The Weekly Food Research and Action Center News Digest highlights what's new on hunger, nutrition and poverty issues at FRAC, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, around the network of national, state and local anti-poverty and anti-hunger organizations, and in the media. The Digest will alert you to trends, reports, news items and resources and, when available, link you directly to them.

1. Report Forecasts Half of U.S. Children on SNAP/Food Stamps by Age 20
(USA Today, November 2, 2009; New Britain Herald, November 5, 2009)

A study analyzing 30 years of data from the University of Michigan’s Panel Study of Income Dynamics survey, and published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, reports that half of U.S. children by age 20 will live in households receiving SNAP/Food Stamps. “This is what we can expect over a period of time, not just during a recession,” said author Mark Rank of Washington University in St. Louis. “It shows that the period of childhood, rather than a period of safety and security, is really a time, for a lot of kids, of economic turmoil and risk.” Since only 67 percent of eligible people actually receive SNAP/Food Stamps, according to USDA, the study may underestimate the number of families finding it hard to put food on the table. Commenting on the study, FRAC President Jim Weill noted that SNAP/Foods Stamps, and other nutrition programs, improve children’s health and assist them in school. However, there’s still a stigma attached. “There is a large pool of people who are poor or who are living close to poverty at any given time,” said Weill. “People don’t like talking about it. They don’t tell their neighbors, ‘I was on food stamps 10 years ago.’” However, Weill notes, SNAP/Food Stamp recipients are our neighbors. “What I hope comes out of this study is an understanding that food stamp beneficiaries aren’t ‘them’ – they’re us,” said Weill. An op-ed in the New Britain Herald expanded on Weill’s statement, explaining “They may keep their dependence on food stamps a secret, because they’re embarrassed – but not so embarrassed that they won’t do whatever it takes to feed their children.” FRAC recently reported that in July, 35.8 million Americans – 6.8 million more than in July 2008 - received SNAP/Food Stamps. About half of that number are children, said Rank.

2. USDA Secretary Reaffirms Obama Administration’s Commitment for Extra $1 Billion for Child Nutrition Reauthorization
(Ag Week, October 26, 2009)

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently reaffirmed the Obama Administration’s commitment to ask Congress for an additional $1 billion for the child nutrition program. Vilsack said the Administration believes the additional $1 billion is needed to improve participation by low-income children in the programs and to improve the quality of the food. Vilsack declined to name an offset for the funding, but said he “will work with Congress and the administration so that we do this in a proper way.” Congress passed a one-year extension for the child nutrition programs as part of the Appropriations bill. Congressional leaders want to reauthorize the programs before Congress considers a new budget resolution next spring, said James Weill, President of the Food Research and Action Center. Weill noted that administration officials “remain committed to finding the $1 billion per year and are agnostic as to what source it should be from.”

3. SNAP/Food Stamps Accepted Soon at All Costco Stores
(The Seattle Times, October 28, 2009)

Costco warehouse stores nationwide will soon begin accepting SNAP/Food Stamps, with close to 410 stores accepting the benefit by Thanksgiving. Following pressure from politicians, the country’s third-largest retailer began accepting SNAP/Food Stamps in New York City stores as a test. The company had doubted whether there would be enough demand. “The rules are different today,” said CEO Jim Sinegal. “People who were in good shape financially all of the sudden are needing some assistance.” In Washington State, all 28 Costco locations will begin accepting SNAP/Food Stamps. “From a dollar and cents perspective, it’s money that gets spent in their stores and, with the way the caseload is growing, it’s pretty smart on their part,” said Leo Ribas, director of community services for the state’s Department of Social and Health Services.

4. Recession Pushes Missouri SNAP/Food Stamp Participation to More than Double Since 2000
(Joplin Independent, October 28, 2009)

About 417,000 Missouri residents received SNAP/Food Stamps in the year 2000, and that number doubled to about 824,000 in 2007. The number on SNAP/Food Stamps grew to 1,071,194 in June 2009, a surge due to the recession as more and more families struggling with unemployment and lost wages have turned to the government for assistance, notes Heather Lasher Todd, executive director of the Missouri Budget Project, in this commentary. Missourians gained little economic clout after the 2001 recession, making the current economic crisis significantly harder on residents, according to a report from the Missouri Budget Project. Many are worse off now than they were at the beginning of the decade. Median income fell more than $6,000 between 2000 and 2008, going from $53,330 to $46,906, the nation’s third largest decline according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Since 2000, the number of residents living in poverty climbed to 780,000 in 2008 – a 13.1 percent increase from 2000. “Although the current recession has left Missourians even farther behind, the economic crisis for Missouri families was a decade in the making,” writes Todd.

