The Weekly Food Research and Action Center News Digest highlights what's new on hunger, nutrition and poverty issues at FRAC, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, around the network of national, state and local anti-poverty and anti-hunger organizations, and in the media. The Digest will alert you to trends, reports, news items and resources and, when available, link you directly to them.

1. Child Nutrition Reauthorization is Chance to Strengthen Nutrition Programs
(New Haven Register, June 15, 2009)

Representative Rosa DeLauro recently received the Food Research and Action Center’s Distinguished Service Award, prompting this op-ed by End Hunger Connecticut!’s Lucy Nolan to call for “holes to be filled” in child nutrition programs by strengthening the Child Nutrition and WIC Act (CNR). Up for reauthorization in the coming year, CNR includes school meals and snacks, summer food programs, and WIC - programs that DeLauro has championed in her two decades in office. “Connecticut’s children and educators will be looking to her again this year,” notes the op-ed, since DeLauro “will take a leadership role in urging her fellow members of Congress to make needed and overdue improvements.” One way to improve program participation is to offer school breakfast “free to all students in low-income neighborhoods and serve it at the beginning of the first class,” which has been proven to “increase access, boost learning and reduce stigma.” Connecticut is currently “at the bottom nationally in the number of schools that offer breakfast.” The state also has low participation in summer nutrition programs, which means that many children receiving free and reduced-price lunch during the school year go hungry when school is out. Additional needs include suppers for children in child care, healthier food in schools and child care (which will address also address obesity in children), and less red tape for summer and afterschool programs. After receiving the FRAC award, DeLauro travelled to Connecticut to take part in a listening session, hearing from state residents how these programs can be improved. Organizers of the event included End Hunger Connecticut!, Connecticut Food Bank, New Haven Public Schools, and the Middlesex Coalition for Children.
Additional coverage – New Haven Independent, June 6, 2009

2. Florida Summer Food Programs Serving High Numbers of Children
(Orlando Sentinel, June 16, 2009)

Officials from Florida’s Orange County Public Schools expect a steep rise in the number of summer meals that will be served to children, since the district received 9,000 more free and reduced-price meal applications this year than last year. While the county served 140,000 meals last summer, the district is planning on serving more than a million, according to Lora Gilbert, food and nutrition services director. Free meals for low-income children will be available at 201 Orange County sites this summer. “Many more might need the meals but can’t get them because they may not live in neighborhoods with the required concentration of poor families,” said Crystal FitzSimons of the Food Research and Action Center. While the recession has caused the spike in numbers, the increase also is due to expansion of the summer food program to more sites, and a marketing campaign which included advertising starring Orlando Magic players that aired during the NBA finals. In West Orlando, one program had 75 children show up on the first day, although there were only 55 meals prepared. “I ran out of food and cried because I didn’t want to turn any kids away,” said Sabrina Duglas, who runs the program. “I just went to our food pantry and made PB&J sandwiches.”

3. Recession and Economic Boom Both Devastating for Chronically Poor
(The New York Times, June 14, 2009)

The economic booms of the 1990’s and 2000’s were “basically devastating” for the already poor – 20 to 30 percent of Americans already struggling - who had to deal with skyrocketing rents and the disappearance of public housing, notes this op-ed. And the current recession, with its job losses, lack of paychecks, and residents falling behind in rent, has “made things palpably worse.” However, the already poor – “the undocumented immigrants, the sweatshop workers, the janitors, maids and security guards” – have disappeared from public policy and news media discussions. “All the focus is on the middle class – on Wall Street and Main Street – but it’s the people on the back streets who are really suffering,” said Candy Hill of Catholic Charities U.S.A. The real story is that blue collar unemployment is rising three times faster than white collar unemployment, notes Larry Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. Although mass white collar layoffs occurred during the last two recessions, as well as the current one, the blue collar working class “has been sliding downward since deindustrialization began in the 80’s.” While middle class deprivation may include missed vacations, the already poor miss meals and one-third of Americans can’t afford their medications. The rural poor buy food at food auctions, which sell items that may be past their expiration dates. The “most common strategy…is simply to increase the number of paying people per square food of dwelling space – by doubling up or renting to couch-surfers.” This overcrowding, while against zoning laws, also carries social tolls. According to Catholic Charities, domestic violence incidents have spiked across the country, due to unemployment and overcrowding. While the “formerly affluent Nouveau Poor” do have their problems, a positive future isn’t presaged for the already poor. “[H]istorically the effect of downturns is to increase, not decrease, class polarization.” After the 1980’s saw manufacturing jobs go to the third world and America’s working class became the working poor, employed in low-wage service and retail jobs, the more affluent still saw this country’s poor as better off than those in other countries. “[T]he difference is rapidly narrowing,” concludes this op-ed. “In good times and grim times, the misery at the bottom just keeps piling up, like a bad debt that will eventually come due.”

