Childhood Hunger
Latest News on September 2009
- September 30
Schools' Toughest Test: Cooking -
“… little actual cooking goes on in the nation’s largest public school system, largely because little of it can. Barely half of New York’s 1,385 school kitchens have enough cooking and fire-suppression equipment so cooks can actually sauté, brown or boil over open flame.”
New York Times (New York, NY)
Kim Severson
September 30, 2009ON a recent Monday afternoon in the back of a middle school kitchen in Queens, it sounded as if a deal was going down.
“You want garam? I can get you garam.”
Jorge Collazo, executive chef for New York City schools, was making an offer to Sharon Barlatier, the manager of one of the largest middle school cafeterias in New York, and, by extension, the country.
Her job is to entice nearly 2,000 students at the height of adolescent squirreliness to eat a good lunch. Because many of her students at Middle School 137 come from families with Indian roots, curry is one of her secret weapons. The spice mix garam masala might improve its firepower.
She has to make curry from a limited list of ingredients approved by the Department of Education: frozen pre-roasted commodity chicken parts, jarred chopped garlic and a generic curry powder.
Fresh chicken might improve it, but there isn’t a speck of raw meat allowed in New York City school cafeterias. It poses too much of a food-handling challenge.
So Mrs. Barlatier will settle for a little garam, even though Mr. Collazo will have to go out of his way to put it on the list.
Mrs. Barlatier is a rarity in a system that feeds almost a million children a day: she can cook, and she has the kitchen equipment to do it.
Many advocates for better, healthier school food have begun to believe that the only way to improve what students eat is to stop reheating processed food and start cooking real, fresh food.
But little actual cooking goes on in the nation’s largest public school system, largely because little of it can. Barely half of New York’s 1,385 school kitchens have enough cooking and fire-suppression equipment so cooks can actually sauté, brown or boil over open flame.
Even in those that do, aging ovens sometimes don’t heat properly, equipment is hidden away in storage rooms or broken, and the staff isn’t trained to do much more than steam frozen vegetables, dig ravioli out of a six-pound can or heat frozen chicken patties in a convection oven.
New York is not that unusual. More than 80 percent of the nation’s districts cook fewer than half their entrees from scratch, according to a 2009 survey by the School Nutrition Association.
The slide didn’t happen overnight. As many American families stopped cooking and began to rely on prepared and packaged food, so did the schools. It became cheaper to cut skilled kitchen labor, eliminate raw ingredients and stop maintaining kitchens.
“In school food 30 or 40 years ago, they roasted turkeys and did all of these things,” said Eric Goldstein, the chief executive of the Office of School Support Services.
“We all recognize we want to be scratch cooking again, but we have some challenges to get there.”
Bill Telepan, the chef who runs the highly regarded restaurant Telepan on the Upper West Side, has been trying to get fresh food back into school kitchens ever since he walked into his daughter’s Manhattan elementary school a couple of years ago and found grape jelly and ketchup passing for barbecue sauce.
Through a program called Wellness in the Schools, started by a group of parents, he is reworking recipes and leading a team of culinary student volunteers who will work side by side with cooks in eight schools.
“The schools are like General Motors,” Mr. Telepan said. “Over the years they created this cheap car that didn’t last and they got burned. It can’t last.”
The fight for scratch cooking can feel like guerrilla warfare. In one Brooklyn elementary school, parents declared victory when they got the cooks to boil water and cook pasta.
M.S. 137 is one of the return-to-cooking strongholds, though it seems an improbable place for it.
The four-story school in Ozone Park is just down the street from a 24-hour White Castle and near two of the busiest streets in Queens. Although it opened in 2002, its halls are already crammed with hundreds more children than the school was designed for. Teachers without classrooms to call their own push carts full of materials from borrowed room to borrowed room.
Students wear only black and white clothes as a sort of uniform. Because there are no lockers, they haul around backpacks so full they look like turtles.
Class materials are translated into eight languages to accommodate students from Guyanese, Dominican and Bengali families. Only a few students come from the Italian families that used to fill the neighborhood.
And in a policy decision based on both need and efficiency, all the students get a free government-subsidized lunch. Still, the school has to make sure a certain number of children eat in order to receive the federal reimbursements.
The principal, Laura Mastrogiovanni, readily admits that food wasn’t on her radar when she took over in 2005. The cafeteria keeps a separate budget and cooks don’t report to her. But when Mrs. Barlatier arrived in 2007 and started to improve the food, it didn’t take long to see that the children not only ate more of it but seemed happier at lunch.
“They needed a little flair in their food,” Mrs. Mastrogiovanni said. “It’s good for their brains.”
Like other newer schools in the city, M.S. 137 has a well-equipped kitchen. For schools around the country that aren’t so lucky, $100 million in federal stimulus money was set aside this year for improvements.
Much of New York City’s share of the money will buy nearly 100 salad bars, including 30-inchers low enough for elementary school students, as well as deli bars and refrigerators. It’s not exactly fancy stoves and copper pots, but it is one more step toward serving fresh food.
But even with the best equipment in the world, you can’t cook without cooks. So school officials use M.S. 137’s large kitchen as a training center.
Mrs. Barlatier embraces the mission like a cheery drill sergeant. She pounds home the concept of kitchen organization in people for whom mise en place might as well be space shuttle repair. She empowers them to turn away produce orders filled with wilted parsley and moldy oranges and to use leftovers judiciously.
“If you would not eat it yourself, don’t serve it,” she admonishes.
She will not tolerate cooks who say students will eat only hamburgers or pizza or who complain that there is not enough equipment to cook the more complex recipes the district is trying to encourage.
“It’s not the limit of the equipment,” she tells them. “You can have only a steamer and make a sauce. You can have one burner and make a sauce. There is nothing stopping you.”
Her remarkably tight-knit staff of 13 people put out an average of 1,400 meals between 11:09 a.m. and 2:06 p.m. The children come through the line in four shifts. That’s like turning a 325-seat restaurant four times in three hours, except everyone is eating off foam trays and using those flimsy fork-spoon combinations called sporks.
It is a loud place, made even louder by the amplified voices of aides, who use microphones and whistles to keep everyone moving or sitting.
“No machines until you get your lunch!” an aide yells, trying to keep students from the bank of vending machines at the back of the cafeteria ringing with the siren call of Pop-Tarts and Cool Ranch Doritos.
The staff heats food in batches and regularly refreshes the well-stocked salad bar, which includes fresh coleslaw and potato salad made with oil and vinegar from mayonnaise-free recipes Mr. Collazo developed.
