Hunger doesn’t take a summer vacation. Only a fraction of kids who receive free breakfast and lunch during the school year participate in the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP), which fills the gap for hungry kids all over the country and all summer long. Join us for a Twitter Town Hall tomorrow, Thursday, June 13, from 3 to 4PM EST with the Food and Nutrition Coalition, USDA Food and Nutrition Service, FRAC and Feeding America as we celebrate and promote the Summer Food Service Program! Follow the hashtag #summermeals and share info, photos, videos and vines of your organization’s outreach activities! We invite everyone to participate and help spread the word about this vital program.
The USDA’s Summer Food Service Program is available at local organizations, like schools, recreation centers, playgrounds, parks, churches, summer camps and more around the country. WhyHunger partners with the USDA to ensure that more children and their families have access to free, nutritious food during the summer months by promoting the Summer Food Service Program to callers to the National Hunger Hotline (1-866-3 HUNGRY and 1-877-8 HAMBRE), by registering summer feeding sites in our database, and through promotional materials that people can post in their communities.
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:
In the process of product optimization, food engineers alter a litany of variables with the sole intent of finding the most perfect version (or versions) of a product. Ordinary consumers are paid to spend hours sitting in rooms where they touch, feel, sip, smell, swirl and taste whatever product is in question. Their opinions are dumped into a computer, and the data are sifted and sorted through a statistical method called conjoint analysis, which determines what features will be most attractive to consumers.
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.
* * *
This article originally appeared in our monthly e-newsletter, the Clearinghouse Connection, which facilitates the exchange of information, resources and ideas among emergency food providers. To subscribe, email nhc@whyhunger.org.
Following
Hurricane Sandy, New York City opened seven “Restoration Centers” in the neighborhoods hit hardest by the storm in a “comprehensive effort to connect residents and businesses impacted by Hurricane Sandy with financial, health, environmental, nutritional and residential services, as well as FEMA reimbursement processing.” Erika, a counselor at the Restoration Center in Gravesend, Brooklyn, called the National Hunger Hotline after meeting with a woman whose house had been partially destroyed by the floodwaters over ten weeks ago. She was sleeping in the bedroom on the second floor of her home, but her kitchen, located on the first floor, was unusable. Low on cash and without a place to store and prepare food, she was eating an average of only one meal every two days, Erika told the Hotline Advocate. Using listings from the local food bank, the Hotline advocate was able to tell Erika the hours and locations of soup kitchens and food pantries in Gravesend so her client would be able to eat adequate meals.
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.
This article originally appeared in our monthly e-newsletter, the Clearinghouse Connection, which facilitates the exchange of information, resources and ideas among emergency food providers. To subscribe, email nhc@whyhunger.org.
Source: Images of Money
The holiday season is a time of giving. More now than any other time of year, people feel compelled to donate their time and resources to organizations that feed the hungry. With hunger at the forefront of people’s minds this season, we have a real opportunity to further the conversation and engage people in advocacy addressing the root causes of both hunger and poverty to create lasting change.
According to MIT professor Amy Glasmeier, “At the core, hunger is the result of employment instability and the lack of an adequate minimum wage. If an employer is allowed to pay a person a wage that essentially does not lift them out of poverty, then the real culprit is failed federal policy.” The annual income (at 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year) of someone earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is $15,080, which, for a family of two, falls just below the federal poverty line. Nearly 16 percent of Americans fall at or below the poverty line. Many retail and food service employers systematicallymanipulate worker schedules in order to deny them the benefits of full term employment.
Read more on Care2.
