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. Food Stamp Participation Sets Record
(Reuters, December 3, 2008)
September 2008 saw more than 31.5 million – one in ten – Americans receiving food stamps, an increase of 17 percent from September 2007 according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data. More people participated in the program than the previous record of 29.85 million in November 2005, when disaster food stamps went to victims of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. While Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in Louisiana and Texas drove part of the increase in September, anti-hunger organizations say that the economic downturn is the cause. “It’s a disturbing trend,” said FRAC’s Ellen Vollinger. Vollinger also said that as unemployment figures climb and the economy stays weak, the number of food stamp recipients will rise as more people seek out the benefit. The average amount in food stamp benefits per person per month was $100 in September. While the average benefit increased slightly in October, anti-hunger groups say that it still doesn’t go far enough to account for higher food costs. In November, USDA released numbers showing that 36.2 million Americans – 11 percent of households – struggle with food insecurity, and one-third sometimes skip or miss meals. Hunger groups are calling on Congress to include a temporary increase in food stamp benefits in the next economic stimulus package. Food stamp benefits go “directly to people who spend it at local grocery stores, supporting businesses and jobs,” said Vollinger, adding that $5 in food stamps equals $9 in economic activity.
Read FRAC’s press release on the September numbers: http://www.frac.org/Press_Release/sep08_SNAP_over30million.htm
2. Unemployment and Job Losses Highest in Years
(Reuters, December 5, 2008)
The Department of Labor reports that the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent in November, up from 6.5 percent in October and the highest since 1993; employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years. Economists expect the unemployment rate to top 8 percent by late next year. Also, revised job loss numbers for recent months show figures much worse than previously reported. October’s new total is 320,000 jobs lost, compared with the original total of 240,000, and September shows a revised figure of 403,000, originally 284,000, for an overall total of 199,000 additional jobs lost in September and October. Service-providing businesses cut 370,000 jobs last month, two-thirds of overall job declines; in October, those businesses lost 153,000 jobs. Labor market weakness has now moved from the goods producing sectors to the services sector, which “delivers almost 80 percent of U.S. output.”
3. Hard Times Strain Arizona Hunger Relief Groups and Increase Food Stamp Numbers
(Arizona Daily Star, November 23, 2008)
These tough times are reminding some of the Great Depression as calls to anti-hunger groups have increased and Arizona’s food stamp numbers shot up from 575,269 recipients in September 2007 to 685,906 in September 2008. Tucson Community Food Bank CEO William Carnegie said lines are so long there that he’s reminded of pictures of soup kitchen lines from the 1930’s. “On any given day,” said Carnegie, “there are 50 to 100 people waiting outside for our doors to open.” Diane Edwards, program director for the Older Americans Act at the Pima Council on Aging, said that assistance calls between July and October this year have doubled as compared to the same time last year. Reports come in of elderly residents living in cold houses in order to eat and pay their bills. “People have very, very tough decision to make,” said Edwards. “Do I buy food, or do I pay my property taxes?” Still, 113,296 Pima County residents are on food stamps, up from 96,422 in 2007. Marco Liu, program administrator for family assistance with the Arizona Department of Economic Security, noted the state is close to the top among states with high growth in food stamp participation. However, he added that 44 percent of eligible Arizona residents have not applied, with the elderly particularly hard to bring on board. “A large number of people who are not participating are working and believe that because they are working, they won't qualify,” Liu said. “It hurts.” Low participation and troubled economic times are straining food banks which are operating at capacity. The Tucson Community Food Bank will begin distributing two boxes of emergency food to each client per month instead of the usual one box in response to the pronounced need. While donations are down two percent, October saw the food bank distribute 48 percent more food than the previous October, a total of 20,266 family food boxes during the month this year. Times are so tough that the Giving Tree meal program is now serving twice the number of people each week, going from 500 a week last year to more than 1,000 now. “If regular people are feeling this,” said Giving Tree’s Libby Wright, “you can imagine how hard it is for people who have been poor all along.”