Still, Mrs. Barlatier does not get to cook what she wants. She has to turn out food like canned beef ravioli and sandwiches made with frozen chicken patties. The items are promised on the citywide menu. Leave them off and students might go home hungry and complain to their parents.
But she does get to play with special recipes to try to broaden the daily menus and appeal to the ethnic makeup of the students.
Mr. Collazo encourages that kind of cooking, but he is not convinced that everything has to be made from scratch.
“What’s the advantage?” he said. Limited staff time and money is better spent creating fresher salad bars and preparing more interesting sauces for the pre-roasted chicken parts.
And he is quick to point out that school lunch has been improving in a thousand other small ways. The bread is whole wheat. The pasta is whole grain. Milk is low fat. The hamburgers, which arrive cooked and frozen, were once so lean and dry that cooks would simmer them in water to keep them moist. He found a company that made them more moist by adding textured vegetable protein to the ground beef. “Part of my job is to make sure the stuff that’s getting heated in a box is decent and good,” he said.
The curry recipe is a compromise between cooking with fresh ingredients and processed ones. It starts with frozen, cooked chicken parts that are left to defrost overnight, then heated in the morning.
Meanwhile, onions, green peppers and celery are finely chopped and tossed with jarred garlic and oil into a 40-gallon tilted braising pan, the prized workhorse of the M.S. 137 kitchen.
Curry powder, chicken soup mix, pepper and cumin are then stirred in, and the mixture is thickened with cornstarch before it is poured over the chicken.
“The kids love this curry,” Mrs. Barlatier said. “It makes them feel comforted and cared for, which is what we want to do.”
She promised a reporter that the children’s enthusiasm for the curry would be easy to see. But there were early signs of trouble. Mrs. Barlatier had just introduced a deli bar. Two workers make custom sandwiches from a selection of freshly sliced cold cuts and cheeses.
Before the students reach the deli bar, they pass the curry station, which looked better than the buffet lines in a lot of Indian restaurants. There was a vegetarian version with peas and potatoes, and fluffy rice yellow with turmeric, garnished with a rose peeled from a tomato. And perhaps the biggest surprise? Chunks of plantains that came frozen but turned soft and sweet in the oven.
As the children began to pour in, Mrs. Barlatier ran back and forth in a long white coat, dispensing hugs and sporks.
The children come to treat her like a respected auntie by the end of the year. But on this day, she was about to become the mean lunch lady.
The lines were backing up. Some children might not have a chance to eat in the precious few minutes allotted them. The principal was becoming upset.
Mrs. Barlatier spotted the culprit: the deli bar. Students were passing on her lovely curry and waiting for their shot at custom-made sandwiches.
No matter how delicious her food is, she battles daily with the mercurial palate of the middle school student.
“You could have steak here and they are going for that deli,” she said, exasperated.
It was time for action. She shut the deli bar, enduring shouts of protest and the kind of incredulous eye rolls that only a seventh-grade girl can deliver.
A sixth grader, asked why people were so crazy for what looked like a fairly unremarkable sandwich, explained.
“It’s like Subway,” he said, “but you don’t have to pay.”
- September 30
At Some Schools, Tastier Trays Come At A Price -
Here’s what everyone agrees on: Too many kids are fat. The food they get at school, which provides 35 percent of most schoolchildren’s calories, is not nutritious enough and tastes lousy, to boot. And there’s not enough money to change this unwholesome picture.
The Washington Post (Washington, DC)
Jane Black, Washington Post Staff Writer
September 30, 2009Here’s what everyone agrees on: Too many kids are fat. The food they get at school, which provides 35 percent of most schoolchildren’s calories, is not nutritious enough and tastes lousy, to boot. And there’s not enough money to change this unwholesome picture.
So here’s the question: How much will it cost to fix school lunch?
Congress will seek the answer this fall as it budgets for childhood nutrition programs, which include about $12 billion annually for school meals. There is no lack of proposals. The nonprofit School Nutrition Association is asking for a 35-cent-per-lunch increase in the federal reimbursement rate, which now stands at $2.68. Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D—N.Y.) wants a 70-cent raise. Berkeley, Calif., chef and local-food pioneer Alice Waters is lobbying to bring the total to $5 per student. The administration, too, supports improving school food, at least rhetorically: President Obama has proposed an additional $1 billion for child nutrition programs, including school lunch, in his 2010 budget. Michelle Obama is promoting healthful eating as a signature issue.
But with a projected $1.6 trillion federal deficit in 2009, even the strongest supporters of school lunch reform privately concede a substantial increase is unlikely to pass. That means no extra money to rebuild school kitchens, to train cafeteria workers or to buy more fresh fruits and vegetables. Progressive food service directors will continue to add leaner menu items and salad bars. But on the whole, traditional school lunch, that culinary gantlet of tater tots and greasy pizza, appears here to stay.
Or does it?
Oakland, Calif.-based Revolution Foods thinks it might have a solution. The four-year-old company turns out thousands of made-from-scratch meals — such as roasted chicken with yams, beans, a locally grown peach and a carton of milk — that meet all Department of Agriculture nutrition standards. It shuns high-fructose corn syrup and trans fats and includes only hormone- and antibiotic-free milk and meat and all-natural ingredients. The price, between $2.90 and $3 per lunch, is not much higher than the current $2.68 the government pays.
To date, more than 250 schools in California, Colorado and, beginning this year, the District have signed on. Public health advocates and lawmakers are watching closely to see whether the model can work.
Hiring Revolution Foods for the 2009 school year was a financial stretch at the KIPP LEAP Academy, a charter school in Southeast Washington. To cover the gap between what the federal government pays and what Revolution Foods charges, the school had to secure a $25,000 grant. But the school already had been struggling to make ends meet on its school lunch program, said Irene Holtzman, the director of student data and accountability for KIPP DC. About 80 percent of students at KIPP DC’s seven schools qualify for a free or reduced-price school lunch. Providing a tasty school meal can increase attendance, boost student focus and, especially among younger children, improve lifelong nutritional habits, Holtzman said: “It’s a testament to how important [food] is to schools in general that they’re even willing to consider it. In general, when you ask a school about something that’s a money loser, the answer is no.”
