Ryan Healy and Feeding New York State: Rethinking Hunger as a Human Right

What does it mean to be a good man in a society where millions of our neighbors don’t know where their next meal will come from?

For Ryan Healy, Advocacy Manager for Feeding New York State, it means facing hunger not as a private shame or a charity case, but as a systemic injustice, and then doing the hard, collective work to change it. Hunger, he reminds us, is never about individual failure. It’s about wages, housing, healthcare, and dignity.

With a background in politics and economics from Brandeis University, and experience across social enterprises, renewable energy, and political campaigns, Healy has spent the last three and a half years organizing statewide advocacy campaigns with Feeding New York State’s ten affiliated food banks and over 3,000 community partners. His mission is clear: to affirm food as a human right.

“Food is a human right. Everyone should have access to it,” Healy says. “Our job is to feed the line and shorten the line at the same time.”

This dual responsibility—meeting urgent needs while fighting for systemic change—offers lessons not just for policymakers and nonprofits, but for anyone wrestling with what responsibility looks like in a fractured world.

Hunger as a Mirror of Masculinity and Power

More than three million New Yorkers struggle to afford food. Tipped workers make subminimum wages. Half of SUNY and CUNY students experience food insecurity. Families are rent-burdened, paying 30% or more of their income just to keep a roof overhead. And while all this unfolds, tons of food rot in landfills.

Healy is blunt: hunger is not about scarcity. It’s about systems designed to keep people scrambling. “Labor is not dignified, housing is unaffordable, wages are low relative to the cost of living. Food insecurity is a reflection of these systemic issues.”

That reflection is not abstract. For men raising families, for fathers trying to make ends meet, for sons watching their parents skip meals, hunger is intimate. It shapes masculinity, sometimes pushing men toward shame and silence, other times toward courage and care.

During the pandemic, universal school meals and the Child Tax Credit cut child poverty in half. That victory, Healy argues, showed what was possible when policy prioritized people. It also modeled something men often overlook: care is not weakness. Care is power.

Feeding New York State embodies this ethos through its partnerships with farmers, hunters, processors, and communities. The organization receives more than 50 million pounds of donated produce annually, ensuring healthy food goes where it’s needed while sustaining local economies.

Healy insists that good advocacy, like good fathering, means listening first. “Nonprofits would be wise to focus on the expertise of the people they serve. After developing priorities with communities, bring them into the room with policymakers. Community forums at local libraries can be as powerful as massive marches.”

Food, Dignity, and the Future

Food is more than calories, it’s culture, sovereignty, and dignity. “Most of us go to the store and buy what we want. Imagine not having that sovereignty,” Healy reflects. “Every day, people are choosing between the light bill and dinner.”

As he looks to the future, Healy warns of growing threats: a Congress gutting SNAP, the largest anti-hunger program in history; the long shadow of climate change; and economic downturns that could tip millions more into food insecurity. His response is a call to citizenship. “Congress works for us. People did not vote for food assistance to be slashed.”

For The Good Men Project community—men exploring what it means to be ethical, responsible, and engaged—Healy’s work offers a reminder: goodness isn’t abstract. It’s built in the choices we make about power, justice, and care.

Hunger is solvable. But only if we’re willing to see it as a collective challenge, not an individual flaw. That means raising our voices, mobilizing communities, and standing with organizations like Feeding New York State that prove systemic change is possible.

Healy’s vision is clear. By ensuring every New Yorker has access to nutritious food, he and his colleagues are not just feeding bodies. They are nourishing hope, equity, and the possibility of a more just society.

And that, perhaps, is one of the clearest measures of what it means to be a good man today.

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