4. Rhode Island Mini-Stimulus Plan Includes Food Stamp Outreach
(Providence Journal, December 4, 2008)
Millions of dollars could be pumped into Rhode Island’s struggling economy through increasing food stamp participation by 10,000 people over the next year, as well as expediting unemployment insurance claims and moving stalled infrastructure projects, according to a plan by the state’s House Finance Committee. Committee Chair Steven M. Constantino cited reports that every $1 in food stamp money returns $1.73 in economic stimulus. According to the state’s Department of Human Services, 90,000 Rhode Islanders receive food stamps, up from 81,400 who received the benefit at this time last year. A marketing campaign to be launched in the coming weeks will focus on adding the 10,000 new recipients, mostly “working poor” who are currently eligible but not receiving benefits. “When you use these benefits, you’re helping the economy as well,” said Adelita Orefice, deputy secretary of the Executive Office of Health & Human Services.
5. Rhode Island Food Bank Promotes Food Stamps to Cope with Increased Demand
(Providence Journal, November 24, 2008)
Although one in six Rhode Island children are food-insecure, and the state rivals Michigan in its high unemployment rate (9.3 percent), Rhode Island Community Food Bank executive director Andrew Schiff believes that no family should go hungry, even in this “severe recession.” More families are visiting food pantries in the state, prompting Schiff to promote food stamps and other federal nutrition programs. “[W]e are leaving money on the table,” said Schiff. “We are only reaching 56 percent of those people eligible for food stamps. If we got to 80 percent, that would mean an additional $35 million [in federal dollars] to Rhode Island that would be spent in stores and boost the local economy.” While the state’s Food Stamp Outreach Project has succeeded in signing more people up for the benefit, Schiff said that even more would sign up if the state accepted applications through community action agencies, health centers and supermarkets. Schiff encourages schools to provide free breakfast at schools where a majority of students qualify for free lunch. In Rhode Island, only 40 students participate in breakfast programs out of every 100 that receive free and reduced-price lunch. He added that research shows that universal free breakfast significantly boosts student participation.
6. New Hampshire Case Managers Struggle with Increased Applications for Food Stamps, Other Assistance
(Concord Monitor, December 7, 2008)
Case managers in New Hampshire are trying to deal with increased demand for public services, including a 19 percent increase in people receiving food stamps over the past year. In October 2008, 4,000 more people applied for food stamps than in October 2007, and November’s increase was almost triple October’s increase. The state’s Family Assistance Division director Terry Smith notes that help requests, currently at historic levels, have put additional pressure on already-strained case workers. Although more people usually apply for food stamps in the fall and winter when seasonal jobs “scale down,” “we’ve never seen a jump like last month,” Smith said. Most mornings, lines form outside the Concord district office before the doors open at 8 a.m. People are applying for a number of programs at the same time – food stamps, cash assistance, medical insurance – and tell caseworkers like Scott Beckwith of their struggles to find work and trouble dealing with high consumer prices. “[I]t’s tough, because you see people at their worst possible moment, their most desperate moment. Not too many come in here happy and giggly,” he said. One senior citizen had been subsisting on peanut butter until her son brought her into the office. Beckwith asked her why it took her “so long to get down here?” The woman replied, “I really don’t know. I just hated to have to do this, but in today’s economy, I guess you just have to do what you have to do.”
7. Lines are Numerous and Long for Food Stamps, Other Services
(Life From The Roof blog, November 13, 2008)
“Sitting in the office waiting room for so many hours gives you a wide-eyed glimpse into the world of food stamps and welfare assistance,” writes this blogger, who helped a friend navigate social services in order to apply for food stamps and health insurance. “Having helped several different people over the last few years, it always amazes me how many lines they are able to make you stand in,” the blogger wrote. Applications and fingerprinting required standing in a number of lines, some only in order to receive a number, and then ended with the need to return to the office later for an interview with a social worker. “I don’t know the stories of everyone who is there,” writes the blogger, “but...I saw a lot of mothers with lots of kids in tow, with puzzled expressions on their faces as they tried to fill out page after page of applications by themselves.”
