time so that I could do some research, and the long and short of it she said, “Let's get you on some physical therapy, we'll start some other interventions, but I want you back in my office in a month because I’m concerned.” The very next day I started walking, and you would think to yourself, well, that's something that would be… you know, anyone should know that, but I hadn't been, so I started walking. I started thinking about, okay, what kinds of things can I do? I found a nutritionist, after talking to the nutritionist, started paying attention to labels and those types of things and paying attention to the sugar that was in almost everything. If you look at a label in a grocery store, how much salt or sodium or things that are all either salt or sugar–they call them various things on labels–so I started to pay attention and within a month's time when I went back to my doctor, I had dropped about 20 pounds, my numbers were starting to immediately come down. Over the course of a year, I lost 70 pounds, my numbers were all dropped into a really healthy range for a woman of my age, and I am now 65, I am on no medications for blood pressure or any of the other things that often people at my age are taking medications for. I also realized that some of what I was able to do was because of the neighborhood I lived in in Washington DC. I was in easy access to several grocery stores–full-service grocery stores–that I could either walk to or take public transportation to. I said, at the front end of this, I started walking the very next day after my doctor's appointment, I lived in a relatively safe neighborhood. You know, if you live in the city there's always things that one has to be cautious about, but I was in a walkable neighborhood where I could get up and walk early in the morning and feels relatively safe, as I said at the time, I was 61. I was able to find a nutritionist, initially I found one at my local grocery store. All of that to say that it started to click for me that one, I needed not to be sitting on my butt, I had skills that I could use and that my health outcomes were directly tied to, in large measure, the neighborhood I lived in and that if I lived in another part of town in Washington DC, I might very well have had a very, very different health outcome. I started to want to do something about that. That's what started my journey, that's what turned the light on for me.
Julian Johnson: I’m wondering then, when did you start realizing that sugary drinks also related to health problems? Was it at the same time as you're starting to make these lifestyle changes for your health or was it later down the line when you're getting more into this work?
Winnie Huston: As I said, when I started looking at how much sugar is in almost everything that we buy and then I started paying attention to drinks, I wasn't drinking a lot of what I thought of as sugary beverages, a lot of soft drinks, but there were other kinds of products that I was drinking, and I wasn't paying attention. It didn't-they didn't taste particularly sweet, but again, it was part of the work with the nutritionist learning about how sugar works in your body, the amounts of sugar, so it was…it was a gradual process, but it started as a result of my own health journey and wanting to figure out how could I make a difference in DC.
Julian Johnson: As you're kind of starting to realize the impact of a lot of sugary drinks but also just a lot of products that contain sugar and high sodium levels what was then the next steps? What did you then do to start making an active effort in your work or just in your personal life to try to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks?
Winnie Huston: After the starting to do the exercise so that I could start trying to manage the acute health issues, I started going more to my farmer's market, and again, I lived in a neighborhood where there was a farmer's market virtually around the corner and there were several farmers markets within an easy walk. So, I started going to the farmer's market and talking to the farmers and thinking about, “well, gosh, you know, I should be cooking more,” and so it was all part of that process and while there, I started hearing about this organization called the Arcadia Center for Food and Agriculture. So, I started to volunteer because again, I was retired at the time and started to volunteer at this mobile market that was bringing fresh, local produce to neighborhoods that were underserved in Washington. So, as I started to want to spread the word if you will about eating healthier food and bringing food to people who didn't have ready access to healthy food, it's sort of a two-step process. Bringing food, talking to people about not only what they're eating but how they're preparing food in the normal course of discussing with someone at a farmers market as it's…it's where the neighborhood meets, you start to see people, you start to ask about their families, you start to build some sort of relationship with people which you start to hear people talk about, “well, I’m doing okay but I went to the doctor and he or she is concerned about this thing or that.” It was an easy in to start talking about my situation because often, particularly in areas of DC that are underserved, many of the people who are coming to the farmers market are middle to older in age because they're often during the day. At the time I was a woman of 61, and so I could talk about my journey and talk about the things that I was paying attention to. It was a very slow process in terms of realizing and coming to a real understanding about how sugar, sodium, and other additives impact health. So, after I worked with the Arcadia mobile market, someone mentioned to me this organization called DC Greens that was working to promote health equity and food justice and I said, huh. So, I did a little work with them and did some volunteer and long and short of it is, a couple years later I ended up being offered a position and it was once I started working with DC Greens that things really started to crystallize for me because I was going to meetings. Currently, I sit, I’m proud to say, on the DC Food Policy Council, but before I was appointed, I would go to the Food Policy Council meetings and listen to various presentations. I'd listen to the nutritionists who would come, I would listen about some of the policy initiatives, and one thing that kept coming up, people would talk about the lack of access to fresh food, healthy food and the like, and it was a two-step process. It was okay, there's a lack of access, but there's also a lack of information about nutrition and helping making that connection, so it was a gradual process but it really started to crystallize with DC Greens.
