TEFAP Alliance Blog

Foodlinks America - February 3, 2006

In this issue:

· Budget Bill Passed by Slim Margin
· Welfare Changes Could Increase Poverty, Hunger
· Poverty Guidelines Updated as Income Inequality Grows
· New Study Shows Food Insecurity Affects Child Development
· Food Stamp Use Hits Record Levels
· TEFAP Commodities for 2006 Announced
· Summer Food Reimbursement Rates Updated
· Obesity Round-Up
· Reports from the Field
· Small Bites
· Make News and Share It!

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.

Budget Bill Passed by Slim Margin

The House of Representatives endorsed budget-cutting legislation on February 1, 2006 that will reduce mandatory spending over the next five years by $39.7 billion by making deep cuts in programs for the poor. By a razor thin, 216-214 margin, the lower chamber finalized S. 1932, otherwise known as the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The bill had been passed by the Senate in December 2005, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting a rare tie-breaking vote, but minor changes made in the Senate needed to be approved by the House to ensure final passage.

Although nutrition assistance programs are not affected directly in the legislation, significant cuts to health care services under Medicaid and Medicare, child support enforcement, welfare programs, and student loans will impact low-income households. Stiffer work requirements under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, also contained in the bill, are predicted to have significant impacts on poverty and emergency food needs (see related story below).

The budget measure represents the first major effort in nearly a decade to reduce the growth of so-called entitlement programs in which spending is determined by eligibility criteria. However, the close votes in both the House and Senate signal how difficult it will be for President Bush to find support for additional cuts that are expected to be proposed in his fiscal year 2007 budget plan, which will be released on February 6.

The budget cuts are also being used as a partial offset to permit tax cuts for upper-income Americans. The congressional leadership hopes to pass $70 billion in tax cuts within the next few weeks. Democrats, who unanimously opposed S. 1932 in the final vote, were critical of the juxtaposition. “A vote for this bill is a vote, literally, to take away health care from our children so we can give more money to the super-rich,” stated Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY).

But elements of the final bill even caused some Republicans to give pause. “I am very concerned,” said Representative Jim Gerlach (R-PA), “about how the legislation reduces funding for mental health and education as well as important health care areas that will ultimately target our nation’s most needy citizens.” And the consideration of more tax cuts for the wealthy right on the heels of a bill cutting services to the poor also caused consternation. “I do not know how anyone can say with a straight face that when we voted to cut spending in December to help achieve deficit reductions, we can now turn around a short while later to provide tax cuts that exceed or cancel out the reduction in spending,” said Senator George Voinovich (R-OH). “We cannot afford these tax cuts.”

Welfare Changes Could Increase Poverty, Hunger

A major restructuring of the nation’s principal welfare program, approved in the budget reconciliation bill (S. 1932) that passed Congress on February 1, 2006, could result in more children in deep poverty and increased needs for emergency food assistance, according to anti-hunger advocates. New, tighter work requirements and reduced state flexibility are the two key provisions of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program contained in the legislation.

“The emergency food networks in Ohio serve as alternative work sites for most of the remaining TANF assistance groups who are required to meet work requirements in order to get their poverty level cash payments,” Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Banks told Foodlinks America. “Our non-profits and faith-based members are also taking in more food stamp recipients who are required to meet work requirements to remain eligible for their food stamp benefits that are lasting on average two-and-a-half weeks of each month. So guess who’s feeding these families when they run out of food stamps and cash? You guessed it – food pantries and soup kitchens.”

Participation in TANF was reduced from 80 percent of eligible poor families in 1995 to just 48 percent in 2001, mostly as a result of the 1996 welfare reform. Further cuts are likely with implementation of the budget legislation, as states will be required to meet higher job targets within 10 months, along with other goals that may be reached only by further restricting eligibility.