Revolution Foods’ lunches went down reasonably well on KIPP LEAP’s first day of school. Nineteen of 23 kindergarteners in Liz Olson’s class sat down to a meal of cheese tortellini, carrots, milk, a whole-wheat roll and a nectarine. The students were flummoxed by the un-fuzzy peach. And most preferred the tortellini to the carrots; “it tastes different,” said Jada Hillard, who was persuaded to try one carrot but refused to eat any more.
The food “is quite different than before,” said Olson, who had tasted Revolution Foods’ meals during summer school. “None of the vegetables are frozen, and there’s a wider variety of what they get to eat. Before, you could visibly see the grease on the entrees; now you don’t.”
Founders Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey conceived Revolution Foods when they were students at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. In spring 2006, the pair launched their first pilot program at an Oakland, Calif., school. By year’s end, the new company was serving 10 schools. “We heard all the reasons why it couldn’t be done: Kids won’t eat healthy food. It’s too expensive,” said Richmond, 34. “But it was clear demand was there.”
The key question was how to meet that demand at a price the schools could afford. Revolution Foods serves a network of charter and private schools, which, like KIPP LEAP, sometimes can tap extra funds. But the company’s mission is to serve public schools in low-income areas as well. The all-natural cheeses, hormone-free milk and organic produce used by Revolution Foods are more expensive than the ingredients in an average school lunch.
One answer to capping costs is Revolution Foods’ partnerships with food suppliers. The company has cut deals with purveyors such as grocer Whole Foods Market, dairy Clover Stornetta Farms and, here in the mid-Atlantic, Uptown Bakery in Hyattsville and sauce and soup maker Chesapeake Gardens in Glen Burnie, Md. To support their mission, Richmond says, partner companies offer a discount of 5 to 8 percent off typical wholesale prices. Revolution Foods also has negotiated extended payment terms with most vendors, a boon when working with cash-strapped schools.
Revolution Foods also saves money by making most of its meals from scratch. The company’s first prep kitchen was a retrofitted McDonald’s on a naval base in Alameda, Calif. It now has four commissaries that produce 40,000 meals a day. In Washington, the company has outgrown its Silver Spring kitchen and plans to move to a 20,000-square-foot space in Northeast Washington to service its 25 local charter and private schools. “The conventional wisdom says that if you buy packaged goods, you save money,” Richmond said. “But by putting the work in and buying fresh broccoli, rather than chopped and bagged, we’re able to save a lot of money.”
Some are still skeptical about whether the Revolution Foods model can work in the country’s largest and poorest school districts. Tony Geraci, the director of food service at the Baltimore City Public Schools and a pioneer for healthful, local foods in schools, says Revolution Foods is right to buy wholesome ingredients and cook meals from scratch in regional commissaries. But he worries that the company will be unable to bring costs down enough or take on school bureaucracies.
“I think for the market segment they’re chasing, it’s obtainable,” Geraci said. “Charter schools have a different mind-set. They understand the connection between nutrition and education, so they may be willing to pony up the extra money.”
Indeed, prospects are dim for a substantial increase to the federal reimbursement rate. “The president asked for $1 billion,” said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. “But he can’t be knocking on [Montana Senator and Senate Finance Committee Chairman] Max Baucus’s door asking for it when he’s asking for $1 trillion for health care. I don’t think we’ll end up with it being based on what’s needed. It will be more like, here’s the pot we have, so how much can we put towards reimbursement?”
Without more federal funds, Geraci says, public schools will have to settle for incremental, if important, change. This year, Geraci is implementing meatless Mondays to improve nutrition — and the bottom line. Fairfax County Public Schools offers a choice of two salads each day: a chef’s salad with tuna, for example, or fruit salad served with yogurt and a pretzel. Last month, Whole Foods Market partnered with school lunch crusader Ann Cooper to launch a Web site called the Lunch Box (http://www.thelunchbox.org) that offers menus, recipes and technical tools for budget planning to help schools wean themselves from packaged and processed foods.
Richmond says Revolution Foods’ model can work. So far, in the Washington area the company is working only with charter and private schools. But it does serve 15 public school districts in California. Some, such as the Los Gatos Union district, are affluent. Others are not: Roseland, in Sonoma County, serves a population in which 81 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals.
Revolution Foods will help schools raise money to bridge the financial gap, Richmond said. In some cases, paid lunches can subsidize meals for lower-income students. The company also provides free catering for events to raise money for better school food. And, of course, Richmond is hopeful that the federal government will raise the federal reimbursement rate when it reauthorizes child nutrition programs later this year.
“We have to be smart as a country and a food system,” Richmond said. “But we are living proof that it can be done.”
- September 30
Census Data Show Falling Income -
In 2008, the median household income in the United States plummeted 3.6% from the year before, and the percentage of people living in poverty soared to an 11-year high, recently released U.S. Census data reveal.
LA Times
Kate Linthicum & DeeDee Correll
September 30, 2009Economists say the bleak news — which they blame on the slew of layoffs that have accompanied the economic downturn — is significant, if not entirely surprising.
“The current recession has eliminated the gains that have been made in the last 10 years or so,” said Lee Ohanian, an economics professor at UCLA. But, he said, “this is the pattern you typically see in a recession.”
The statistics don’t surprise people like Aura Lopez either.
“It is very difficult to get by always, but it is especially difficult now,” said Lopez, 28, a Guatemalan immigrant in Los Angeles who is unemployed. She said she used to send $450 every month to her two young daughters in Guatemala, but these days, she sends nothing.
The census data, culled earlier this year from the Current Population Survey, represent the Census Bureau’s most current findings and reflect the impact of the early part of the recession, which economists say started in December 2007.
The data show the devastation of the recession through various economic indicators, such as the real median household income. In 2007 it was $52,163. A year later it dropped to $50,303, the lowest level since 1997.
The nation’s poverty rate, meanwhile, rose to 13.2%, the highest level since 1997.
The new data also cast a spotlight on the recession’s principal victims: children, minorities and those who weren’t born in the United States.
The number of children younger than 18 living in poverty increased from 13.3 million in 2007 to 14.1 million in 2008, the census says, with minority children more likely to be poor.
Last year, 34.7% of black children and 30.6% of Latino children lived below the poverty line, compared with 10.6% of white children.
Foreign-born people living in the United States were also more likely to live in poverty than American-born citizens, with 17.8% of people born outside the country living beneath the poverty line, compared with 12.6% of native-born Americans.
The data also suggest that Latinos have suffered economically more than other groups in the last year. Between 2007 and 2008, the median income for Latino households declined 5.6%, to $37,913. At the same time, the median income for non-Latinos fell 2.6%, to $55,530.