Julian Johnson: I’m wondering then because you mentioned at the farmers market when you were trying to talk to people and share your story a lot of times the population that went there were more middle class or older populations. So, I’m wondering what are ways to tap into lower income communities that may not have farmers markets that are readily are in walking distance to where they live, or again, do not have that educational information about the health risks that sugary drinks could cause them.
Winnie Huston: I may have misspoke. Folks who come to the farmer's markets were middle-aged or older. I didn't mean middle class if I misspoke.
Julian Johnson: Oh, okay!
Winnie Huston: In my neighborhood, tends to be younger middle-class of all colors. It's a much more mixed population that comes to the farmer's market in my neighborhood. In some of the poorer communities, it often is middle-aged to older folk who are coming out. Some of the young people with families are trying to work or looking for work. In terms of making connection with people to the point I think that you are getting at is that engaging with people at the farmer's market is one of the easiest ways to start people thinking about their connection between what they ingest and their health outcomes. Sugary beverages are a part of that discussion, but you can't lead with that. When you talk about the sugar industry. it targets low-income Black and Brown communities. They do targeted advertising to up the consumption, and no one wants to be talked at. I remember particularly, I was at a senior citizen building, we set up the farmers market outside the senior citizen building in Ward 8. It's a one of the poorest, least resource accessed areas in DC, and we had fresh bok choy. Now, many of the customers that day, they would look at it and they would say, “I don't know what this is, it's x number of dollars, I’m not going to buy it.” Well finally, I walked up to a woman and I said, “can a help you with anything? You have any questions?” and she said, “What is this?” And so, it gave me an opportunity to talk with her about bok choy, and she kind of looked at me when I started talking, and I said, “You know what, think of it as Chinese cabbage. It's not exactly, but it's similar. You can cook it in a similar way that you might cook cabbage,” and she said, “huh!” Well, long story short, she bought some, she went home, she cooked it. The next week she came out and she talked to me about it she said, “You know, that had a really good flavor. My kids liked it; my husband liked it.” So, each week when she would come to the farmer's market, she would talk to me about one thing or another. You know that time it was bok choy, another time it was garlic ramps, and it was like, “Well, what are these and how do you cook these?” and so I would offer her suggestions about how I cooked it and then how other people might cook it. The long and short of it is that you build relationship with someone over time and during the course of your discussion you start to talk about life and you can offer information, but it's in the normal course of the relationship building. It's not about talking to people about, “Well, don't use a lot of sodium in your cooking,” or, “I noticed your kid was drinking a soda the other day. Well, you know, that's not a good idea.” That approach, particularly in underserved communities–I mean, historically Black and Brown people have been talked at our entire lives, so people want opportunity to try different things, but they also want to be treated with respect. It's about giving people the opportunity and taking people where they are.