“The number of children in deep poverty [below one-half the poverty line] is likely to rise,” explained the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) in a December 19, 2005 analysis (available at: http://www.cbpp.org/12-18-05bud2.htm). CBPP noted that even the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “expects states to try and cope with the federal mandates by increasing the number of families that are sanctioned off the program and by imposing new barriers to poor families seeking assistance [emphasis in original].”

“Welfare reform promised independence, but they’re making it into a dead-end street,” commented Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, whose 1,200 members feed hundreds of thousands of people daily. “These TANF changes, done without hearings or debate, will move people to homelessness, soup kitchens and food pantries,” Berg added. “It’s the worst of politics and the worst of policy combined.”

Poverty Guidelines Updated as Income Inequality Grows

Revised poverty guidelines for 2006, which affect eligibility for many government programs and services, were released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on January 24, 2006. The new poverty standards – at $9,800 for a single individual and $20,000 for a family of four – reflect a 3.4 percent increase over 2005 to account for inflation.

However, in most states the gap between high-income families and low-income families is once again increasing significantly, according to an analysis of Census data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) in Washington, D.C. in a report released on January 26, 2006. “The incomes of the country’s richest families have climbed substantially over the past two decades, while middle- and lower-income families have seen only modest increases,” noted CBPP. After a brief respite from growing income disparities in 2000 to 2002, “it appears that the two-decade-long trend of worsening income inequality has resumed,” the CBPP analysis stated.

The five states with the largest income gap between rich and poor, based on numbers for the top and bottom fifths of families in those states are New York, Texas, Tennessee, Arizona, and Florida. Generally, the income gap was larger in the Southeast and Southwest portions of the country. The principal cause of rising income inequality since the early 1980s “has been the erosion of wages for the 70 percent of workers with less than a college education,” claimed CBPP, though even college-educated workers are now finding their wages declining as more jobs head overseas.

The poverty guidelines, published in the Federal Register, may be found at: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20061800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2006/pdf/06-624.pdf. The CBPP report may be viewed at: http://www.cbpp.org/1-26-06sfp.htm.

New Study Shows Food Insecurity Affects Child Development

Recently published research from investigators at Cornell University and the University of South Carolina provides evidence that food insecurity negatively affects children’s academic performance in reading and math, as well as weight gain and social skills. The study results appeared in the December 2005 issue of the Journal of Nutrition.

“This study provides the strongest empirical evidence to date that food insecurity is linked to specific developmental consequences for children, and that those consequences may be both nutritional and non-nutritional,” the authors wrote in their summary. The researchers looked at longitudinal data for a nationally representative sample of more than 21,000 children in nearly 1,600 elementary schools, who were tracked from kindergarten through third grade.

The study found that food insecure children – both boys and girls – had smaller increases in math and reading scores over time. In addition, food insecure girls evidenced greater gains in weight and body mass index (BMI) than food secure girls. Food insecure boys showed greater declines in social skills than food secure boys. The researchers concluded that: “Food insecurity serves as an important marker for identifying children with delayed trajectories of development.”

To learn more, go to: http://www.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/135/12/2831.

Food Stamp Use Hits Record Levels

Participation in the Food Stamp Program (FSP) reached 29,596,860 people in November 2005, the highest level in the history of the program since its inception in 1969. The previous record participation level was 27.5 million people in 1994. More than two million new individuals enrolled in the FSP in November alone, numbers driven by the huge food relief needs in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.

The national caseload grew by 4.4 million people between November 2004 and November 2005, reflecting not only disaster-related eligibility, but limited job growth and continued wage stagnation.

TEFAP Commodities for 2006 Announced

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced the surplus and purchased commodities it expects to make available for donation to states this year for use in providing nutrition assistance to the needy under The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). The commodities were listed in a January 30, 2006 notice in the Federal Register.