Ohanian, who studies recessions, says minorities and people born outside the country often suffer disproportionately during recessions, in part because they often have less advanced education.
“Job loss tends to be concentrated most highly among those with the least amount of education and formal training,” he said.
William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, said those at the bottom of the income ladder suffer because their jobs are often among the first to be cut.
“They’ve been hit hard because they’ve had a lot of the low-paying jobs which have been jettisoned easily,” Frey said.
The census data indicate that although the recession has hit some groups harder than others, it has affected almost all Americans.
In Arvada, Colo., a suburb northwest of Denver, the Arvada Community Food Bank has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of families seeking help over the last year, executive director Ernest Giron said.
In summer 2008, an average of 28 families per day came in for food; by fall, that number had jumped by 35%.
“We had a tremendous spike,” Giron said. “A lot were newly laid off, or their hours were being reduced significantly. They weren’t working 40 hours a week anymore. Some were getting pink slips and having to come to the food bank for the first time in their adult life.”
A year later, the food bank is serving as many as 54 families per day, Giron said.
Several weeks ago, he encountered one well-dressed man waiting for his wife to pick out their food.
“He said, ‘I know you think I’m dressed pretty good for a food bank, but I’ve been laid off for eight months, and from here, I’m going to an interview. Before, we were able to give to the food bank. Now I have to come because our kids have to have food,’ ” Giron recalled.
In Los Angeles, Lopez has also had trouble paying for basics, such as food and rent for her room in Koreatown.
“We used to be able to go shopping and buy things that were not absolutely necessities, like clothes and toys,” she said. “Those things I can no longer do. We cannot afford to go to the doctor, so we try hard not to get sick.”
- September 29
Whole Foods to Food Banks -
For the charities, the surge in demand has tested their resourcefulness — and sometimes their patience.
Washington Post
Annie Gowen
September 29, 2009The Germantown woman was loading boxes of food from the Manna food bank into a shiny sport-utility vehicle one recent afternoon when she was approached by a donor dropping off food.
“What group are you with?” the donor asked the woman, who promptly burst into tears. With her Toyota Sequoia and quilted Vera Bradley bag, she had been mistaken for a volunteer — rather than a client waiting to take home a bag of potatoes.
“I’m a mother of four just trying to feed my kids,” the woman sobbed to the donor, who was taken aback, then sympathetic.
Such awkward scenes are playing out frequently at food pantries and other charities across the region as they struggle to help the still upward-spiraling number of formerly middle-class people knocking on their doors.
For the charities, the surge in demand has tested their resourcefulness — and sometimes their patience. Not only must they stock millions of pounds of additional food in bigger warehouses, but they also must adopt fresh tactics to help the newly needy, who can be more bewildered, more emotional and more selective than their traditional clients.
One intake volunteer at Food for Others in Fairfax County, for example, has learned that the formerly affluent won’t wait outside in line for food at evening neighborhood giveaways, lest they be spotted.
“We have more people than ever coming here thinking they’d never ever be here,” said Amy Ginsburg, executive director of Manna Food Center in Montgomery County. Manna, along with most food area pantries, requires people to prove by income that they need assistance.
The group is moving into a 12,000-square-foot warehouse in Gaithersburg on Oct. 5 to meet the growing need. Manna gave away 3.1 million pounds of food to 102,519 Montgomery County residents last fiscal year, up from 2.1 million pounds the year before. They’ve increased food drives, and cash donations have kept pace.
Manna’s workers and volunteers try to make the experience as dignified as possible for everyone, helping clients load their cars and handing out juice boxes and pretzels to families waiting in increasingly longer lines. On a recent morning, residents dressed in pressed khakis waited for boxes of fresh produce, meat and canned goods alongside those in dirty T-shirts.
“Not having enough money for food is a bizarre, foreign experience” for the new needy, Ginsburg explained. “They’re still getting over the shock.”
Ginsburg and others running local charities expect the number of residents seeking help to continue to rise even as the economy improves. Jobless numbers are increasing, they point out, while severance checks and unemployment benefits are running out.
Fairfax found in a recent survey of 89 churches and nonprofit organizations that 32,044 households received food assistance in the last quarter of 2008, a 39 percent increase from the previous year’s fourth quarter. Almost half of the respondents reported helping families that had never asked for aid before — many of them former middle-class residents now unemployed or facing foreclosure.
Wanda Moloney, client relations manager at Loudoun Interfaith Relief, which served 56,000 residents last year, said her group gives food to 100 new families a week. Increasingly, Interfaith volunteers from some of Loudoun’s most affluent neighborhoods find themselves packing boxes for their friends and neighbors.
Nobody knows what to say.
“You can see it in the eye contact,” Moloney said. “The tears say it all.”
Barbara Curtis, 61, said that the experience of getting groceries from the food pantry was “startling at first.” She and her husband, Tripp, lost their sprawling Loudoun home this year after he became ill and was unable to work. With five children at home, their descent from a comfortable middle-class life seemed to happen overnight. “It really let me see how vulnerable we all are,” Curtis said.
Terry Wilson, 43, a floral designer, also sought help in Loudoun after he was bumped from full time to part time at work and lost his benefits. But it wasn’t easy. The first time he pulled open the door and took in the crowd in the waiting room, he turned around and walked out.
“It was like, ‘Whoa … I can’t do this,’ ” he recalled Wednesday as he picked up food for the second time. But then he realized having the groceries could help him shift money to his utility bill and his car payment. “Everyone else is doing it, and times are tough. Let’s suck it up and see what happens.”
Out in the Manna parking lot, the Germantown woman — who was visiting the food bank for the second time and did not want her name used to spare her children embarrassment — was inspecting her food allotment with the zeal of a soccer mom at Whole Foods. She turned to Manna for help after her husband refinanced their home into a costly subprime mortgage and then moved out. She has been able to get the mortgage modified, but her finances remain precarious.
She checked the expiration date on a carton of soy milk, unscrewed the lid of a jar of organic peanut butter to make sure it was sealed and read the label on a tube of ground turkey. The turkey did not pass muster, and she politely returned it to a Manna staffer. “I don’t know what’s in it,” she explained.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” she said. “You can’t go without food, but certain foods at Manna, no way I’m going to feed my kids. It’s kind of snotty.” She rejoiced in a big bag of day-old bagels, sport drinks and doughnuts, treats she could no longer afford to buy her sons.
At times, this changing face of need has sparked moments of confusion and discomfort for those who are trying to help.
