TEFAP Alliance Blog

Foodlinks America - January 20, 2006

In this issue:

· More Spending Cuts Expected to be Proposed
· 50,000 To Be Cut From Commodity Program
· Wal-Mart Halts Food Donations
· Community Food Applications Invited
· More States Opting for Food over Money in TEFAP
· Meal Services to Homeless Youth Expanded
· Fast Food Facts
· Obesity Round-Up
· Reports from the Field
· Small Bites

Foodlinks America is published 24 times a year by California Emergency Foodlink and distributed by Weinberg & Vauthier Consulting, 6412 CR 116, Burnet, Texas 78611; Zy Weinberg and Barbara Vauthier, Editors; email: bvauthier@281.com.

There is no copyright on Foodlinks America, so the information can be freely shared with colleagues and friends, though attribution for reprinted articles is appreciated. To receive the newsletter directly, contact Barbara Vauthier at: bvauthier@281.com.

More Spending Cuts Expected to be Proposed

The Bush Administration will release its budget for federal fiscal year 2007 (October 1, 2006 to September 30, 2007) on February 6 and it likely will propose additional cuts in both mandatory, or entitlement, spending, as well as discretionary programs. No details are available at this time, but multi-billion programs like food stamps are likely candidates for possible reductions.

The potential for new cuts is being driven by the burgeoning federal deficit, which is now expected to exceed $400 billion next year, as federal assistance to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, the war in Iraq, and the new Medicare prescription drug program increase the federal debt. In addition, the White House continues to pledge that it will cut the deficit in half by fiscal 2009, a promise that would entail substantial reductions in federal spending. “Policy is going to butt heads with politics this year,” said Bill Hoagland, a budget analyst working for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), since cuts in Medicare and other entitlement programs “aren’t politically saleable.”

However, the Administration’s efforts have already garnered some support in Congress. Senate Budget Committee chairman Judd Gregg (R-NH) has publicly called for another round of cuts in entitlement programs for fiscal year 2007, on top of the $39.7 billion in reductions that is currently pending in Congress as part of the fiscal year 2006 budget reconciliation bill. Congress is expected to finalize the fiscal 2006 budget legislation when it reconvenes later this month.

50,000 To Be Cut From Commodity Program

A funding shortfall this year in the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) will result in nearly 50,000 low-income people – mostly seniors – being dropped from the program, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The CSFP, which operates in 32 states, the District of Columbia, and two Indian reservations, provides a monthly box of government commodity foods, including peanut butter, canned meats, rice, pasta, and cheese.

USDA has ordered states to reduce their caseloads by 9.2 percent for calendar year 2006. The program is expected to serve just 477,000 people nationwide this year, compared to over 525,000 in 2005. The cuts are being driven by lower appropriations, fewer carryover funds from last year, and higher costs for commodity items, particularly cheese.

CSFP advocates, however, are still waging an uphill battle for restoration of the funding. “For more than 30 years, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program has been one of the first lines of defense against hunger for low-income women, children, and seniors,” noted Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). “I have been fighting these cuts and will continue to work to restore funding to help Michigan seniors and families,” she added.

Michigan, which has the second biggest CSFP program in the nation after Louisiana, stands to lose some 7,700 caseload slots. “We don’t want to remove people from the program,” said Frank Kubik of Focus HOPE in Detroit, a large CSFP agency. “How can I go to someone and say, ‘Don’t come back?’”

Wal-Mart Halts Food Donations

Wal-Mart Stores, the largest food retailer in the nation, announced on January 5, 2006 that it would no longer donate out-of-date or nearly expired products to food banks and other charities. Instead, the food will be thrown away.

The new policy will apply to all 1,224 Wal-Marts, 1,929 Supercenters, and 558 Sam’s Club stores.

Wal-Mart claims that the reason for the change is to protect the corporation from liability in the event that a recipient gets sick from eating a donated item. “We can’t guarantee the safety of the merchandise, and consumer safety is our top priority,” said a company spokesperson. No mention was made of the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, a federal law passed in 1996 that provides protection from civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution for food donors unless there is “gross negligence.”