One of the things that we were able to do at DC Greens in collaboration with our Food Policy council was to start what we called a community meal series. It's about bringing policy makers and community members together and bringing them together over food to discuss issues that were of concern to the community. At the very first community meal, we talked, we brought a doctor, a nutritionist, an urban farmer, and I actually talked about my personal journey with health and my awakening if you will, and we did it over the course of a meal. One of the things that was really cool is that a couple of people stood up at various points to ask questions of the doctor or the nutritionist and would say, “Well, you know, you're talking about all of these things, you're talking about different spices that you might use, or herbs that one might use to cook, or even different vegetables… How do I know that my family will like this? Because I don't have the money to go and spend X number of dollars on something and prepare it in this way that you're talking about, and I have no idea really what it's going to taste like.” What we were able to do was to get the nutritionist at one of the local grocery stores to do some taste testing, and she brought all of these different vegetables and herbs and spices to another meeting and prepared them so that people could have an opportunity to taste what a meal tastes like, or what vegetables taste like if they were seasoned not with heavily salted or some of the other kinds of additives that one can add–I don't want to name a brand–but to season food. So again, it's not directly tied to sugar, but you're talking to people about how food and the way it's prepared can impact health. Then you talk about sugary sweetened beverages, but it's in the context of having a relationship with someone. That's what we've been trying to do here in DC, is to build relationships in the community so that when you're talking to people one: it’s not the first time that you've ever talked to them, two: you're not preaching at someone, and three: you're providing information that makes sense. When we can, we are providing access to or information about healthcare providers or nutritionists or to policy initiatives. In DC, we have introduced a healthy beverage choice act which is our sugar sweetened beverage legislation, so as part of our work in the community and I say we–it's DC Greens, but DC Greens is part of a larger coalition that's being led in terms of the legislative push, by community groups particularly a group called Don't Mute My Health that is doing some of the work that I was just talking about in terms of building support in the community around what is health: what things are important to the community? You know, whether it's being mindful of the type of food that you eat, being mindful of getting enough exercise, being mindful of sugar sweetened beverages and how much sugar really is in that Coca-Cola beverage, or in that orange soda, or in whatever type of sugary sweetened beverage–even the iced tea that one might buy. At the same time, they're also trying to talk to people about how the industry targets the community, how advertising ties in with what people think is a good thing to eat or a good thing to drink, and how the advertising is targeted to different communities. If you live in a community where you are being targeted, one has an opportunity to change that by changing behavior, but it's a very slow walk when you're talking to folks and asking them to not only change their behavior but looking at how industry targets them.
Julian Johnson: Right, exactly.
Winnie Huston: I mean, we've done a number of different things in DC talking some about the health disparities. If you look at parts of the city that are underserved, primarily Black and Brown communities with lack of access to fresh fruit and vegetables and you look at richer, whiter parts of Washington DC, you've got sometimes it's a 17-year life expectancy age gap. I’ve seen the numbers in some studies that say it's up to as many as 30-year difference in age and expectancy. When you look at the high blood pressure and other chronic diseases, diabetes and heart issues, and you map it out in areas of the city and I’m sure it plays out the same around the country, the Blacker, the Browner, the poorer the community, the greater incidence of these diet related chronic diseases, the higher consumption of a sugar sweetened beverage, the lack of access to fresh food, and the greater there is targeting to those communities, particularly around sugar sweetened beverages. So, it's about educating the community; it's about working with the city to create more opportunity on the policy level for people to have access to more fresh fruit and vegetables, and we've introduced legislation in the District of Columbia. We have not yet had the opportunity for a public hearing on it, but we're hopeful that we will be able to move the legislation in the next council session. I mean, with COVID-19, hitting dc very hard as it is in many places around the country particularly African Americans and other minority communities. Grassroots efforts, the kinds of activities we had planned, it makes it more difficult to engage the community either educationally or around just events to raise the issues around health and also to do work with the council, with the legislators to encourage them to support the legislation. So, we are hopeful that we will be able to move this legislation next year. We're all keeping our fingers crossed. I think that we have a lot of community support in Washington. I think that with some effort, we can continue to generate support amongst our legislators. We're optimistic.
Julian Johnson: Nice, and so now to trying to reshift to talking more so about sort of tax policy. You mentioned earlier this idea of health equity when talking about the work that DC Greens is doing, and so, one question I had looking at soda tax policy, what are ways that we can center health equity?
