Words are policy: Why the language of hunger must change

In Dari, the language of my Afghan heritage, the word for hospital is shefa-khana, literally “The healing house.” Not a facility. Not a system. A place where healing happens. The word carries an entire philosophy: the person who enters is not a patient to be processed, but a human being seeking restoration.

I think about shefa-khana often in my work at Oregon Food Bank. The words we choose to describe places, and the people who enter them, are never neutral. They are a form of policy.

I have sat in rooms full of people who genuinely care, where someone raises their hand and asks with real sincerity: Why are we spending money on advocacy and narrative change? Why aren’t we just buying more food?

It is a fair question on its surface. And it reveals exactly why language is the work.

Here is my answer: hunger is not a supply problem. If it were, we would have solved it. The United States produces enough food to feed its population.

People go hungry in Oregon not because food does not exist, but because of policy choices: wage structures, housing costs, immigration status, healthcare debt and harmful land use decisions that make food inaccessible to people who deserve it. Hunger is shaped by policy choices. And political outcomes are changed through narrative, advocacy and the slow work of shifting what a society believes is acceptable.

Buying food feeds people today. Changing the story is how we make sure we do not have to keep doing it forever.

But language also matters closer to the ground, in the daily experience of the people we serve.

In Dari, there is a concept embedded in the word mehmân: guest. In Afghan culture, a guest is not a burden. A guest is an honor. The host’s dignity is measured by how well the guest is received.

Now consider what we call the people who walk through the doors of a food pantry: clients. Recipients. Beneficiaries. These words quietly sort people into categories of need. They whisper that you are here because you failed to provide for yourself. They carry shame the way a room carries cold air. You feel it before you can name it.

And shame is not a soft outcome. It is a utilization barrier. Research consistently shows that people delay accessing food resources when the framing signals charity rather than community. When someone does not feel entitled to walk through the door, they wait until the crisis is severe. Language itself becomes a barrier to accessing food.

The same logic applies in rooms where policy is made and where funders decide how resources are invested. A version of the earlier question often resurfaces: why invest in advocacy, narrative and language when the immediate need for food is so great?

It is worth answering directly. Advocacy is one way we work to reduce the conditions that make food assistance necessary in the first place. When Oregon Food Bank advocates for affordable healthcare, expanded SNAP access and stable housing policy, we are not moving away from our mission. We are working at its deepest level.

A donor who funds food is helping respond to an immediate wound. A donor who also funds advocacy is helping address some of the conditions that keep causing it. Both are essential. Together, they can move us closer to breaking the cycle.

The language we use in a legislative hearing or a foundation pitch shapes what feels fundable and what feels trivial. When we say “hunger relief,” we invite relief-sized solutions. When we say “food justice” or “the right to food,” we invite structural ones.

The goal is not to stop buying food as a food bank. The goal is to build an Oregon where we no longer have to.

So what do we do instead?

We do not swap one vocabulary for another overnight and call it transformation. That would be its own kind of failure, the kind where the words on the wall change but the power dynamics in the room do not. I have seen organizations rebrand their way into irrelevance, adopting equity language as aesthetic without changing who sits at the table, who designs the programs and whose knowledge is treated as expertise.

The approach I believe in is slower and more honest. We introduce dual language as a bridge. “Free food market” alongside “food pantry.” “Community members” where we once said “clients.” “Nourishment” where we once said “assistance.” We let the aspirational term grow familiar before the clinical one recedes.

We test the language with community members, not focus groups of people who already speak this vocabulary, but Oregonians in Gresham, Medford and Woodburn who need to immediately understand where to go and what they will find there. If the language confuses, it fails. Dignity and clarity are not in tension. The best language holds both.

Oregon Food Bank already speaks much of this. “Food that feels like home.” “Nourishing food.” “Free food markets.” “Partner network.” These phrases carry implicit dignity. Our work is to make that framing explicit, consistent and systemic, from the signage at a food distribution site to the testimony of an advocate before the Oregon Legislature.

Because here is what I have learned as a communicator: the words that surround a person when they are vulnerable either confirm their humanity or quietly diminish it.

A shefa-khana is a healing place because someone decided, in language, that it would be. Not a processing center. Not a facility. A place of restoration.

We can make that same decision about how we speak about hunger, food and the people who deserve it.

To us, at Oregon Food Bank, the question is not whether we can afford to change the language. The question is whether we can afford not to.