Wal-Mart’s changing attitude comes at a time when emergency food providers are already facing a precipitous decline in donations from industry. “If they were giving it away somewhere else that wouldn’t be so bad, but the fact is, it’s going in the garbage,” said Owen Foley of the St. Vincent de Paul Food Locker in Sacramento, CA. “I mean, there’s a big need,” Foley added.

Community Food Applications Invited

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that approximately $4.6 million is available for new awards under its Community Food Projects (CFP) competitive grants program for fiscal year 2006. Eligible applicants must submit letters of intent by February 13, 2006 in order to be invited to submit a full application. The application deadline is April 13, 2006.

CFP funds are available in three categories this year – regular Community Food Projects, Training and Technical Assistance (T&TA) projects, and a new category of Planning Projects. Community Food Projects promote comprehensive responses to local food, farm, and nutrition issues, while T&TA projects help program applicants and grantees to build organizational capacity and strengthen project operations. Regular CFP and T&TA projects may request as much as $300,000 for projects of up to three years’ duration. The small-scale Planning Projects will offer up to $25,000 for assessment of local food security and the identification of needed improvements. Regular CFP and Planning projects must commit matching non-federal resources on a dollar-for-dollar basis.

For additional information, review the CFP request for applications at: http://www.csrees.usda.gov/fo/fundview.cfm?fonum=1080.

More States Opting for Food over Money in TEFAP

An increasing number of states are exercising their option to spend a portion of their storage and distribution funds in The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) on food. The final fiscal year 2006 appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) once again allows states to convert up to $10 million of the $49.5 million provided for distribution expenses to be used to buy food.

Although TEFAP continues to be allocated $140 million a year for food purchases, a growing need for more food to combat increasing hunger nationwide has propelled an increase in the numbers each year. USDA reports that for fiscal year 2006, 12 states will use $2.55 million of the $10 million for food. Those numbers are up from fiscal year 2005, when nine states converted $1.45 million and from fiscal 2004, when just four states transferred $744,000.

Reduced amounts of bonus commodities available to TEFAP are also driving the trend. So far this fiscal year, USDA has supplied only five items – dry beans, dried cherries, grape juice, dried fig pieces, and canned sweet potatoes. No additional bonus purchases are on the horizon at this time, according to USDA officials.

Meal Services to Homeless Youth Expanded

On January 3, 2006, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued interim regulations in the Federal Register extending eligibility for Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) participation to emergency shelters that serve homeless teenagers and children without their families. The rules implement a provision of the 2004 child nutrition reauthorization act that raised the age limit for residents of emergency shelters from age 13 to 18.

USDA notes that, “These changes are expected to increase the number of emergency shelters that will be eligible to participate in the CACFP as well as the number of homeless children that will have access to free, nutritious meals.” Comments on the interim regulations may be submitted through March 6, 2006. For additional information, see the Federal Register notice at: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/…gov/2006/pdf/05-24683.pdf.

Fast Food Facts

- Breakfast: The Final Frontier. Seventy-five percent of Americans start their day with breakfast at home. Just seven percent of Americans currently eat breakfast on the go and only two percent of them get their meal from a fast food restaurant. Consequently, fast food purveyors are focusing on the breakfast market, which is growing three times as fast as the lunch and dinner market, according to an article in the January 6, 2006 issue of Forbes magazine.

Until recently, McDonald’s, with its Egg McMuffin, dominated the fast food breakfast arena. But now other chains are ratcheting up the competition, offering take-offs on the egg sandwich with cheese and/or meat in a muffin, croissant, or biscuit. Starbucks is beginning to install ovens in its stores to offer wider food choices for breakfast. Carl’s Jr. is selling a breakfast burger; Chick-fil-A has adapted its chicken nuggets for breakfast; and Papa John’s is serving an omelet pizza.