8. San Antonio Focuses Efforts on Feeding Hungry Seniors
(San Antonio Express News, November 23, 2008)
In Texas’s Bexar County, the number of low-incomes seniors 60 and older is approximately 12 percent, compared with a national average of nine percent. Living on fixed incomes, the elderly are particularly affected by high food prices, and may have trouble finding help during tough times when funding is cut to senior relief services. Sharon Baughman, executive director of Christian Senior Services, which provides Meals-On-Wheels among other services to the elderly poor, notes that “[t]he face of poverty in San Antonio is largely female and largely Hispanic. Government figures show that 57 percent of the elderly are women, with elderly unmarried women receiving half their income from Social Security. San Antonio has made “a huge investment in seniors,” and has “one of the largest nutrition programs in the country,” said Laura Cisneros, social services manager for San Antonio Community Initiatives. The numbers tell the story – 79 nutrition centers offer hot meals to seniors in addition to social services, crafts, and exercise; seniors are brought to nearby centers by vans. For 46 percent of seniors, the hot meal is their only meal of the day. The city also delivers 4,000 meals a day, 450 to homebound seniors. According to Peter Zanoni, the city’s budget director, senior meals, education and fitness benefit from an additional $1 million in the city budget, in addition to a further $1 million in utility assistance, and a proposed $1 million in solid waste credits. But, many seniors still go unserved, said Laura Cisneros, noting “We may serve 6,000 seniors a year, but that’s 6,000 out of 27,000. A lot of needs are going unmet.”
9. Increased Demand for Food Stamps in Maine
(Ellsworth American, November 24, 2008)
New regulations on how Maine determines who is eligible for programs like food stamps could translate to more people receiving aid. Since the federal government pays for 100 percent of cash benefits that go to needy households in Maine (as well as other states) and 50 percent of administrative costs, more Maine residents can take advantage of assistance, even if cuts reduce the state’s budgets., More than 93,000 families, or 186,715 individuals, in the state received food stamps (now called food supplements in Maine) in November; the average benefit per person per month is $111.64, or $1.24 per meal. More residents are now eligible for food supplements, as the child care income deduction cap, which used to be $200, was eliminated. Due to increased unemployment and the economic recession, the state has seen a surge in visits to field offices of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). About 35,000 people visited DHHS bureaus last month, noted Barbara Van Burgel, director of the Office of Integrated Access and Support. That number is up from 25,000 a month last year.
10. Senator Cites Food Stamps in Award Acceptance
(Delta Farm Press, November 25, 2008)
“Every month, nutrition assistance programs enable almost 385,000 Arkansans – 13.7 percent of our state’s population – to purchase groceries for themselves and their families,” said two-term Democrat Sen. Blanche Lincoln in her remarks upon receiving the “Champion of Arkansas Agriculture” award. Sen. Lincoln, who founded and now chairs the Senate Hunger Caucus, spoke about hunger in Arkansas and her efforts to address this problem in the 2008 Farm Bill, saying that she was “particularly proud of the tremendous investment [the Farm Bill] makes to reduce food insecurity among our children and our elderly, and others in need.” She said the Farm Bill is “the largest amount of funding for nutrition programs in our nation’s history.” Sen. Lincoln received her award at a dinner in Little Rock, Ark. Funds raised by the dinner went to Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance. “Let’s don’t give up,” Lincoln concluded. “Hunger is a disease that has a cure. Let’s strive hard each and every day to eliminate hunger once and for all.”