Christine Lucas, executive director of the Arlington Food Assistance Center, said she is often asked by volunteers and donors about the number of clients driving fancy cars. (A well-dressed couple who declined to be interviewed was there recently, putting their sacks into a Cadillac.) Lucas responds that it could be an employer’s car or a family hanging onto its last asset.
Or it could be the formerly middle-class mom with Calvin Klein sunglasses perched atop her head who said she was going to have to search Epicurious.com for recipes that use black beans because the pantry had given her so many cans.
Appearances can be deceiving, as Debbie Lane and her two children discovered when they drove out to an affluent neighborhood in Chantilly to deliver $200 worth of school supplies to a needy family. Lane, of Fairfax, said her kids had offered to reuse some of their school supplies from last year so that they could contribute to the back-to-school drive, organized by the food pantry Our Daily Bread.
“My son, who is 8, said, ‘Mom, if this is the neighborhood we’re dropping these things off in, I think we should turn our car around,’ ” Lane recalled. “It was a great segue for me to talk about what poverty does and does not look like.”
But even she was surprised at the size and scope of “this palatial home with two brand-new expensive cars in the driveway. I was really grappling with this. I was thinking, ‘This is crazy.’ ” She later learned that what she had tried to explain to her kids was true: The family that needed the supplies was renting rooms in the home’s basement and had recently seen its income drop when the mother died of cancer.
The Germantown mother of four said she knew why she’d been mistaken for a volunteer by the donor dropping off food — it was her car.
“Because I have the [Sequoia], she thought I was doing the same thing she was, I guess,” the woman speculated. She watched the donor drive away with a mix of envy and sadness, remembering what it was like “to be normal.”
“What a glorious feeling … to be able to give to other people,” she said. “It is a better feeling to give than to receive. But sometimes you have to receive.”
- September 29
D.C. Data On Poverty Grim But Unchanged -
More than one in four District children were living in poverty last year, even as the region was weathering the recession’s onset better than most metropolitan areas, according to census data released Tuesday.
Washington Post
Carol Morello & Dan Keating
September 29, 2009The poverty rates for District children diverged widely by race and ethnicity. The rate was 36 percent for black children; 17 percent for Hispanic children; and 3 percent for non-Hispanic white children. Virginia and Maryland also had large racial and ethnic gaps in childhood poverty, but none as great as in the District. The data was virtually unchanged from 2007.
Washington and Baltimore were the only jurisdictions in the region whose share of the total population living in poverty — 17 percent in the District and 19 percent in Baltimore — was greater last year than the national average of 13 percent, according to the Census Bureau.
In Maryland, 8 percent of residents were poor, as were 10 percent of all Virginians, the data showed.
The poverty statistics were collected throughout 2008, and do not reflect the full brunt of the recession that began in December 2007. Charities and other nonprofit groups that work with the poor throughout the region began reporting an uptick in people looking for help last year, and workers have watched the numbers snowball since then.
The data derived from the sample survey showed no significant year-to-year change.
At the Calvert County Family Center, a program run by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, new families began to show up in June of 2008, said program manager Nicole Quinn. The pace has picked up since then, she said. Many qualify for food stamps for the first time because their incomes have dropped so precipitously.
“If you were to take a snapshot that was a picture of today’s reality, you’d see things have gotten worse,” said George Jones, executive director of Bread for the City in the District, which has seen private donations and government contributions plummet or dry up this year.
Despite the grim news, prosperity held up better last year in the Washington area than in virtually every other metropolitan region in the country. Its poverty rate of 7 percent was the lowest of 101 metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 residents.
William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, said the sharpest increases in poverty nationwide occurred in Florida and California. Bridgeport, Conn., also took a hit from the corporate financial crisis and mortgage meltdown, he said.
“For 2008, the recession was a bit slower to impact our region than the rest of the country,” said Peter Tatian of the Urban Institute. “But within the metro area, you’re going to see a lot more hardship than you would looking at the average.”
The region’s lowest poverty rates were in Loudoun County, 3 percent; Anne Arundel County, 4 percent; and Fairfax County, 5 percent. Apart from the District and Baltimore, the highest poverty rates were in Frederick County, 8 percent; Alexandria, 7 percent; Arlington County, 7 percent; and Prince George’s County, 7 percent.
Poverty has been offset somewhat by increases in food stamps and other government food programs. The Census Bureau said 8.6 percent of all Americans received government food stamps in 2008, up from 7.7 percent in 2007.
The number of people receiving food stamps increased by more than 37,000 in the District, Maryland and Virginia last year, compared with the previous year. Almost 11 percent of District residents received food stamps in 2008, as did 6 percent of Maryland residents and 7 percent of Virginians.
The District’s food stamp caseload is at its highest level in two decades, said Ed Lazare, head of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute.
Kinaya Sokoya, executive director of the D.C. Children’s Trust Fund, said the poverty figures, which were based on a sample, probably underestimate the problem.
“The people who are willing to answer the questions would not be among the ones who are most impoverished,” she said. “They tend to be a little suspicious, out of concern the person coming to their door is a bill collector.”
Lazare said the most recent numbers underscore a growing inequality that has been building over several years. “It’s been a familiar but depressing story of the only people benefiting in the city’s economy are those with the most education, generally white residents who live west of Rock Creek Park,” he said.
- September 29
Downturn Weighs on Poor -
More Children Fall Into Poverty as Family Incomes Shrink; Ms. Smith Sells Her Recliner
The Wall Street Journal (New York, NY)
Conor Dougherty
September 29, 2009Poverty rose in the West and Midwest last year, as slowdowns in housing and manufacturing sent more families below the poverty line, according to a Census Bureau report released Tuesday.
Kimberly Calvillo prepares food baskets for the needy at Elijah’s Pantry in Chicago on Sept. 10. The group now gives away 500 baskets monthly, up from 300 in the past year.
The report, part of the agency’s annual American Community Survey, was the latest to measure the recession’s toll on low-income families, after a boom in which low-skilled workers relied on plentiful jobs and overtime — often in construction and retail — to raise their incomes and prospects.
The bureau said poverty rates overall increased in 31 states and the District of Columbia in 2008, compared with poverty-rate increases in 10 states in 2007. Still, of the 31 states that reported increases in the poverty rate last year, the increases were statistically significant in only eight, though they included two of the nation’s four largest states, California and Florida.