5. Texas Hiring SNAP/Food Stamp Workers, But System Improvements will Take Time
(Austin American-Statesman, October 29, 2009)

SNAP/Food Stamp workers hired to take care of the application backlog will find their jobs lengthy and difficult because they’ll have fewer experienced colleagues onhand, job training will be shorter, and they may be mandated to work up to 13 hours of overtime a week, as some workers are currently doing. “There is no way that people who are in training can understand policy – much less do an interview – in two weeks,” Houston caseworker Sheila Badzioch. “You’re overwhelming the people who are coming in. They’re just lost.” About the current staff, Badzioch noted “We’re just overrun. The attitude of the higher-ups is, ‘You can do more.’ Well, you can’t. There are only so many hours in a day.” This year, less than half of the SNAP/Food Stamp and Medicaid workers have two years of on-the-job experience, while in 2004, more than 90 percent of workers did. Only 67 percent of supervisors in 2009 have a year of experience, while in 2004, 95.4 percent of supervisors did. Hiring and training the new employees could take months. “I’m not sure that getting 250 or 500 people in there who don’t know what they’re doing is really going to solve this problem,” said State Sen. Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands), who the Governor recently tapped to monitor SNAP/Food Stamps. The state estimates that the backlog would not go away until July 2010 even with the new hires, and the upcoming holidays will further affect application processing times, as current staff take leave and offices close. The state is also trying to fight the backlog by approving recipients for a year instead of six months. In September, Texas processed 58.6 percent of SNAP/Food Stamp applications within the 30 day federally-mandated timeframe, which left nearly 42,000 families waiting to hear whether or not they were approved.

6. SNAP/Food Stamps Can Help Needy Avoid “Heat or Eat” Question
(Press & Sun-Bulletin, October 24, 2009)

Choosing between food or fuel this winter – the “heat or eat” question – may be a struggle that low-income families in New York’s Broome County could be facing. The Family Enrichment Network Nutrition Outreach and Education Program helps the county’s needy access SNAP/Food Stamps. Interested households can contact the Network, which receives funding from the Nutrition Consortium of New York State, at (607) 723-8313 x827 for more information.

7. Missouri, Illinois School Districts Understanding Importance of National School Lunch Program
(St. Louis Today, November 4, 2009)

School districts in Missouri and Illinois are taking aggressive steps to sign up students for free and reduced-price meals by sending notices home about the program and offering raffles and contests with prizes such as iPods, grocery store certificates and pizza parties. About 25,000 additional Missouri students have signed up, resulting in 43 percent of students receiving free and reduced-price lunch this year as compared to 40 percent last year. Illinois now has 49 percent of students signed up as of February, as opposed to 47 percent last year; 26,000 additional students are receiving lunch this year. But, some say the numbers could be higher, and a recent USDA study fund that Missouri and Illinois were ranked in the bottom 10 states nationwide for signing up eligible students. The program not only fights childhood hunger, but brings federal dollars to strapped school districts. Every percentage point participation increase in St. Louis Public Schools equals $123,000 in meal funding. The recession has made many more families eligible for the assistance. Many families now struggling economically previously didn’t have incomes low enough to make their children eligible, noted Crystal FitzSimons of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). That’s why is important for schools and districts to reach out and sign up children for the program. FRAC recently published a guide to help districts sign up more students.

8. New Hampshire Seeing Increase in Free and Reduced-Price Lunch Participation
(New Hampshire Union Leader, November 3, 2009; WCAX, November 3, 2009)

New Hampshire schools are seeing increases in the number of students receiving free and reduced-price lunch, a result of the weak economy. In Manchester, 33 percent of public schools students received free or reduced-price lunch last year, and this year, the number jumped to 37 percent. “So we’re seeing more people eligible for free and reduced than last year,” said Jim Connors, the district’s director of school food and nutrition services. According to Elaine VanDyke, administrator of the Bureau of Nutrition Programs and Services for the state Department of Education, the number of free meals served in New Hampshire through the lunch program increased six percent from 2007-2008 to 2008-2009. “It looks overall like the kids who qualify for free and reduced lunch are certainly utilizing it,” said Donna Roy, president of the School Nutrition Association of New Hampshire. However, a recent report from USDA shows New Hampshire is one of the bottom four states in directly certifying eligible students for the National School Lunch Program, enrolling less than 50 percent of students from SNAP/Food Stamp families. The top four states enrolled 90 percent or more students. Click here for more information on direct certification on FRAC’s Web site.