4. Disabled SNAP/Food Stamp Recipients Find Accessing Groceries Tough
(Oregonlive.com, June 14, 2009)

Disabled SNAP/Food Stamp recipients have unique problems in purchasing groceries with their benefits. In Oregon, Felicia Halvorsen is unable to drive, carries a white cane, and can only carry limited groceries since an accident seven years ago left her legally blind and forced her to go on disability. She would order groceries from the supermarket which offers home delivery, but that service doesn’t accept SNAP/Food Stamps. Senior citizens and the disabled have similar needs, notes Nancy Weed, food stamp outreach coordinator for the Portland-based Hunger Relief Task Force. But the number of disabled SNAP/Food stamp recipients is smaller, which can lead to their “unique problems going neglected.” The application process and system is streamlined for seniors, who receive help with applying, are allowed more deductions and more allowable expenses than other populations. But, still seniors often face the same difficulties as Halvorsen in actually using their EBT cards.

5. Ohio Benefit Bank Links Needy to SNAP/Food Stamps
(Marketplace, June 12, 2009)

The Ohio Benefit Bank has “helped low and moderate-income Ohioans secure over $100 million in public benefits and work support programs that help them meet their basic needs and weather the storm,” said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the organization that manages the service, the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Banks. The Benefit Bank, which operates in six states, helps residents access two of the most overlooked benefits – SNAP/Food Stamps and children’s health insurance. The service operates in community centers and churches which people are comfortable in visiting, according to Hamler-Fugitt. The Benefit Bank also is on the road, as a van equipped with Internet access visits communities. In Ohio, approximately $1.5 billion in benefits go unclaimed each year. The Benefit Bank “is…one of the best investments we’ve made in our 63 year history,” said Lisa Courtice of the Columbus Foundation, which helped launch the program and paid for the mobile van.

6. SNAP/Food Stamp Boost Helps Improve Family’s Food Choices
(Fredericksburg.com, June 14, 2009)

The recession forced the Hernandez family in Virginia’s Stafford County to move into a double-wide trailer after job cuts in 2006 and the loss of their home. The children also lost their access to fresh fruits, which the family couldn’t afford; a family therapist, who suggested the family apply for SNAP/Food Stamps, noted that the children needed more fruit, which had become a luxury. Since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act boosted SNAP/Food Stamp benefits, the family has been able to afford more fruit. The boost “…is sort of a two-fer,” said Robert Rycroft, economics professor at the University of Mary Washington. “It’s helping the least advantaged among us, but it’s also providing a stimulus to the economy. It will provide a short-term dose of stimulus. It will also provide support to people who’ve been the most harmed by our current economic mess.” Penny Hernandez, whose monthly SNAP/Food Stamp benefit fluctuates with her up and down income, said the benefit allows her to serve “good food that I know my kids will eat.” Still, many recipients say their benefits don’t last through the end of each month.

7. SNAP/Food Stamp Paper Coupons Expire July 17
(Press-Enterprise, June 7, 2009)

EBT cards will soon be the only method SNAP/Food Stamp recipients have of redeeming their benefits at grocery stores, as paper coupons will no longer be accepted after June 17. Officials are encouraging those recipients who still have the coupons to spend them before that date; afterwards, they will no longer be accepted. Paper coupons were last distributed in 2002, and few are used any more. In California, Stater Bros. Markets redeemed $100 annually in paper coupons in all its 166 stores. EBT cards have many advantages - they are easier to replace if lost, and counties don’t have to mail coupons, cutting down their costs. Plus, families using the cards don’t face the same stigma the recognizable paper coupons can sometimes bring.

8. NYC Food Deserts Will Benefit from Fresh Produce Carts
(The New York Times, June 10, 2009)

A city-wide effort in New York City is encouraging more street vendors to sell fresh fruits and vegetables in those low-income neighborhoods that lack grocery stores (food deserts). Neighborhoods in the five boroughs will see 1,000 new vendor carts that have been approved by the city. While none currently accept SNAP/Food Stamps, a pilot program, financed by the federal government, will supply EBT terminals to 15 of the carts. The overall cart program was created in order to improve the diets of residents, and will create 1,000 new jobs. “We know it takes more time to build supermarkets,” said Benjamin Thomases, food policy coordinator for Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, “but we can get carts on the streets right now.” Laurie M. Tisch, president of the Illumination Fund charity, noted that people working two jobs “are not going to get on a train, or two buses, to travel to get fresh vegetables.” For Tom Johnson, a maintenance worker, access to better food is important. “There’s third-rate stuff around here if you can even find it,” he said of his neighborhood, adding that with the carts “I can buy here now.” Research has shown that, given better access to fresh fruits and vegetables, residents of these neighborhoods will consume more of them, according to Elliott S. Marcus, associate commissioner of the city’s health department.

