NEWS

The National Hunger Hotline (NHH), a service of WhyHunger's National Hunger Clearinghouse, provides real-time referrals for people in need across the U.S. to emergency food and assistance programs. Receiving an average of 700 calls per month, the NHH is a portal to information, assistance, and resources, ultimately empowering families and individuals to meet their vital needs including fresh, healthy food. In Stories from the Hotline, we share some of the experiences of callers and our efforts to support them.

A man from Dallas, Texas called the Hotline in need of food assistance. Recently released from prison, he was struggling financially, and when applying for SNAP he was told that he was "never going to get food stamps" because he had been charged with a drug felony. He told the Hotline advocate that he knew of other previously incarcerated people who were receiving food stamps, and wanted to know if he had been wrongfully denied, asking, "Doesn't everyone have a right to food?" The Hotline advocate informed him that in Texas, some drug-related felonies disqualify applicants from receiving food stamps, but the advocate provided him with the phone number for his local Health and Human Services office so he could follow up for more information. The advocate also provided him with contact information for several food pantries in the area.

The National Hunger Hotline 1-866-3 HUNGRY and 1-877-8 HAMBRE (1-866-348-6479 and 1-877-842-6273) refers people in need of emergency food assistance to food pantries, government programs, and model grassroots organizations that work to improve access to healthy, nutritious food, and build self-reliance. Help is available on Monday through Friday from 9am-6pm EST. Hablamos español. The Hotline is funded in part by the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.    

Cooking Up Community Feedback

In July, we released Cooking Up Community: Nutrition Education in Emergency Food Programs. We've heard from academics, nutrition educators and food banks that are using the guide to strengthen an existing program or to create a new program. We'd like to hear your feedback. Please fill out this brief survey to let us know if the guide has been helpful and if there is a resource we should include next time: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGJ2YjdaYXJzaWJIMWwtbnVTYU1EVmc6MQ. 

Three people who complete the survey by October 31st, 2012 will be selected at random to receive a free WhyHunger t-shirt.

Download the executive summary or the full report at www.whyhunger.org/cookingupcommunity.

Food + Justice = Democracy

In late September, I attended the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's (IATP) Food + Justice= Democracy conference in Minneapolis. Food + Justice= Democracy was a national meeting whose agenda aimed to elevate the food stories of communities of color and tribal nations. With this grounding, participants created a national food justice platform to push our political leaders to prioritize a fair, just and healthy food system.

This conference gave people of color the space to tell the stories of their communities' historical and cultural connection to the land and the long history of their agricultural knowledge. It was a welcome change to hear not only stories of the problems people of color are facing but the solutions that their communities are creating to address those problems. As a Black woman, it was extremely validating to have what I know about the strength, fortitude and knowledge in the Black community being confirmed and reaffirmed through the conference presentations. I was also grateful that other people were given the opportunity to learn about and celebrate our deep seated connection to food and agriculture.

As I think about the power that comes from telling your own story and I connect it to my work at the National Hunger Clearinghouse, the question that come up for me is how do to we create a stage for people who face food insecurity to tell their own stories? At WhyHunger, we amplify the voices and tell the stories of the emergency food and food justice organizations we work with. In this newsletter, we share some of the experiences of callers who deal with food insecurity in our hotline stories. But how can we, in the emergency food sector, collectively take it a step further and provide a venue for people who go hungry to lift up their voices? How can we elevate their food stories and recognize them as a source of strength and resilience? How can their stories be used in an empowering way that could lead to building a movement of millions of voices to end hunger and poverty? Send your thoughts and stories to the National Hunger Clearinghouse and let's start a dialogue. - SB

   
USDA Report Shows History of Major Nutrition Assistance Programs Providing Americans with Critical Safety Net in Economically Challenging Times

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Economic Research Service released a new research report which investigates the relationship between economic conditions and participation in USDA's five largest nutrition assistance programs. Most notably, the increase in SNAP participation during 2008-10 was consistent with the increase during the previous three economic downturns (1980-81, 1990-92, 2001-03), after adjusting for the increase in the unemployment rate.

"Recessions clearly impact enrollment in SNAP and other USDA nutrition programs, and this report provides further evidence that they are working as designed, providing a vital safety net for low income households to help as people work their way to greater self-sufficiency," said Kevin Concannon, USDA's Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, which administers the federal nutrition programs. "In addition, the report indicates program enrollment has been relatively consistent for the past five decades across periods of higher unemployment."

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is the nation's first line of defense against hunger and helps put food on the table for millions of low income families and individuals every month. In fact, 82 percent of SNAP households contain an elderly or disabled person, one or more children, or are the working poor. Previous research has shown that SNAP is one of the nation's primary countercyclical assistance programs, expanding during economic downturns and contracting during periods of growth.
As noted by both public sector and private sector economists, the countercyclical nature of SNAP contributes to its effect in reducing poverty. A previous ERS study found that SNAP protected families, and particularly children, from large increases in poverty during the 2007-09 recession. In 2009, the official U.S. poverty rate was 14.3 percent. Adding SNAP program benefits to income calculations, however, would have lowered the poverty rate to 13.2 percent. This translates into lifting roughly 3.4 million people out of poverty that year. SNAP benefits also ensured that the depth and severity of poverty, and particularly child poverty, increased only slightly from 2008 to 2009 despite the recession.