Florida and California saw poverty-rate increases of about one percentage point to just over 13% for each state, according to an analysis of Census data by William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. More
The other six states were Oregon, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Hawaii and Connecticut. Only one state — Michigan — saw statistically significant increases in poverty two years in a row.
Tuesday’s Census report is the latest to show an increase in poverty across the U.S. — especially among children, and in regions where job and income losses have been acute. Last year, only three states showed statistically significant decreases in the poverty rate, compared with 12 states in the year-earlier period. Twenty-one states had poverty rates that were higher than the national poverty rate of 13.2%.
The U.S. poverty rate for 2008 is defined as annual earnings of less than $22,000 for a family of four with two children.
With unemployment rising, and hours shrinking, many working poor and their children are falling into poverty and seeking more government help. Families with two or more workers made up 28.4% of food-stamp recipients, up 1.5 percentage points from a year ago, one of the largest increases among groups getting food stamps.
“There are lots of people who are using food stamps for the first time, because they don’t have any other options,” said Mark Mather, a demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group in Washington.
The percentage of children living in poverty increased in 26 states and the District of Columbia last year, compared with the 17 states that saw increases in 2007.
43-year-old home-care nurse, hasn’t lost her job, but spotty work hours have dropped her income to about $800 a month, roughly a quarter of what she made a year ago. Ms. Smith augments her salary with partial-unemployment benefits.
Ms. Smith and three of her sons have moved three times in the past year, including two months spent at a housing shelter. The family is now living in a two-bedroom attic apartment in Allentown, Pa. Ms. Smith’s 25-year-old son, who is receiving unemployment benefits, recently moved in as well. “The family has moved back in together to help each other out,” she said.
Ms. Smith said she goes to food banks and plans family meals every week based on what is in the refrigerator. Everyone in the family has sold something — sneakers, clothes and Ms. Smith’s recliner — at the many yard sales they have staged in the past year to raise cash, she said. Her 15-year-old son took money from working at a fair to buy shoes for school — and gave the rest to his mother to help out, she said.
“I try to have family meetings to let them know what’s going on and how we need to work together,” she said.
The increase in poverty in Florida and California was apparent at the city level. The six metropolitan areas with the largest year-over-year increase in poverty were in Florida and California, including Lakeland-Winter Haven, as well as Stockton and Fresno in California’s Central Valley.
Oregon, Nevada and Arizona saw poverty-rate increases between 0.5 percentage point and 0.7 percentage point, according to the Census Bureau. Poverty also rose across the Rust Belt and industrial Midwest, with the poverty rising in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Michigan.
The highest concentrations of poor were still in Southern states, where poverty has long been a problem. The highest poverty rate in the country, at 21.2%, was in Mississippi, while Kentucky, West Virginia and Arkansas each had poverty rates around 17%.
- September 22
USDA, NFL & Dairy Farmers Team Up For Nutrition -
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today the U.S. Department of Agriculture will work with the National Football League (NFL) and the nation’s dairy farmers to promote good nutrition and fitness in the nation’s schools. The collaboration will help support President Obama’s effort to promote good nutrition and physical fitness for America’s children.
Food Manufacturing
September 21, 2009WASHINGTON, D.C.(USDA) — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today the U.S. Department of Agriculture will work with the National Football League (NFL) and the nation’s dairy farmers to promote good nutrition and fitness in the nation’s schools. The collaboration will help support President Obama’s effort to promote good nutrition and physical fitness for America’s children.
“Childhood obesity is a very serious issue that endangers the long-term health and welfare of our nation’s youngsters,” said Vilsack. “To reverse this dangerous trend and give our kids the opportunity to eat smarter, exercise more and lessen their risk of disease, both the public and private sectors will have to work together to marshal their combined expertise and resources.”
Vilsack met with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Thomas Gallagher, chief executive of Dairy Management, Inc., which runs the National Dairy Research and Promotion Program. The NFL and DMI are launching Fuel Up to Play 60, an innovative nutrition and fitness program based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, in some 60,000 schools this fall. The social marketing program empowers students to assume leadership in being more active and eating more healthy foods.
The campaign will inspire kids to “fuel up” with the nutrient-rich foods they often lack—fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low- or no-fat dairy products—and “get up and play” with 60 minutes of daily physical activity. Student teams will evaluate their school’s “wellness” and choose the healthy eating and physical activity programs on which the school will focus.
At the meeting, Secretary Vilsack discussed a plan to develop a Memorandum of Understanding between USDA, the NFL and DMI to allow USDA programs and Fuel Up to Play 60 to collaborate and collectively tackle the critical issue of children’s health.
“USDA is excited to bring this partnership the experience and resources of our successful school-based health education efforts like Team Nutrition schools and the HealthierUS School Challenge,” Vilsack said.
“NFL is a proud partner of Fuel Up to Play 60. It is an important component of our overall NFL Play 60 campaign,” says NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “Our goal is to raise awareness about the importance of staying fit and eating right, especially for America’s young people. This partnership is a powerful alliance linking the USDA, National Dairy Council and the NFL to address childhood obesity and emphasize the role of daily physical activity in a healthy lifestyle.”
“National Dairy Council is honored to work together with USDA and the NFL on Fuel Up to Play 60,” said Thomas P. Gallagher, chief executive officer of Dairy Management Inc., the managing organization for National Dairy Council. “Child nutrition, particularly in schools, has been a cornerstone of National Dairy Council for nearly a century. This program centers on youth taking the lead in changing the school environment through increasing opportunities for eating healthier and getting more physical activity.”
USDA manages 15 nutrition programs, which touch the lives of one in five Americans each year. And across the country, USDA designated ‘Team Nutrition’ schools have worked to forge the link between classroom nutrition activities and healthy meals served in the cafeteria. USDA’s HealthierUS School Challenge recognizes ‘Team Nutrition’ schools that are creating healthier school environments through their promotion of good nutrition and physical activity. USDA is also the one of the lead agencies along with the Department of Health and Human Services, working to develop the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the nation’s official dietary advice.
- September 16
Food Bank Farm Keeps Growing -
While many New Hampshire farms continue to suffer due to the economy, there is one local farm that is thriving due to the number of families who are hungry.
The production garden is a recent addition to the New Hampshire Food Bank’s Recipe for Success program. Located on the grounds of the Youth Development Center in Manchester, the garden is meant to provide local families with fresh, healthy food.
The Telegraph (Nashua, NH)
Michelle Collins
September 16, 2009While many New Hampshire farms continue to suffer due to the economy, there is one local farm that is thriving due to the number of families who are hungry.