Winnie Huston: Well, there are a couple of issues. Whenever a sugar sweetened beverage taxe is implemented or attempted to be implemented, the industry talks about the tax: that you're hurting poor people, that this tax is gonna make it more difficult for people to buy what they need. Well, it's a two-pronged approach in terms of turning, I think, that argument. Because in terms of health equity, it's a health crisis. It is a public health crisis what is happening in…I'll talk specifically about Washington and tying it back to the statistics of the high incidence of chronic disease in the poorer, Blacker, Browner parts of our city, and the research shows that consumption of certain types of foods and beverages, there's a direct tie to high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and the like. When you talk about health equity, the industry wants to talk about the tax, the community wants to talk about health impact, and I think that if you talk to the community and keep talking to the policymakers about the health impact and the disparate impact that sugary drinks have on particular parts of the community and tie the revenue to increase nutrition training, it could be…give SNAP a raise, in terms of putting it back into your local community to increase SNAP allotments, or it could be WIC, or some other way of taking the income, the revenue that's going to be generated by this increase in soda revenue and put it back into the community. It’s about keeping front and center the health impact of these beverages, and then figuring out a way to use the revenue that's generated to put money back into people's pocket, put money back into the community that is being targeted. That's the message I think that has to continue to be pushed because the industry will want to talk about the “nanny state” and talk about poor people not being able to afford the food. But what the real issue is is like these products are impacting people's health, and if the industry would stop focusing on the money–it's a pay me now or pay me later the situation. The community could spend 10 cents more for a drink or however much it might be, but then 10 years from now when their health care bills are high or they're struggling with the chronic disease… so it's really about keeping the health impact, the health equity impact, the disparate impact of these sugary sweetened beverages on community and not focused on the money. Because the money, as I said, you can figure out ways to put that money back into the community, put that money back into people's pocket.
Julian Johnson: Right, and I think as you mentioned earlier, when there is legislation that's being introduced surrounding sugary drinks or taxation of those sugary drinks, the industry spares no expense in trying to prove that the evidence being presented is wrong, that like you said low-income communities of color will be most affected, people lose their jobs, groceries will be expensive, and so a lot of times advocates like yourself have to then rebuttal that either with talk about the health impacts or other research areas. The question I have for you is, as you continue this fight, what are some areas in research that you think advocates must continue to focus on when communicating the effects of sugary drinks in order to make those gains in communities for them to see adverse health outcomes and the way the beverage industry is lying to them?
Winnie Huston: I think one thing that would be helpful…I think there's a lot of research out there, the way the research is packaged perhaps we could look at. One of the things that I find when I’m out in community, I might have all of the information in the world, but it's a question of how I share that information. Often what happens with research is that it's heavy on jargon and there's a lot of footnotes, and so that an advocate has to not only understand the words but understand how to take that language and present it in a way that's conversational and that anyone can understand. So often, I think what would be helpful for researchers is to not only have the language to have the documentation that supports the theories, but to have more pictures, to have more videos, to have more sound bites, to have more social media. I think one thing that's helpful is for the researchers and organizations that are trying to get the message out is to package that information in easily digested bytes, I guess is what my point, so that those of us who are on the ground either talking to other non-profit organizations, or community-based organizations, or the mom or dad that we run into at a community event. For example, I saw something that one of the research groups–I think it was the American Heart Association–put out that had the picture of a sugary beverage and one caption and right next to it was I don't know, 16 or 17 lumps of sugar. I mean that's an easy pictorial that shows you drinking that 16-ounce sugary beverage, you're ingesting 16 or 17 lumps of sugar. So, I’m not sure that I would have any particular suggestions around research topics because as I said, there's a lot of research out there, it's more presenting the research in a more easily digested package for those of us who are on the ground and that are easy things for people to walk away with that they can hold onto to that drives the message home about the dangers and/or the impact of sugar sweetened beverages.
Julian Johnson: Exactly, and I think that also ties into just reoccurring conversation around partnership and bringing in community advocates and grassroots organizers into these academic spaces. Because if the research is for these communities, you need to have people that live in them and understand them also part of not only the communication aspect of presenting findings, but also in the room when it comes to research protocol as well. I think that conversation touches on that for sure.
