FRAC Chat

There is a common misconception that college students cannot, or do not, face food insecurity. When we imagine who attends college, we often think of students fresh out of high school, supported by their middle- to upper-middle-class — often white — parents. We imagine modern dormitories with ample amenities and seemingly unending supplies of cafeteria food, all freely accessible with just the swipe of one’s student ID.

However, given the demographic shift in who attends college, what we previously imagined about college students is no longer in touch with reality, if it ever was.

In this guest blog post, Dr. Janet Poppendieck, Urban School Food Alliance Advisory Council Member, highlights 10 key reasons to support free healthy school meals for all. Professor Poppendieck is the author of Free For All: Fixing School Food in America (University of California Press, 2010).

The Trump administration’s 2019 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) public charge rule has been removed. This victory is in no small part thanks to the tireless work of anti-hunger advocates and Protecting Immigrant Families Campaign partners who helped block the public charge rule and its harms to the nutrition, health, and well-being of immigrant families.

On March 31, attorneys representing Pennsylvania Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants secured an important victory when the Biden administration abandoned the Trump administration’s opposition to Families First SNAP Emergency Assistance going to the lowest income households already at the maximum benefit levels.  

In fiscal year 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service (USDA FNS) reported that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) retailer redemptions approximated $56 billion. In their recently released fiscal year 2020 data, that number dramatically increased to $78 billion. FNS attributes this 40 percent increase in redemptions to the emergency benefits provided in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.