11. Portland Food Desert Story Generates Big Response
(The Oregonian, November 17, 2008)
A recent story in The Oregonian about the difficulties low-income families experience in buying food in their neighborhoods generated nearly 300 calls, emails and online comments from readers. “Low-income and minority families, prone to obesity and dietary-related diseases, are also most likely to live in communities where nutritious food is hard to come by,” according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Low-income neighborhoods across the country have 30 percent fewer grocery stores than higher-income communities, and residents of low-income communities may not have transportation options to travel to grocery stores outside their communities. The original article profiled Lesli Calderon who can’t afford a car and often can’t take public transportation to one of the distant supermarkets outside her neighborhood. When she does travel to buy food, at those times when she’s run out, she has to make a four-hour round trip to buy groceries. Markets closer to Calderon are convenience stores that stock high calorie and processed foods. Those that sell produce only carry limited vegetables, often not the freshest; milk can be $2 more than at larger supermarkets. Grocery chains take a number of factors into account when looking to open a store, including population density, household income, and education levels. One grocer even looked at oil spills in adjacent parking lots, thinking leaking cars “belong to people who can’t afford much food.” Food deserts have their origins in the 1960s and 1970s, as middle-class residents left the cities for the suburbs, according to PolicyLink, which focuses on social economic inequities. Solutions to the current food desert problem range from bringing new stores to these neighborhoods to having the government provide incentives for convenience store owners to stock fresh fruits and vegetables, a tactic currently being piloted in Multnomah County. In Portland, planners are making food access part of the city’s comprehensive plan. "We can tell people to buy fresh fruits and vegetables… but if we don't address the social barriers of cost and availability, it's just not going to happen," said Noelle Dobson, a project director with Community Health Partnership.
12. Two Pennsylvania Schools Win Awards for Innovative Breakfast Programs
(Solanco News, November 24, 2008)
Innovative breakfast programs at Harrisburg’s Ben Franklin Elementary School and Homer City’s Homer-Center School were honored with Expanding Breakfast Awards, funded by the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association and local dairy farmers. Nearly 70 percent of Ben Franklin students receive the meal through the school’s Breakfast in the Classroom Program, earning the school a $5,000 grant and first place. “Teachers are finding students are more attentive, better behaved and more ready to learn” because of the program said the school’s food service director David Lloyd. Universal Free Breakfast After First Period reaches 82 percent of Homer-Center High School’s students, winning the school second place and a $3,000 grant. “We went from serving breakfast to 35 to 50 students a day to feeding 350 students. Our attendance has increased, tardiness is down and so are trips to the nurse,” said the school’s food service director Susan McLoughlin, MS, RD, LDN, commenting on the program that has run for several years. She said the key to success was building breakfast into the student’s schedules in order to keep it from competing with extracurricular events and socializing. McLoughlin and Floyd are members of the Pennsylvania Breakfast Brigade, which provides support and training on school breakfast to school districts. The Expanding Breakfast Awards highlight “alternative school breakfast options,” where schools offer breakfast outside the cafeteria in an effort to boost participation.
13. Schools with Higher-Income Students Offer More Food Choices
(Salt Lake Tribune, November 18, 2008)
A Child Trends study titled School Food Unwrapped: What’s Available and What Our Kids Actually are Eating found that higher-income fifth-grade students in suburban school districts are no more likely to have access to healthy or unhealthy foods than are their lower-income, urban peers, but schools with higher-income students offer “a greater selection of both healthy and unhealthy food choices.” The study examined the prevalence of vending machines, school stores and other elementary school outlets, the types of food sold, and what students consumed. It found that most of the less healthy food purchases came not from vending machines but from school cafeterias. However, more than half (57.2 percent) of elementary schools reported having “competitive outlets” (vending machines, school stores, etc.) where students can purchase foods that do not meet federal nutrition standards, and that these outlets are available at schools regardless of location, public/private status, school breakfast and lunch participation, or receipt of Title 1 funds. Also, more unhealthy and healthy foods are available: at suburban elementary schools than in urban elementary schools; at schools with lower minority participation compared to higher minority participation; and at schools not receiving Title 1 funding.