Winnie Huston: Absolutely! Absolutely, that is a critical point, and thank you for raising that up. I am pleased that in, at least in DC, we have been able to build a coalition of researchers, funders, grassroots and grass tops community members–and that's an important piece as well–is that as you're building coalition and you're inviting people to the table there are grassroots and grass tops organizations in every community. It’s important to have both, so that you are reaching the mom and dad on the corner, and you're reaching the health care provider, you're reaching the community services person, you're reaching the rabbi or minister or pastor in the community, so it's like you've got to reach everyone, and your message has to be tailored. If you don't have everyone at the table, then you won't be able to strike the right tone, and it's hard; it's hard work building a coalition, it's hard work building community support because as I said earlier, you can't go to the community only when you want something–whether it's support for legislation or support for anything. You can't talk at people, you've got to build relationship, it takes time. People have to learn to trust you, and sometimes it's just about showing up consistently.
Julian Johnson: This next question–excuse me–is a little bit more open-ended, and I think that people that may listen in on this conversation would wonder what is the end game? Is the goal to have soda tax policy adopted on a national scale? Is it to continue to be a watchdog for the beverage industry in terms of monitoring not only what they're putting inside their products but how they are targeting specifically vulnerable communities? So, I guess the question would be what will it look like when advocates like yourself win against the beverage industry in an ideal world? You know, what would you like to see come out of the work that you're currently doing?
Winnie Huston: I'd say yes to all of the things that you mentioned, but specifically in Washington DC, it would be very meaningful for an industry, like the sugary beverage industry, to work in partnership with the community in a meaningful way. So, it means not only do you stop targeting the community, you look at what are the ingredients in your product because it's not just working to bring support to underserved communities, but it's a larger issue about what sugary sweetened beverages are doing to all of us. So, industry looking at targeting Black and Brown communities, it's looking at their ingredients. I mean, you know what would be lovely? Is that if the sugary sweetened beverage industry would put money into nutrition counseling and nutrition services in the community because I mean, this is America where people are of a right to sell product. At the same time that you're selling your product, wouldn't it be great if you're also educating the community about health outcomes? Let the community make a decision about what it is that they want to ingest and then have a meaningful understanding about what health outcomes could be. Additionally, victory would look like more non-sugary beverages in our communities so that people have more options. I mean, I love water and I love flavored water, and when I talk about flavored water, I’m talking about water that's infused with herbs, or lemons, or limes, or fruit, or whatever, but other people might want something else. I think that victory for us in DC not only is it not targeting, it’s nutrition counseling and educational information, it's alternatives to sugary sweetened beverages that are healthy, that are good for people and meaningful opportunity for people to engage in other products, and I think that in America that the sugary sweetened beverage companies could play a part, could be partners, could be meaningful partners with community. So, that's what victory looks like. I think it's a slow process, but I think that in the short term getting these kinds of legislative policies in place in jurisdictions and having that income put back into the community is a first step, and I think that in time, the industry could be a good partner. I think that there's money to be made for the industry, but I think that they have to change their approach, particularly in Black and Brown and poor communities. This is a national health crisis that all of us no matter our income, no matter our color, no matter our socioeconomic station are paying for. Each person is impacted, this is not just a poor people issue.
Julian Johnson: Yes. I think that's the perfect way to end it! Thank you so much Winnie for coming and talking to me and sharing not only your perspective but also the importance of this work. Before we close out, I’d just love to…if there's anything else you'd like to add now is the time to do so.
Winnie Huston: I think I would just say to folk, each person has a responsibility to be doing something to lift up their community Whether it's educating oneself about the impact of additives in our food whether it's sugar or salt, looking at what's available in terms of healthy food in our community–and not just in our immediate community but in our cities and in our towns. It's got to be a holistic approach. Each of us are impacted one way or another if we're not paying attention to the overconsumption of sugar sweetened beverages, the over consumption of sodium, the lack of fresh food and healthy food in our communities, we all end up paying for it in one way or another.
Julian Johnson: I 100% agree with everything that we discussed in this call. Thank you again!
Winnie Huston: It's absolutely my pleasure.
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[In Praxis outro] Thank you for listening to this episode of In Praxis. We hope you all enjoyed it. Make sure to visit our website, www.thepraxisproject.org, where you can check out additional episodes of other guests as well as learn more about our work.
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