9. Classroom Breakfast Ups Participation in St. Paul, Minnesota Schools
(TwinCities.com, November 2, 2009)

The number students eating breakfast has increased from 39 percent to 63 percent since 12 St. Paul Minn. schools instituted “Breakfast to Go,” which allows students to pick up a bagged breakfast from the cafeteria and bring it to the classroom. In the school district, 10,000 more students are eating breakfast this year, noted Linda Dieleman, senior manager for nutrition and commercial services. “Some of these students have never been through full breakfast before,” she said. “Breakfast to Go is probably the only way we could meet the needs of the students.” In Wellstone Elementary, students arrive a few minutes early and head to the cafeteria to pick up a free, nutritious breakfast in a plastic biodegradable bag, which they then carry to and eat in their class. “There were some people that had concerns about food in the classroom,” said Wellstone’s principal Christine Osorio. “But now they’ve seen the benefit of it and are very supportive of it. It’s built community in the classrooms. It’s given us a much more relaxed start to our day.” Breakfast in the classroom also dropped tardiness rates by eight percent, and reduced office referrals for discipline problems 20 percent. For 9-year-old Mohamedameen Mohamud, there’s no more rush from the cafeteria to the classroom. “Now it’s better because we get to eat before we learn,” he said.

10. West Virginia Day Care Centers Will Operate Under CACFP Nutrition Standards
(Daily Mail, October 26, 2009)

West Virginia officials say that they will tighten nutrition standards in day care centers over the next 18 months by implementing a plan based on the Child and Adult Care Food Program. The National School Lunch Program serves pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, “but we really had nothing in place in West Virginia that was comparable to that for child-care centers,” said Mollie Wood, assistant director for the state’s Office of Child Nutrition. In many of the smaller child-care centers, noted Wood, “teachers…are actually doing the cooking. So, we’re trying to put something together that’s easier for them to understand and to help improve the nutrition in meals.” Schools have cooks and a strong infrastructure, said Wood. Few states require child-care centers focus on keeping children under five fit through specific nutrition and physical activity, according to new Harvard research. With nearly three-fourths of children two to five spending part of the day in child care, and half in formal day care, the centers are becoming the “new frontier” in fighting childhood obesity, especially since more and more children are already overweight or obese when they start public school. According to Harvard researchers, key nutrition and physical activity requirements include: 1 percent or fat-free milk for children 2 and older; no sugar-sweetened beverages and no more than 6 ounces of 100 percent juice per day; at least 60 minutes of structured physical activity, another 60 minutes of free play, and not keeping children seated for longer than 30 minutes at a time.

11. Nutrition Consortium of New York State Promotes 2015 Buttons
(Nutrition Consortium blog, October 26, 2009)

Anti-hunger advocates can show their support of President Obama’s ending child hunger by 2015 goal by ordering “2015” buttons from the Food Research and Action Center. Buttons are available in bunches of 50, and can be ordered by visiting http://frac.org/news/2015.htm.

12. Study Finds Insurance a Factor in Hospitalized Children’s Death Rate
(U.S. News & World Report, October 29, 2009)

Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore reports, in the October 30 Journal of Public Health, that children lacking health insurance were 60 percent more likely to die in the hospital than children with insurance. This means that approximately 17,000 children may have died unnecessarily in the U.S. over the past two decades. The Johns Hopkins study, once adjusted for race, gender and other differences, found that uninsured children were 37.8 percent more likely to die than insured children. “This is actually something we as a society…can choose to do something about,” said David C. Chang, study co-author and co-director of Hopkins’ pediatric surgery outcomes research group. “It’s literally with the stroke of someone’s pen, this could be changed.” Chang noted that he could not think of a medical treatment that would have the dramatic effect on health outcomes that health insurance seems to have. The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is an important government program, said Bruce Lesley, President of First Focus. “CHIP has really worked and…insures about 7 million kids in the country,” he said, adding that 6.5 million CHIP or Medicaid-eligible children remain uninsured. First Focus supports legislation for a “default enrollment” system which would help remove enrollment barriers. “The presumption should be the kid’s enrolled, and let’s figure out what program they’re in.” The Johns Hopkins research studied more than 23 million hospitalizations of children 18 years and younger; while it “does not prove that being uninsured boosts a child’s risk of mortality, it does suggest a strong association between insurance status and odds of dying.”