14. Economy Finds More Students Eating Breakfast at School, Subsidized Meal Numbers Also Up
(Daily Press, November 19, 2008)
Newport News, Va.’s Yates Elementary School is feeding breakfast to 25 percent more students, serving between 140 to 160 or more a day. A typical meal consists of juice or milk and one of three breakfast entrees. Food Services Director Cathy Alexander said there’s been an increase across the district. She notes that they’re getting more applications for free and reduced-price meals and that they’re “getting more hardship calls.” Students at Yates begin lining up 35 minutes before school starts to receive a 90-cent breakfast bag; “It’s amazing,” said teacher Bernice Victor-Smith. “If they all came at once, we wouldn’t have enough seats. Yates Principal Raquel Cox attributes the numbers to parents working longer hours who have less time to prepare breakfast at home as well as the opportunity for students to socialize; other educators point to rising food prices, the economic crisis, and other high consumer costs driving the upswing. Cox and Victor-Smith have also noticed that students eat everything in their breakfast bags, which must follow nutrition guidelines mandating they include a protein, be balanced, and low fat. Last year, 7,977 students ate breakfast in the district's elementary, middle and high schools, about a quarter of the district's enrollment. This year, 8,188 students are eating breakfast on an average day. Alexander said she’s worried about those families who are just above the income threshold but still struggling. “If they don’t have money, we feed them,” she said, as her mission is to “make sure students are fed.” The school district also helps financially “strapped” families find additional community sources of food assistance.
15. Study Authors Detail Philadelphia Universal Feeding Program
(Philadelphia Inquirer, November 17, 2008)
In this op-ed, Ira Goldstein, director of policy and information services for the Reinvestment Fund, and William Yancey, Temple University sociology professor, describe their research for Philadelphia's Universal Feeding Program, which serves free meals to all students in qualifying schools. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced that the program will be cancelled. In 1991, the Philadelphia School District launched the Universal Feeding program as a pilot project with the goal of reducing paperwork. All student records are compared with state data to find those who are automatically eligible for the free and reduced-price meals. Research is done on the remaining students to calculate each school's overall eligibility rate for free and reduced-price meals. The Universal Feeding program was implemented in schools with high free and reduced-price meal eligibility rates. For schools running the Universal program, no meal applications were necessary since all students in the school received free breakfast and lunch. Collecting meal applications is a challenge for many larger school districts; Philadelphia has more than 200,000 students. “[G]etting the forms back is a major problem. Students don't always take the forms home, and when they do, parents don't always fill them out,” write Goldstein and Yancey. The Reinvestment Fund was hired in 2006 "to lead a group of nationally recognized researchers and school-lunch experts to update earlier data related to the program," a task that had full USDA approval and support; income documentation of 475 households was measured with an added face-to-face survey. "We surveyed 1,952 households and found that 79.6 percent of students were eligible for subsidized meals," write Goldstein and Yancey, who led the study. “Based on this data, Philadelphia has designated more than 200 schools as Universal Feeding sites. State and federal officials approved the study and its results." The study also found that, "compared with USDA studies in other districts, Philadelphia's data was more accurate. Furthermore, administering a traditional program in Philadelphia would be more expensive: an estimated $800,000 a year, far costlier than a $500,000 study done every few years." Goldstein and Yancey conclude "USDA's rationale for canceling Universal Feeding contradicts the facts. Congress' intent was to feed needy children in a cost-effective way. And that's what Universal Feeding does."