The report also shows that, to varying degrees, economic conditions affect participation in the other four major USDA nutrition assistance programs. In other words, all of the major food and nutrition assistance programs respond to increased demand for their services by needy families during economic downturns. More specifically, the report shows that:  

• After adjusting for the increase in the unemployment rate, the increase in SNAP participation during 2008-10 was consistent with the increase during the previous three economic downturns (1980-81, 1990-92, 2001-03), at 2 to 3 million additional participants per 1-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate.
• Since WIC became fully funded in the late 1990s, data suggest that participation in the program has been sensitive to economic conditions, increasing as unemployment increased and vice versa, though the total number of U.S. births also influences participation.
• Total participation in the Child Nutrition Programs (NSLP, SBP, and CACFP) is not affected by economic conditions, but the share of participants receiving free and reduced-price meals is responsive to economic conditions, rising with the unemployment rate during economic declines. The response to economic conditions is greatest for the NSLP, due primarily to the large share of participants already receiving free and reduced price meals (80-90 percent) in the SBP and CACFP.

Visit www.fns.usda.gov for information about USDA's nutrition assistance programs. Visit www.ers.usda.gov for information about economic and policy issues related to agriculture, food, the environment, and rural development. The ERS report can be found at:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib-economic-information-bulletin/eib100.aspx.

It's Not Nutrition Until It's Eaten: Behavior Change is the Key to Nutrition

The 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) has paved the way for healthy changes to school meals. While this legislation is the first step to making nutrition a reality for more children, increased access to healthy foods does not guarantee that students will eat it. The goal of the Cornell University-based Smarter Lunchrooms Movement is to understand how children make decisions so that healthier foods offered in schools make it into their stomachs.

Established in 2009, The Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs (also known as the B.E.N. Center) started the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement to empower school lunchrooms with evidence-based tools that improve child eating behaviors and in turn improve childhood nutrition. The B.E.N. Center provides the research that fuels the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement's expertise. Much of their research is funded by the USDA Economic and Research Service. The Center also has a Small Grants Program which helps to fund behavior-focused school nutrition research projects at other institutions such as Yale, University of Minnesota and Brigham Young University.
 
Dr. Brian Wansink of the Smarter Lunchroom Movement says: "a 'smarter lunchroom' is one that encourages students to eat nutritious food through environmental cues that unconsciously impact our decision making. Just as fast food franchises are crafty in making us crave their product without even knowing it, our school cafeterias must take the same approach to promoting healthy foods. For example, placing a trash receptacle next to the food ordering area is a common mistake in a cafeteria, but this same error is unlikely in a McDonald's."

The Smarter Lunchrooms Movement prides itself on offering low cost/no-cost best practices that will transform an average lunchroom into one that promotes nutrition in a unique way. On the USDA website, there is a Best Practices Matrix with easy-to-understand solutions for a variety of common lunchroom problems. What's more, the Matrix delves into greater detail, outlining why the solutions work, how to implement them, and the cost and time necessary to realize the changes.

This groundbreaking research is also symbolic in a historical context because Cornell is a land-grand university, founded under the Morill Land Grant Act of 1862. Land-grant universities are uniquely charged with the mission of educating and conducting applied research and outreach for the benefit of the state's citizens. The Smarter Lunchrooms Movement is currently working with the USDA Food and Nutrition Service to promote healthy school meal changes under the HHFKA. In fact, several Smarter Lunchrooms techniques are now optional criteria for the HealthierUS School Challenge (HUSSC). Policy makes the provisions for healthy food to be in the lunchroom, but it is behavior the choice to eat the food, which ultimately makes it nutritious. As they like to say in the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement, "It's not nutrition until it's eaten." Also check out the New York Times interactive healthier lunch line.

Fitter Body, Fitter Brain Infographic   

Here's a great infographic that may motivate schools and parents to give their students and children enough time to run around and play. It shows the connection between exercise and brain activity. For more ideas about how you can keep students physically active, visit www.letsmove.gov.   

The New York City Coalition Against Hunger released an online toolkit called Beyond the Food Drive: Ending Hunger Through Citizen Service, available at HungerVolunteer.org. Chapters are geared towards volunteers and anti-hunger groups seeking opportunities in a range of topics, including: how to enable agencies to serve more and better food, how to build a board of directors, how to raise money, how to raise public awareness and more. The chapters are well organized and easy to read, with bulleted lists, action steps and links to learn more.

Cultivate wines sources grapes from high-end producers to bottle blends that are of consistent quality. Perhaps more exciting, the brand is part of the movement for "connected capitalism," believing that a company should exist not just to make a profit, but also to make a positive difference in the world. Cultivate gives at least 10% of sales to non-profits supporting education and basic human needs, including nutrition, hunger and sustainable agriculture. They will be giving away $100,000 a quarter via an online video submission and voting process. Rolling deadline.

To learn more, please visit: http://www.cultivatewines.com/give/how-it-works/.

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