The production garden is a recent addition to the New Hampshire Food Bank’s Recipe for Success program. Located on the grounds of the Youth Development Center in Manchester, the garden is meant to provide local families with fresh, healthy food.
“The food gets divided up between three programs at the Food Bank: the warehouse, (Operation) Frontline and the culinary training program,” said Jason Rivers, garden coordinator.
The Recipe for Success program is meant to empower less fortunate individuals and their families in order to improve their food security. The culinary program at the NHFB provides unemployed and underemployed adults with the skills necessary to get jobs in the food-service industry. Operation Frontline is meant to teach less fortunate families how to make healthy food choices, prepare delicious meals on a tight budget and make the most out of their money when it comes to healthy eating.
The production garden was not developed until last year and started at only a quarter of an acre, which was donated by the N.H. Division of Juvenile Justice Services. The garden has already grown to half an acre, and it received more than 2,600 pounds of vegetables last season alone.
“My understanding is that (the garden was started) because a lot of the donations that were coming in weren’t coming in anymore,” Rivers said. “This season was a little rough … but I think we’re coming along and doing great.”
Rivers was signed on as garden coordinator halfway through the summer of 2008. Rivers was a student at the Food Bank’s culinary training program before being promoted to his current title. This promotion couldn’t have come at a better time, seeing as the number of families who rely on the NHFB for their meals has risen considerably since the last calendar year. For instance, the Food Bank distributed 508,847 pounds of food this past April to local families, compared to the 443,974 pounds it distributed the previous April.
“We’re looking at working on a project to (build) a year-round greenhouse so we can start growing the plants earlier,” Rivers said.
The production garden grows everything from corn to carrots to potatoes to a variety of squashes, as well as a more unique plot of produce: a pizza garden.
“A pizza garden is … everything you’d put on a pizza,” Rivers said. “It’s (even) shaped like a pizza.”
The pizza garden grows everything from tomatoes to basil and is just another way the production garden benefits the culinary students and the local families that are looking for easy, healthy meals to assemble during the week.
The production garden closes for the winter at the end of October and reopens at the end of May. However, Rivers is always looking for volunteers, as he is already building his list for the next season.
If you are interested in volunteering at the garden, or the NHFB in general, contact the volunteer coordinator at 669-9725 or nphillips@nhfoodbank. org. You can also visit the NHFB Web site at www. nhfoodbank.org.
- September 15
Agriculture Deputy Secretary Merrigan Announces Initiative To Connect Children To Where Their Food Comes From -
New Farm-to-School Tactical Teams Will Assist School Administrators Transition to Purchasing More Locally Grown Foods as Part of USDA’s ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Initiative’
USDA Release No. 0441.09
Contact: USDA Office of Communications (202) 720-4623WASHINGTON, Sept. 15, 2009 - Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan today announced a new initiative to better connect children to their food and create opportunities for local farmers to provide their harvest to schools in their communities as part of USDA’s ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiative. USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) and Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) will team together and form ‘Farm to School Tactical Teams’ to assist school administrators as they transition to purchasing more locally grown foods. The agencies will also issue updated common-sense purchasing guidance to schools so they can buy fresh, locally grown produce for students eating through USDA’s school nutrition programs. Food and Nutrition Service Administrator Julie Paradis made the announcement on Merrigan’s behalf at the Homegrown School Lunch Week Kickoff in Hanover, Md.
“It is important that our children have access to healthy, nutritious food and our focus on enabling schools to purchase local produce will provide opportunities for local producers,” said Merrigan. “This will enable greater wealth creation in communities by allowing producers to build their capacity by serving local institutional customers like schools.”
USDA’s Farm-To-School Tactical Teams will soon begin touring America’s school cafeterias to identify challenges and opportunities to help them transition to purchasing more locally grown foods. The team will work with local farmers, local and state authorities, school districts, and community partners to develop Farm-To-School projects and provide assistance on the best ways to buy more local produce for the National School Lunch Program. USDA will partner with schools, the U.S. Department of Education and non-profits to develop and enhance these resources. Additional information will be made available soon.
This announcement is just one component of USDA’s ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiative to help develop local and regional food systems and spur economic opportunity. By successfully restoring the link between consumers with local producers there can be new income opportunities for farmers and generate wealth that will stay in rural communities; a greater focus on sustainable agricultural practices; and families can better access healthy, fresh, locally grown food.
- September 10
Minestrone, and Three Other Things That Will Save American School Lunch -
This year’s child nutrition reauthorization provides an enormous opportunity to overhaul school food and teach students healthy eating habits that will last a lifetime.
Huffington Post
Deborah Lehman
September 9, 2009For some, the prospect of reforming American school lunch is dauntingly complex. But for one feisty Italian old woman, the solution was simple: “Minestrone!” she cried out in her heavy accent, interrupting a speech at the Slow Food USA Eat-In I attended today in Tiverton, Rhode Island. “So cheap, so good, and you have the beans, and the vegetables. And you put in the chard, and it makes it so sweet, and they like it.”
Well, our Congressmen can’t exactly bring minestrone to all U.S. public schools (though it would be pretty amazing if they could). But there are a number of measures they can take in the next few months that would go a long way toward improving school food in America. Today, in 307 Eat-Ins across all 50 states, thousands of people gathered over potluck fare to ask Congress to take those measures and provide real food to schoolchildren across the United States.
In Tiverton, we lunched on tomato and peach salad, home-baked bread with homegrown herbs and slices of deliciously nutty banana bread. The feisty Italian woman turned out to be a good cook too, bringing a platter of rice croquettes stuffed with meat, cheese and peas. Her husband, who was similarly vocal, wasn’t sure minestrone would solve our nation’s lunchtime problems. “The problem is education!” he declared. “We need to teach the children!”
He’s right, and feeding students real food at school is one way to do that. The National School Lunch Program provides meals to more than 30 million students every day. Serving healthy food to all those children is not only a down payment on health care reform, it’s also a way to establish lifelong healthy habits. That’s a mission that goes back to the founding of the National School Lunch Program. In the 1920s and 1930s, when volunteer meal programs were sprouting up across the country, advocates hoped school lunch would teach students how to eat. They hoped their efforts would create a generation of strong Americans who would ensure a healthy future for this country.
It’s time to bring the school lunch program back to its roots. Slow Food USA is asking Congress for five things in this year’s child nutrition reauthorization: more money for school cafeterias, nutrition regulations for snack foods, funding for farm-to-school programs, incentives for local procurement and the creation of a school lunch corps to build and work in cafeterias nationwide.