9. Texas Officials, Advocates Call on State to Feed More Children This Summer
(Houston Chronicle, June 9, 2009; Star-Telegram, June 10, 2009; KVUE, June 9, 2009)

Hungry children have a tougher time in the summer in Texas than the rest of the year, notes this editorial. While children in the state have the highest food insecurity rate in the nation, many receive free and reduced-price school meals during the school year – although not all needy children in the state participate in school meal programs. But in summer, when school is out, these meals stop, making it hard for families and other agencies to pick up the slack. Agencies this year are dealing with higher numbers of people seeking help, due to the recession and Hurricane Ike. Although Houston Independent School District will offer free breakfast and lunch at more than 200 schools until July 1, and the city’s parks and recreation department will offer meals through August 14, the editorial points out that “Houston Mayor Bill White and the City Council should be guiding and assisting the parks and recreation department to quickly expand its outreach and its timelines to serve more children.” Compared to the national average of 65 percent, only 40 percent of Houston residents eligible for SNAP/Food Stamps receive them. “Individuals might want to ride herd on their school districts, churches, community groups and elected officials to use all available funds,” the editorial concludes.

“We have the resources, we have the ability, we have the programs through our partners at USDA to get the job done and we’re asking for your help today” said Todd Staples, the state’s Agriculture Commissioner, in his challenge to mayors across Texas to promote and raise participation in summer meal programs. The top three cities with the largest increase in summer meal participation will receive a donation to the charity of that city’s mayor’s choice. In Arlington, 50 schools and community sites will serve free meals and officials expect the numbers of participating children to rise due to the recession. Free and reduced-price meal numbers rose during the school year. The Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district expects more children this summer, since their free lunch recipients increased 11 percent between April 2008 and April 2009. In Austin, 76 sites are feeding students this summer. “We figure that if children have a need during the regular school year, then during the summertime they still have a need for meals,” said Dorothea Prince, assistant director of food and nutrition services for Arlington school district. “Our goal is to feed every child that shows up at a site.”

10. Thousands of Chicago Children Starting Summer without School Meals
(Chicago Tribune, June 15, 2009)

Nearly 342,000 Chicago public school children (84 percent of the school system’s 405,000 students) who receive free and reduced-price school meals stopped receiving them last week when school ended for the summer. “It’s going to be a challenge, but I’m going to make it some way,” said Sonia Benjamin, who is worried about feeding her children this summer. There are some options: Chicago Park District camps will provide free lunches, and 49 sites at YMCAs, churches and Boys & Girls Clubs will offer 195,000 free breakfasts and lunches through the food depository. Last year, 36 sites served 151,000 meals. Needy parents can also sign up for TANF, which increased by two percent in Cook County this year, and SNAP/Food Stamps, which increased by 15 percent in Chicago.

11. New Jersey and Texas Schools Will Receive Stimulus Funds to Improve Meal Service Equipment
(NewJerseyNewsroom.com, June 15, 2009; Fort Worth Star-Telegram, June 15, 2009)

New Jersey’s Department of Agriculture announced that $1.85 million in federal economic stimulus funds will be shared by 95 of the state’s school districts; the funds will be used to renovate older equipment and “buy new refrigerators, freezers, and many other items essential to the delivery of safe and quality meals,” said N.J. Agriculture Secretary Douglas H. Fisher. “This is a wonderful example of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package doing what it intended to do, make people’s lives better,” said Gov. Jon Corzine in a statement.

In Texas, Fort Worth and Arlington school districts will share $11 million in school equipment grants through the federal economic stimulus act. Fort Worth’s share to buy food processors, freezers, ovens and steamers will be $563,000, while $111,000 will go to Arlington for similar equipment. More than 3,000 Texas schools submitted $135 million in applications for the highly competitive grants; 381 received money. Priority was given to schools with a majority of students receiving free and reduced-price lunches, a federal requirement. In the applications, districts were required to explain how the money would be used according to one or more of four criteria: improving food safety, increasing efficiency, supporting or expanding school lunch program participation, and improving food/nutrition quality. Veronica Obregon of the Texas Agriculture Department said a big response was anticipated, as there hasn’t been equipment assistance offered by the federal government since the early 1980s. “[I]t’s been up to the districts to replace their own equipment with their own revenue or general funds,” noted Obregon. “One of our goals was to provide our students with more fresh fruits and vegetables,” said Lena Wilson, Fort Worth’s child nutrition services director. Getting new food processors “makes it easier to do,” she said.