- A fruitless marketing effort. Wendy’s, which introduced a fruit bowl of fresh-cut melon, pineapple, and grapes to its menu last February with great fanfare, has now dropped the item from all 6,400 of its North American restaurants due to sagging sales, notes an article in Fruit Growers News. Last year, Wendy’s CEO Tom Mueller proudly announced that, “We’re giving our customers an easy, convenient way to add more fruit to their daily diet.” No more. Wendy’s will still serve mandarin oranges at its restaurants, but that’s it.

Obesity Round-Up

• Parental and breakfast factors weighed: The best indicator of whether a youth will be a healthy weight is having two parents of normal weight. For those teens who have an obese parent, the best predictor of whether they will not be overweight is eating breakfast every day, according to the results of a study published in the January 2006 issue of The Journal of the American Dietetic Association. Researchers at Strong’s Children’s Hospital in Rochester, NY analyzed a nationally representative sample of nearly 1,900 youth ages 12 to 16. Fewer than 40 percent of children with two obese parents were of normal weight.

Breakfast consumption had more impact on weight outcomes than exercise or watching television. “The main message is that regular breakfast consumption has a protective effect,” said Heather Fiore of Strong’s Hospital. “We don’t know exactly why it helps, but there’s certainly no harm in eating breakfast every day. It has numerous benefits for kids in school. Weight control is an additional benefit.” To review the study, go to: http://www.adajournal.org/article/PIIS0002822305017311/abstract.

• There is no fat and healthy: Middle age Americans who are overweight but have normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels may not be as healthy as they believe. A study by Northwestern University tracking over 17,000 adults, and reported in the January 11, 2006 Journal of the American Medical Society, found that being overweight or obese in midlife increased substantially the risk of dying later of heart disease, even in people who had normal cholesterol and blood pressure levels at the outset of the study.

Researchers concluded that: “For individuals with no cardiovascular risk factors as well as for those with one or more risk factors, those who are obese in middle age have a higher risk of hospitalization and mortality from coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes in older age than those who are normal weight,” said investigator Lijing Yan: “The take-home message would be, pay more attention to your weight even if you don’t have an unhealthy risk factor profile yet.” For more details, see: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/295/2/190.

• Belly matters more than BMI: The relationship between a person’s belly size and hip size is a more useful indicator of health risks than body mass index (BMI), concluded Canadian researchers in an article published in the November 7, 2005 issue of The Lancet, a British medical journal. Heart attack risk was more accurately predicted when waist circumference was compared to hip circumference rather than when weight relative to height was measured. Waist-to-hip ratios greater than 0.95 indicated an increased risk of heart problems in the population studied. To learn more, see: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673605676635/abstract.

• Supersizing equipment and supplies: Researchers in Ireland recently reported that they had to use extra long needles to give shots in the derriere because some patients’ skin was so thick they could not reach their target using regular-length needles. The long needles are only one example of a medical industry that now caters to the needs of the obese. Other alterations include size 5X patient gowns, wheelchairs with seats four feet wide, scales that measure people in the hundreds of pounds, reinforced hospital beds that can handle excessive loads, and oversized MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines that have a more intense energy use to bore through all the tissue to produce a clear, clinical image that has diagnostic value.
Reports from the Field

· Significant state-level efforts in Oregon over the past few years have moved the state down a few notches in the national hunger and food insecurity rankings from the top position it held in 1999. However, the need for food remains high, according to an article in the December 24, 2005 Salem Statesman Journal:

“According to an Oregon Food Bank survey conducted last year, 43 percent of surveyed households receiving emergency food assistance had at least one member working, and 26 percent of them had at least one full-time worker. Among families with children, 54 percent had at least one adult working, and 35 percent had a full-time working adult.”

“The fact that a lot of hungry people are really ‘working poor” is difficult to comprehend,” said Bob Morris, a food-resource manager for the Oregon Food Bank. “People think if you work, you are OK – but it’s not necessarily so.”

