News

WASHINGTON, September 15, 2020 — Between 26–29 million adults living in the United States reported that members of their households sometimes or often did not have enough to eat during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report commissioned by the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC). Not Enough to Eat: COVID-19 Deepens America’s Hunger Crisis finds that Black and Latinx households, women, and children have been particularly hit hard during the pandemic. The report also underscores how the struggle to put food on the table would be far worse if not for federal nutrition programs.

WASHINGTON, August 31, 2020 — The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) commends the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for heeding the anti-hunger, education, youth-serving communities’ and bi-partisan call to extend waivers for critical child nutrition programs that ensure the growing number of children at risk of hunger can get the nutrition they need.

WASHINGTON, August 19, 2020 — The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) is calling on Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to use his authority to extend the child nutrition waivers that were available in the spring through the 2020-2021 school year to ensure schools and private nonprofit organizations have the flexibility needed to ensure that children who rely on free and reduced-price school meals still get the nutrition they need while schools are shuttered or have schedules that include both remote and in-classroom learning.

WASHINGTON, August 4, 2020 — Too many children across the country are missing out on the nutrition they need during the summer months when the school year — and access to school breakfast and lunch — ends, according to a new report released today by the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC). The Hunger Doesn’t Take a Vacation: Summer Nutrition Status Report finds 2.8 million children received summer lunch on an average weekday in July 2019, reaching only one child for every 7 low-income children who participated in school lunch during the 2018-2019 school year. Even fewer children — 1.5 million — ate breakfast at a summer meals site in July 2019, according to a companion report.

WASHINGTON, July 27, 2020 — Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s proposed COVID-19 response omits Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit boosts and falls woefully short of the investments needed to address food and economic hardship and jump-start economic recovery. The pandemic relief proposal fails to meet the needs of the growing number of hungry households that have been significantly impacted by this public health and economic crisis. The Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) calls on lawmakers to reject the McConnell proposal and instead redouble efforts to quickly craft and enact a package with SNAP boosts that would get meals onto struggling Americans’ kitchen tables and stimulate economic growth.