12. Bill Creating Child Care Nutrition Standards Moves through California Legislature
(Los Angeles Times, June 8, 2009)

Licensed child-care centers in California would be held to minimum nutrition standards in the food they serve to children if bill AB 627, recently passed by the California Assembly (by a 48-27 vote), is approved by the Senate. Only Michigan and Virginia currently require that child care menus follow federal nutrition guidelines. In Los Angeles County, 350,000 children ages five and under would be affected, along with 2,230 licensed child care centers and 7,800 family child care homes. Private day care centers currently serve a wide range of food, unlike programs such as Head Start and child care centers [and homes receiving the Child and Adult Care Food Program] which are held to nutrition guidelines. Research on lunches at 54 of the County’s child care sites found that the least nutritious food children ate was from their homes.

13. Parental Influence on Children’s Diets Not as Strong as Other Influences
(Food Navigator, June 1, 2009)

A study published in the Journal of Social Science and Medicine reports that parents have less influence on their children’s diets than is commonly believed. According to one of the study’s authors, Youfa Wang of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “[c]hild-parent dietary resemblance in the US is relatively weak, and varies by nutrients and food groups and by the types of parent-child dyads and social demographic characteristics such as age, gender and family income.” Other factors that “seem to play an important role in young people’s dietary intake” include “community and school, food environment, peer influence, television viewing, as well as individual factors such as self-image and self-esteem,” noted study author May Beydoun, also of the Bloomberg School. The authors recommend that future studies focus on factors such as peer pressure. The researchers used USDA data from the Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals and the USDA 2005 Health Eating Index; 1,061 fathers, 1,230 mothers, 1,370 sons and 1,322 daughters were sampled. In another survey, by Mintel, findings showed parents do feel responsible for their children’s’ weight, with 78 percent of parents saying they blame themselves if their child was overweight.

14. Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program in Pennsylvania Provides Fresh Produce and Additional Funding
(PR Newswire, June 10, 2009)

Eligible seniors across the state of Pennsylvania can benefit from the Seniors Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program. The federally-funded program, which provides seniors with coupons that can be exchanged for fresh produce, is available to seniors 60 and over (by December 31, 2009) who have a total household income before taxes of less than $20,036 (single person) and $26,955 (for a couple). Pennsylvania also contributes state funding to the program; in 2009, that funding totaled $2.2 million to the nearly $6 million program. Running from June 1 to November 30, the program has 1,025 farmers participating at 189 farmers’ markets and 920 roadside stands. At the kickoff for this year’s program, state Secretary of Agriculture Dennis Wolff noted “The program benefits all involved, including the individuals who purchase food, the farmers who produce it, and the communities they live in.”

15. Recession Could Weaken Family Ties
(The New York Times, May 29, 2009)

In this op-ed, Andrew J. Cherlin, professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, writes that although it’s commonly believed that families pulled together during the Great Depression, the drop in divorce rate in 1930 was due to unhappy couples unable to afford divorces when faced with job losses and lowered incomes. Also, “[t]hey feared that neither spouse would be able to manage alone.” However, the Depression “destroyed the inner life of many married couples.” With the current recession, many couples will be unwilling to start separate households, especially since it may be difficult to sell their homes since the “housing market meltdown.” And while disasters both financial and natural tend to bring families together to help each other and their communities, “such an impulse is hard to sustain. During the Great Depression, “[t]he divorce rate began to rise again in 1934 when employment picked up, providing some unhappy couples with the income they needed to separate. The rate rose during the rest of the decade as the recovery took hold.” Divorces happened in greater numbers in 1940 than before the Depression. “Today’s economic slump could well generate a similar backlog of couples whose relationships have been irreparably ruined,” concludes Cherlin. “So it is only when the economy is healthy again that we will begin to see just how many fractured families have been created.”

16. Few Areas of U.S. Will See Rapid Return of Jobs
(McClatchy Newspapers, June 14, 2009)

While experts believe the worst of the recession has passed, IHS Global Insight, a leading economic forecaster, projects a long road of rebuilding ahead for the U.S. economy, and only a few areas will see jobs rebound in the coming year. Those areas are: Anchorage, Alaska; Champaign-Urbana, Ill.; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Columbia, Mo.; Laredo, Texas; and Louisiana’s Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux areas. Of the 325 metro areas in the HIS report, 286 won’t see a return to pre-recession employment numbers until 2012; 112 of those areas won’t see a return until 2014 or later. Between November 2008 and April 2009, four million jobs were lost, with four straight months of 600,000 job losses. Since the recession began 18 months ago, six million jobs have been lost. “Although we expect the economy to bottom out in GDP terms during the second half of the year, job losses should continue throughout 2009, with the unemployment rate peaking just above 10 percent,” noted IHS chief U.S. economist Nigel Gault. “We still expect total job losses to exceed 7 million. But the worst news is behind us, and employment declines should progressively soften as the year proceeds.”
Look up data on when areas will “return to normal” through this interactive map included with article.

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