$10 For a Homemade Meal for 4?
Posted by Billy Shore on Monday, February 6, 2012
Every parent wants the best for their child. But when you’re among the one in three Americans who lives in or near poverty, how do you put a healthy dinner on the table for your family each night? If – like a record number of Americans – you rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamps), you might have about $10 to spend on dinner for a family of four.
Share Our Strength recently surveyed low-income parents across the country about their cooking habits and the results were eye-opening. For example, the study showed 8 out of 10 families are making dinner at home at least 5 times a week. And 85 percent of parents surveyed say eating healthy meals is important to them. We also heard about the gap that exists between parents’ healthy aspirations and their ability to consistently prepare nourishing meals for their children.
The good news is that many of the barriers to healthy eating can be overcome with practical information and simple strategies, such as those taught in Cooking Matters, one of Share Our Strength’s signature anti-hunger programs. In Cooking Matters, families learn cooking skills and ways to shop smartly on a limited budget.
Programs like Cooking Matters along with essential public nutrition programs, like school breakfast and summer meals, are critical to ending childhood hunger but we need your help to ramp up and raise awareness about these efforts. I encourage you to read the study, share the findings, and learn how you can help.
The ConAgra Foods Foundation, one of our core partners and a national sponsor of Cooking Matters, generously supported It’s Dinnertime as part of its effort to better understand and address the issue of child hunger in the U.S.
I’m confident that with the support of friends like you, we can increase kids’ access to healthy food and continue educating families about ways to maximize their food resources so they can feed their children healthy food every day. Thank you again for your dedication to ending childhood hunger.
Click here for the entire report: It's Dinnertime: A Report on Low-Income Families' Efforts to Plan, Shop for, and Cook Healthy Meals
February 6, 2012 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: cooking matters, low-income, report
Post a comment
All fields are required (your e-mail address will not be displayed)