13. Recession Forces Millions of Seniors to Continue Working, Though Not All Can Find Jobs
(The New York Times, October 24, 2009)

In 2001, 4.1 million Americans 65 and older continued to work. Today, more seniors than at any time in history - 6.6 million in number - are still in the job market, as 401(k)’s have lost value. Half a million seniors, the greatest number since the Great Depression, want to work but are unable to find jobs. Many seniors have lost jobs because of weakened seniority protections. And many seniors took on more debt in recent years, as have many Americans. “It’s a big deal for a lot of these people not to find a job,” said David Certner, AARP legislative policy director. “That so many of them are still trying to find work shows how bad the economic situation is.” The unemployment rate for those 65 and over is 6.7 percent – double that of two years ago – but low compared to the general population unemployment percentage. Early in the decade, senior unemployment was 1.9 percent. Unemployed seniors stay out of work 40 percent longer (36.5 weeks on average) than the rest of the unemployed population. A quarter of seniors in 2008 had incomes under $11,139 according to the Congressional Research Service, while the median income for that age group was $18,208.

14. Teens Producing Documentary on Poverty in One Indiana Town Have Their Eyes Opened to the Problem
(JC Online, October 26, 2009)

Teens working on documentary on poverty in Indiana’s Tippecanoe County are gaining an understanding of the scope of the problem in their community. Many did not think that poverty was a problem in Lafayette. “If (you) walk around town, you don’t see people on the streets sitting there asking for money,” said 14-year-old Cheyenne Russell. “Most of us are in poverty and just don’t realize it,” said Selina Gaeta, 15, whose family receives Medicaid and has been on SNAP/Food Stamps. Without such aid, the problem of poverty would be much more apparent. “It’s just that we can cover it up by getting the help that we get,” said Gaeta. The teens producing the documentary are members of the Keystone Club, a leadership development group at the Lyn Treece Boys and Girls Club of Tippecanoe County.

15. Research Shows Women Under Stress More Likely to Eat High-Fat Foods
(USA Today, November 2, 2009)

In a study of more than 600 women who were overweight or obese, University of California – San Francisco researchers found that women with chronic stress were more likely to say they ate high-fat foods. They also were more likely to say they had no control over their eating and hunger. The study asked the women questions about their eating habits and stress factors. Chronic stress in the study was categorized as their inability to pay rent or mortgage, being stuck in a job they didn’t like, having a spouse or partner who doesn’t understand them or expects too much, having a child not doing well in school, or being the caregiver to a family member in poor health. The study, one of the largest ever to focus on the relationship between chronic stress and eating behaviors, was presented at a recent meeting of the Obesity Society.

16. Eating Healthy Takes a Downturn During Recession
(The Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2009)

Over the summer, an online survey of 1,200 people on food affordability conducted by Technomic, a food-industry research firm, found that 70 percent of respondents said they are finding it hard to afford healthy food. “Eating healthy has been one of the big casualties of this economic downturn,” said Harry Balzer, chief industry analyst at NPD Group. “Last year, consumers cut back on eating ‘better-for-you’ and organic foods.” Balzer is also author of NPD’s annual “Eating Patterns in America” report. These findings point to more and more Americans turning to cheaper fast foods and canned and frozen processed foods (made with refined grains and sugars and higher in fat and calories) as the unemployment rate nears 10 percent and many in the U.S. are trying to balance their home budgets. “The result,” notes this article, is that “[m]ore Americans are getting fatter and becoming more at risk of getting illnesses such as diabetes.”

17. Grocers Looking to Expand into Small Oklahoma Towns and City Neighborhoods
(NewsOK.com, November 2, 2009)

Food deserts prevalent in Oklahoma may be getting stores as retailers are looking to move into small towns and other neighborhoods in the state. Several retailers have asked the state’s only grocery wholesaler about possible locations. “It just has to be financially feasible to go back in there and have a good base of business,” said Jeff Pederson, vice president of merchandising for Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc. Half the state lacks convenient access to grocery stores, and the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture found that a quarter of the population of 32 counties (out of Oklahoma’s 77 counties) lives 10 miles from a supermarket. All the food deserts in the study are in rural areas, although Tulsa and Oklahoma City neighborhoods also have food desert areas. Mothers receiving food stamps don’t have access to healthy foods, and children aren’t getting fruits and vegetables noted Stephen Eberle of the Indian Health Care Research Center in Tulsa. Tax credits and other incentives would help get stores into Oklahoma’s food deserts, although the state is struggling with revenue shortfalls and budget cuts which would make incentives difficult. There are some federal programs that can help noted State Rep. Seneca Scott (D-Tulsa). Incentives also help Oklahoma residents by making them healthier, which helps the state by lowering health care costs, said Scott. Currently, the state ranks sixth in the nation for obesity.