16. Universal Breakfast Benefits Students and Schools in Oregon
(Moving Up blog, November 12, 2008)
Universal school breakfast is “what works” in Portland, Ore., skyrocketing the breakfast participation rate to 98 percent, and in Newark, New Jersey, with a 94 percent participation rate; both cities have a breakfast program that serves free breakfast in the classroom. Schools experience fewer behavioral problems and students are more focused when universal breakfast is offered; financial benefits accrue through elimination of bureaucracy and paperwork, which saves districts both time and money. According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the program pays for itself at 80 percent participation, making it a “low-cost intervention.” School breakfast also brings “significant federal dollars into cities and towns that are facing shrinking budgets and severe state cutbacks.” The Conference of Mayors states “it only makes sense” for schools to take advantage of the school breakfast program. However, according to FRAC, “only 44 children eat federally-funded free or reduced price school breakfasts for every 100 who receive free or reduced price school lunch.” Not all schools offer free breakfast, and there’s often a stigma attached to receiving free- and reduced-price meals, negatively affecting the participation rate for low-income students who are eligible. The post concludes, “Universal breakfast not only ensures that every child, regardless of his or her socioeconomic status, starts each day with a nutritious meal, but it also frees up family discretionary income. As the economy continues to sour and pocketbooks tighten, this is a policy everyone can get behind.”
17. Programs for Single Mothers Should Coordinate Services to be More Effective
(Gloucester Daily Times, November 13, 2008)
Current government programs helping single mothers advance in the workforce are disjointed and end too soon according to a report by the UMass-Boston Center for Social Policy and the Crittenton Women’s Union. The report cites “inconsistent eligibility requirements and limited coordination among programs” which let clients fall through the cracks, and people “vulnerable to steep increases in costs” when their work supports phase out too quickly. A single working mother in Greater Boston, notes the report, earning $8 an hour and receiving the full array of government benefits, has only $439 a month for basic living expenses, which include food, housing, health care, transportation, clothing and household supplies. The report cites seven federal “work support” programs a single mother is eligible for: food stamps, child care assistance, MassHealth, EITC, child tax credit, WIC, and Section 8 housing. But, because of budget constraints and high demand, most families do not receive all these benefits. "They earn enough to be eligible but not enough to pay the bills," said Randy Albelda, a UMass-Boston professor and co-author of the report. A single parent with two children needs to earn between $44,000 and $55,000 a year ($22 to $29 per hour) to live in Massachusetts without public assistance. At the report’s release, Marilyn Chase, Assistant Secretary for Office of Children, Youth and Families, said she is looking at slowing down benefit phase-out.
18. Diluting Formula is One Method of Parents Cutting Back on Food, Services for their Children
(ABC News, December 4, 2008)
The story out of Florida concerning the infant who almost died after his mother cut his formula with water to cut costs is an extreme example of the kinds of cutbacks parents are making in a troubled economy. Nancy Cauthen, deputy director of the National Center for Children in Poverty, notes that it’s hard to measure how many people have to cut back. “In general, there are the kinds of things we know happen,” she said, “and the kinds of things we worry about.” She said it is known that parents will “cut back on their own meals before they’ll cut back on their own children’s.” Health care and child care, however, get cut back to where everyone in the household suffers. Families without insurance will forego checkups, missing vital signs of developmental problems in children. Parents send their children to school sick in order to avoid high health care bills and to avoid missing work in order to keep their jobs. Already, child care agencies are noting that parents are taking their children out of child care and having relatives and neighbors provide care while they’re at work. But for families like Denise Bonito’s, times are extremely tough. Bonito receives $147 in welfare benefits every two weeks for her job at a senior citizens center. She’ll lose those benefits if she misses work. And the money she receives has to support her, her 16-year-old daughter and her child, plus her 22-year-old son who has cerebral palsy and seizures. She relies on the food pantry when the WIC benefits run out, but those visits require referrals from the Salvation Army or welfare office. “We’re barely making it,” said Bonito.
