There are a lot of people in San Diego County who aren’t sure where their next meal is coming from. Feeding San Diego said 13%, or about 430,000 people, are food insecure. That includes 123,000 children.
Food insecurity was the subject of a state senate hearing in Kearny Mesa Wednesday. “Addressing inequality means listening to our community,” Sen. Dr. Akilah Weber-Pierson, D-39, said as the hearing got underway.
Weber-Pierson was joined by her colleague, State Sen. Steve Padilla, D-18. For about two hours, the senators listened to experts in food insecurity and healthcare.
“In California in 2025, 24% of all adults in California experienced food insecurity,” said Jared Call, the Director of Public Policy and Advocacy at the California Association of Food Banks.
Call said for 16 million Californians, the cost of basic needs in their community exceed their income. "The basic needs we use to calculate this measure include housing, healthcare, transportation, childcare and food,” Call said.
Another witness told the senators that not having enough to eat can often lead to poor health.
“As a surgeon, this has very real implications on not only pre-op care and post-op care,” said Dr. Alexandra Kharazi, a cardiothoracic surgeon who advocates for cardiovascular health. She sees the cumulative effects of decades of food insecurity and poor nutrition in many of her patients.
“Particularly in the South Bay, where I do a lot of my work, people oftentimes, there’s more of a disparity with the food people are able to have access to,” Kharazi said.
Healthy food for children pays off
Representatives of the San Diego Unified School District and California Department of Education said state support for getting good, healthy food to children is paying off. They credit a program called California Universal Meals that the state launched five years ago.
“It’s just kind of a no-brainer, it’s just common sense and the research confirms that when they’re well-nourished, there’s improved concentration and cognitive function,” said Kim Frinzell, with the California Department of Education Nutrition Services.
Both Weber-Pierson and Padilla sit on committees that deal with the health of Californians. They said they’ll take what they learned back to Sacramento, and work on crafting policies that will improve people’s lives. That will include where they money will come from to support those policies.