Why are these measures necessary? Let’s start with funding. Schools cafeterias are essentially stand-alone businesses within school districts. They don’t receive money from the district general fund or from local taxpayers. The only funding they get comes from the federal government, which reimburses them for each meal served, and from the students who pay for their meals. The government reimbursements are slim — cafeterias get $2.57 for each free meal, $2.17 for each reduced-price meal and 24 cents for each paid meal. Along with student dollars, that money has to cover everything from food, to labor, to equipment to meal program directors’ own salaries.
That means budget overshadows nutrition when it comes to planning menus. Cafeterias often can’t afford fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains, which typically cost more than processed foods. And with such tight budgets, cafeteria directors hesitate to change their menus and serve healthy foods out of concern that their sales will take a hit. Raising the reimbursement by $1, as Slow Food proposes, will not only allow schools to purchase more fresh produce, it will also allow them to think outside the box and introduce students to new, nutritious foods.
Problem number two is junk food. Though reimbursable meals must meet some basic nutrition standards set by the USDA, foods sold in student stores, cafeteria a la carte lines and vending machines are entirely unregulated. Students can buy French fries, ice cream, chips, candy bars and soda at school, and it’s not unusual for them to bypass the cafeteria line for a lunch of Cheetos and cookies. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) have introduced a bill that would set national nutrition standards for all foods sold in the school environment. With rising rates of obesity, diabetes and other diet-related diseases, this legislation is far overdue.
Once we overhaul school meals and remove junk food, we need to make sure students actually eat the healthy foods that end up on their trays. That’s where local procurement, farm-to-school programs and school gardens come in. You’ll probably have a hard time getting students to eat kale if you just heap it on their trays. But if students plant, water and harvest the kale themselves, they’ll be much more open to tasting it. If they meet the farmer who grew their asparagus and their broccoli, they’ll be more likely to eat those vegetables too. Michelle Obama knows that, and that’s why she’s busy tending her White House vegetable garden. The Bancroft Elementary School students who helped her plant the garden have “really learned some lessons about nutrition,” the first lady said in May. “They’re making different choices because they’re a part of the process of planting and tilling the soil and pulling up the food. It makes such a huge difference in the choices that they make.” It’s time to spread that to schools around the country.
Of course, you can’t do any of this without adequate facilities and workers who know how to cook — two things that are sorely lacking in public school cafeterias today. According to a 2009 report from the School Nutrition Association, over 80 percent of schools cook fewer than half of their entrees from scratch, and almost 40 percent of schools cook fewer than one-quarter of their entrees from scratch. Schools not only need industrial kitchens that can provide food for thousands of students, they also need employees that know how to prepare that food so that it is safe and delicious. A school lunch corps that would train underemployed Americans to renovate cafeterias and work in kitchens would give cafeterias the support they need to use their funding effectively.
This year’s child nutrition reauthorization provides an enormous opportunity to overhaul school food and teach students healthy eating habits that will last a lifetime. It may not be as simple as ladling out minestrone, but with a movement over 20,000 strong, I hope Congress will be up to the challenge.
- September 3
Maine Children Hungry Because They Lack Access to Food Programs -
Children in Maine aren’t hungry because we lack food or because we lack effective food and nutrition programs. They are hungry because they lack access to such programs.
Kennebec Journal (Portland, ME)
Bill Shore
September 1, 2009Like elsewhere on the Maine coast, the slice of land beyond our window at Goose Rocks Beach is in constant flux. Every 12 hours, incoming tide reshapes and remakes the beach, depositing shells, snails, driftwood and an occasional lobster trap. With the sun in a different position during each day’s high- and low-tides, the effect is of an exquisitely sensitive kaleidoscope offering a unique view each time one returns to it.
The subtidal stretch of ocean floor, always submerged though just barely at low tide, remains ankle deep hundreds of yards from shore, and is rich in both life and drama if one’s willing to look for it. We always take guests out to search for everything from the prized wafer-thin sand dollars and hermit crabs to the large coiled moon snails whose domes are barely visible above the sand.
If you dig up a moon snail that has anchored itself to the ocean floor with a large purplish squishy suction-cup-like foot, you often will find that it has completely enveloped a large clam upon which is it feeding. The snail secretes an enzyme to soften the clam shell and uses its razor-like tongue to drill a hole in the shell through which it can digest the clam.
Such struggles for survival can be found on almost every inch of ocean floor, near shore as well as out where lobsters, crabs, eels and sea stars scramble to survive. This is nature at its most remarkably routine.
Just as struggles of the subtidal are hidden from view unless we go looking, so are other struggles in Maine that remain below the surface. But there is nothing natural about them.
One in five Maine children lives in households facing hunger. Only 44 percent of children in Maine receive the free school breakfast for which they are eligible, and only 15.5 percent get summer meals when schools are closed.
Between 2000 and 2005, Maine had the highest percentage growth rate of hungry people in the United states. More than one in eight Mainers uses food stamps.
A state known for catering to tourists in search of simple pleasures like sailing, kayaking, hiking and camping is permanent home to many for whom pleasure has become a distant dream.
Childhood hunger, however, is a solvable problem. Children in Maine aren’t hungry because we lack food or because we lack effective food and nutrition programs. They are hungry because they lack access to such programs.
That’s one reason that Share Our Strength, which I founded, funds organizations like Preble Street, Cultivating Community and Maine Equal Justice to ensure that more children and families can connect to the healthy and nutritious food they need.
Maine, of course, is not alone. A record 34 million Americans are now on food stamps. Understanding the challenges they face depends on our willingness to dig beneath the surface.
Because of the recession, we need not dig as deeply as we once did. But all social change begins with a commitment to scratch away the veneer of comfort and complacency and stare unblinkingly at hard truths.
Just as nature manages to camouflage its harsh realities, so too does our culture with its penchant for journalism as entertainment, celebrity trials and deaths, political scorekeeping and the latest fads in fashion and technology.
That’s why a commitment to bearing witness remains such an indispensible ingredient of any effort to end hunger and poverty.
Whether on the beach or on the front line of the fight against hunger, there is wisdom in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s words that “What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Bill Shore is founder and executive director of the national anti-hunger organization, Share Our Strength, and has a home in southern Maine.
- September 3
Struggling Beneath the Surface -
Blog post: Sometimes, you need to look beneath the surface to see what’s really happening. Read post »