19. Poor Children’s Obesity Caused By Missing Nutrients
(Fort Worth Star-Telegram, November 18, 2008)
Research published in the November issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that childhood obesity and diabetes is the result, for children in poverty, of not eating enough to meet daily nutritional requirements. According to Dr. Roberto Trevino, director of the Social and health Research Center, out of 1,400 children studied in San Antonio, 44 percent consumed less than 1,400 calories a day – and 33 percent were obese; 7 percent screened positive for type 2 diabetes, typically a disease seen in adults. Without intervention, many of these children could be headed toward open heart surgery by age 25, and dialysis by 35. A healthy 9-year old child should be consuming1,400 to 2,200 calories a day, Trevino noted. The children studied “were not overeating,” he said. “This study shows these kids were not eating enough, and when they did eat it was all the wrong things.” Texas ranked seventh in the nation for the percentage of children living in poverty, and other cities, like Fort Worth, have the same socio-economic conditions found in the San Antonio study. In the state, the cost for obesity-related illnesses is projected to rise to $15.8 billion in 2025 from a 2005 total of $3.3 billion.
20. Social and Economic Policies Contribute to Obesity and Diabetes
(Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 18, 2008)
“The social and economic policies of the past two decades have created an obese and increasingly diabetic American underclass,” writes guest columnist Adam Drewnowski. Blaming obesity and diabetes on poor diet and fitness choices “fostered the illusion of choice” and disguised “the fact that most people have none.” Low-income households choosing high-calorie, energy-dense foods selected them because they simply had no other choice. “Simply put,” states Drewnowski, as incomes drop and budgets shrink, people choose energy-dense foods. And while increased money to spend on food does not necessarily guarantee “a better diet,” reducing spending money below a certain amount “virtually ensures” a nutrient-poor, energy rich diet. The high prices of food made the problem even worse. According to Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization and speaking at the 2008 High-level Conference on World Food Security, “Food choices are highly sensitive to price. The first items to drop out of the diet are usually healthy foods – fruit, vegetables, and high quality sources of protein…Nutrient poor staples are often the cheapest way to fill hungry stomachs.” Income levels have not entered into the U.S. debate on obesity, and the issue of food access is only now getting recognition. Drewnowski concludes by saying “It is a shame that many of the current strategies for obesity management are based not around alleviating poverty but around recommending high-cost foods to low-income people,” an approach that “will not work in the U.S. or elsewhere…. The relation between food, incomes and health should once again become a priority for global public health.”
21. Online Course Helps Healthcare Providers Learn About Hunger
(media-newswire.com, October 27, 2008)
A survey of doctors and nurses in Portland, Ore. revealed they wanted to know more about childhood food insecurity, its health consequences, and how to intervene clinically for hungry children. From this need, Oregon State University (OSU) developed a free online course titled “Childhood Food Insecurity: Health Impacts, Screening and Intervention” (available at http://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/hunger.) Not all hunger in the Portland area is visible, cautioned OSU nutrition education specialist Anne Hoisington, who said “About 12 percent of Oregon’s households struggle with food insecurity.” Hoisington helped design the survey and the online course. Taking about an hour to complete, the course helps doctors and nurses communicate with patients about hunger and assist them in finding food assistance programs. “This is a masterful summary to help Oregon’s physicians understand and address food insecurity that is threatening the well-being of mothers and children in their care,” said Deborah Frank, a doctor and professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine, who endorsed the original survey.
22. Residents of All Incomes Support Local Food in Grocery Stores
(Cattlenetwork.com, November 19, 2008)
A study of consumers by the University of Kentucky showed that people, regardless of their income, are aware of food issues and would like more local food offered in stores and restaurants. The survey was conducted by students in the rural sociology class taught by associate professor Keiko Tanaka; they visited five Lexington food retail markets and interviewed customers. Students in Tanaka’s classes have been contributing pieces over the past three years to her ongoing study about local food issues, a study started by Sociology Professor Patrick Mooney. Tanaka asked this year's class to determine whether the ordinary consumer has any concerns about food issues. Study participants said that healthy food is expensive and they wished they could buy more fresh fruits and vegetables for their children. An earlier study found that the poorest areas of Lexington, Ky. lacked grocery stores and are food deserts; low-income residents in these neighborhoods could walk to corner stores, but most carried no fresh produce and some offered bread, milk, and occasionally eggs. Another study found that corner store prices were much higher than in larger supermarkets.
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