To help inform strategies for increasing access to summer meals, Share Our Strength conducted a national survey. In March, SOS hosted a webinar to share their results, which give insight into current summer behaviors of low-income families and what we can do to make sure our programs and outreach are meeting their needs. Here are some of the findings:

• Nationally, 43% of low-income families find it harder to make ends meet during the summer and 32% sometimes find themselves without enough food during the summer months.

• Most low-income children (80%) are at their homes during the summer, and even more (86%) eat lunch at home most days- few are already in programs that can serve federally reimbursed summer meals.

• Most low-income families (68%) are interested in summer meals programs, especially those that have a demonstrated need for food assistance, but only 40% of low-income families report being aware of locations for free summer meals and only 17% report their child/children having received those meals.

• Above all, low-income families are looking for safe sites with staff that they trust; 72% of respondents said this was necessary to consider sending their child to a summer meals site.

• Overall, schools are the most reliable source for receiving materials about programs, followed by places of worship and grocery stores.

• Of those that have participated in summer meals programs in the past, nine out of ten would recommend attending the site to others and the same number are interested in using the program again. 

To listen to the webinar or read a summary of survey results, please visit the No Kid Hungry Center for Best Practices. Share Our Strength also offers a Summer Meals Outreach Toolkit.

In our work for food justice, we know that we face many challenges- lack of food access, so-called "food deserts," skyrocketing rates of obesity and diet-related diseases, to name just a few. And we know that many of these problems hit low-income communities and communities of color the hardest. Too often, communities hardest hit by the impacts of the unhealthy food system aren't seen as also having the solutions to the challenges they face- when the reality is that the most lasting and sustainable solutions are those that come from the ground up.

D'Artagnan Scorza, Executive Director of Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI) in Inglewood, California, and Nikki Henderson, Executive Director of People's Grocery (PG), in Oakland, California, have been talking about this paradox for a long time. They continued these conversations as part of WhyHunger's Community Learning Project for Food Justice, and the result is the groundbreaking study, "Facilitating Change in the Food Justice Movement."

The paper examines the roles of community-based organizations, non-profits and funders in facilitating real change, and analyzes the strategies and theories of change of SJLI and PG as organizations successfully working with residents to address diet-related health disparities. The report concludes with strong recommendations for food justice and community health work to start from within the community, driven by community needs and local leaders with support - rather than direction - from external organizations and funders.

 

From 2010 to 2012, the Atkins Center for Weight & Health at UC Berkeley conducted an evaluation of the "Healthy Options, Healthy Meals Initiative," a collaboration among MAZON, Kaiser Permanente, the Atkins Center and twelve selected food banks from across the country. The goal of "Healthy Options, Healthy Meals" is to increase access to nutritious foods for low-income families by assisting food banks in creating deliberate systemic change to improve the nutritional quality of their food inventory.

                                 

The full evaluation report, available here, gives an overview and discusses elements of the initiative, including food bank action plans, nutrition policies, nutrition rating systems, technical assistance and peer-to-peer sharing. An informative resource for emergency food providers, it also details initiative outcomes, recommendations and lessons learned.

Investigative reporter Michael Moss caused a stir - and won a Pulitzer Prize - with his 2009 New York Times article questioning the safety of "pink slime," a controversial product made from low-grade beef trimmings and treated with ammonia to kill E. coli and other bacteria. His story ignited a powerful consumer backlash against pink slime, which forced grocers, restaurant chains and school districts towards greater transparency regarding the contents of their ground beef. He has since shifted his journalistic attention from hidden contaminants to products that are intentionally added to our food.

In his latest book, "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us," Michael Moss takes the reader into the conference rooms and laboratories of America's largest food companies, where experts deftly engineer and market processed foods that contain rapidly increasing amounts of sugar, fat and salt. He begins each part by delving into the neuroscience of taste, describing the effects of these additives on the brain's pleasure centers. Food processors are able to exploit our biology to create products that consumers find irresistible:

Moss goes on to explain the success of many familiar foods, such as Lunchables, Go-Gurt and Prego spaghetti sauce, and illustrates why, for example, Americans now consume three times more cheese than they did in the 1970s. Unlike the writings of Michael Pollan or Mark Bittman, "Salt Sugar Fat" is not prescriptive. Moss acknowledges that processed food is part of life for most Americans, but his book is incredibly useful in providing the reader with a better understanding of the forces that people face in the pursuit of a healthful diet.

Excerpts from "Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us" were published in the February 10th issue of the New York Times Magazine.

 

The open period for applying for USDA Farm to School Grants ends at Midnight EDT on April 24. To learn more about the program and read the request for applications, visit the grants page. Be sure not to miss recordings and slides from webinars about applying for a grant or the frequently asked questions document, which was updated in response to some of the great inquiries received from prospective applicants around the country. For those applying, the USDA recommends leaving plenty of time to navigate through the grants.gov system, fill out the proper forms, and upload the required documents; late or incomplete applications will not be accepted.