· That home on the range can be a hungry home, the Casper, Wyoming Star-Tribune reported in its January 8, 2006 edition:

In Laramie County, nutrition educator Karen Davis said that 10 to 20 percent of high school students are at risk of hunger and some depend on school lunch as their only meal of the day. “I have had kids in those classes who live in cars. People think that doesn’t happen in Wyoming or that doesn’t happen in small communities; that doesn’t happen in this country where we live in a land of plenty,” explained Davis. “But to those of us working in the trenches, teaching them to eat and finding out when they ate their last meal, we see it on a daily basis. They don’t have anything to eat and don’t know what to eat.”

The same article described how emergency food stamps helped one locality following a disaster. “The damage caused when a tornado scraped the community of Wright literally off the Wyoming landscape was horrible, yet there was an ironic silver lining for some. Campbell County nutrition educator Lori Jones, who serves an average of 125 families a year, said the lives of her clients in Wright actually improved.”

“The tornado raised their standard of living because whatever is brought in will be an improvement,” she noted. “There are mothers trying to get by on $6 to $7 an hour. We work with those mothers to try and get them to feel like they are doing a good job of feeding their children.”

Campbell County is one of the wealthiest in Wyoming, yet poverty and hunger are entrenched there, said Jones. “There is a big disparity between the haves and have-nots,” she added. “We don’t have out-and-out slums in Wyoming,” stated Ms. Jones, “but we have two or three families living in one apartment or living in one home. It is not us hiding poverty, as much as people in poverty have gotten pretty good at hiding it.”

· In neighboring Utah, hunger is increasing in spite of economic growth, reported the Daily Herald in Central Utah in its January 6, 2006 edition:
“Even with an expanding economy, job growth and a low unemployment rate, the number of people seeking help with something as basic as food is increasing — and the problem isn’t going away.”
“The state’s unemployment rate is expected to drop even lower over the next two years. Finding work, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s enough money to feed a household.”
“People are working. It’s just that there are so many low-paying jobs,” said Myla Dutton, executive director of Community Action Services. “We’re very concerned with getting through this winter with an estimated 25 to 30 percent increase in heating costs. People are using their food money to deal with those other bills.”
“The food budget is the first to go,” noted Gina Cornia, director of Utahns Against Hunger. “We actually use the food bank to prevent homelessness.”
· Back East, in Massachusetts, concerns about hunger among seniors are growing, following the release of an “Elderly Nutrition Needs Assessment” compiled by the South Shore Community Action Council. The assessment, which surveyed low-income elders, ages 66 to 100, in ten towns in the Boston area, was described in an article in Boston’s Patriot Ledger on January 9, 2006:
‘‘With rising housing and energy costs, people on fixed incomes turn to their food money as the only flexible money they have for those other bills,’’ said Patricia Daley, executive director of the Council. ‘‘I can feel the pressure from all over to do more.’’
Calling the assessment report “powerful and disturbing,” Daley stated that the report describes ‘‘a troubling picture of widespread food insecurity and nutritional risk.’’
Among the findings:
- One in seven elders went to bed feeling hungry sometimes or often.
- One in four had had to choose between paying for food and paying for utilities or heating fuel.
- More than half were judged at high nutritional risk.
‘‘The elders who go hungry are very embarrassed - they don’t want others to know they have been reduced to that level,’’ said Mary Willis, director of the Pembroke Council on Aging. ‘‘They are very proud old Yankees.’’

Small Bites

Ag’s top ten: The top 10 agriculture producing states, in terms of cash receipts, are: California, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Kansas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Florida, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Hispanics underrepresented in government: Though Hispanics comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population, the make up only seven percent of the federal workforce.

Corny counts: A mature ear of corn averages 800 kernels in 16 rows.

Healthy eating can cut health care costs: Physicians Plus, an insurance company based in Madison, WI, is encouraging its 95,000 members to participate in community supported agriculture (CSA) programs by offering rebates of up to $200 per family for those that join a CSA.

Pets eating well, too: Organic pet food sales in the U.S. increased 64.5 percent between 2002 and 2003, says the Organic Trade Association.

Faith-friendly foods: Economic prognosticators are forecasting new consumer trends that will appeal to specific groups, such as Christian-raised chicken. Tyson Foods, one of the nation’s largest producers of meat products, already offers free downloadable prayer books on its web site.

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