Among commodities to be purchased with the $140 million appropriated for TEFAP this year are 61 foods, including corn flakes, peanut butter, frozen chicken, and grapefruit juice. States are able to order foods off the list as their funding permits. Surplus or bonus commodities USDA expects to have available this year are: fresh apples, frozen and canned asparagus, canned apple juice, pineapple juice, cranberry juice concentrate, canned apricots, applesauce, mixed fruit, peaches, dehydrated potatoes, and fresh and canned sweet potatoes. Additional bonus commodities may be made available later in the year.

For additional information, see the Federal Register notice at: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/…gov/2006/pdf/06-813.pdf

Summer Food Reimbursement Rates Updated

Annual adjustments to the reimbursement rates for meals served in the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) were issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on January 24, 2006 in the Federal Register. The new rates reflect a 3.2 increase over 2005 to account for inflation.

SFSP sponsors can receive operating costs this year of up to $2.56 per lunch or supper, $1.47 per breakfast, and 0.59 cents per supplement or snack, in addition to an administrative reimbursement of up to 26.75 cents for lunches, 14.50 cents for breakfasts, and 7.25 cents per snack, if they prepare their own meals or operate in rural areas. Regular administrative payment rates are slightly lower.

Anti-hunger groups have been trying for years to increase the number of children getting meals during summer and other vacation times from the SFSP and the regular school lunch program. During the summer of 2004 (the latest year for which statistics are available), an average of only 19 children participated in a summer meals program for every 100 who ate a regular school lunch during the school year. Only one jurisdiction, the District of Columbia, fed more than half of eligible children that year, while five states served less than seven percent of eligible children.

To review the Federal Register notice, go to: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/…gov/2006/pdf/E6-793.pdf.

Obesity Round-Up

· Hiding prostate cancer: Obesity may make it harder to identify prostate cancer in men, causing delays in diagnosis and treatment that increase the risk of dying of the disease, according to a multi-university study led by researchers from Duke University and published in the February 2005 issue of the Journal of Urology. Prostate cancer is the second most common type of cancer affecting males in the U.S.

Prostate gland size increases as body weight grows and the study of some 1,400 men diagnosed with prostate cancer found death rates of obese men with the disease up to 35 percent higher than those of men at a normal weight. “Diagnosing prostate cancer is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack,” said Dr. Stephen Freedland, a professor at Duke and a principal investigator in the study. “The bigger the haystack you have, the harder it is to find the needle, and in this case, we may be missing cancers in obese men.”

For additional details, see: http://www.dukemednews.org/news/article.php?id=9435.

· Longer residency reduces produce consumption: Women who are new immigrants to the U.S. tend to eat more fruits and vegetables than native residents or other immigrants who arrived earlier, according to a study done by the Harvard School of Public Health and presented at a December 2005 conference. Findings revealed that American-born women ate two-and-one-half fewer servings of fruits and vegetables daily than recent immigrants.

“In their countries of origin, food was central to family, food was central to life in general,” said Harvard researcher Tamara Dubowitz. “Eating held a different priority.” But things are different here in the U.S., where there is less income, time, and family support. “There are pressures to assimilate, too – part of it is eating the way people eat here,” explained Harvard health specialist Dolores Acevedo-Garcia. “And when people are on a limited budget, it’s easier to go for a $1 or $2 McDonald’s meal than to eat what you would eat in your home country.”

For further information, see: http://apha.confex.com/apha/133am/techprogram/paper_114466.htm.

· Lower prices, lower weight: Lower grocery prices for fruits and vegetables were found to deliver a significantly lower gain in body mass index (BMI) among elementary school children in a study reported by Rand Corporation researchers in the December 2005 issue of Public Health magazine. In examining the association between food prices, food outlet density, and changes in BMI among children in kindergarten through third grade, investigators found that lower produce prices reduced weight gains by half, while lower meat prices had the opposite effect.

“The estimated effects were meaningfully larger for children in poverty, children already at risk for overweight or overweight in kindergarten, and Asian and Hispanic children,” according to the study findings, which may be reviewed at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B73H6-4H21KF8-1/2/3b39dc3303f38dfe9725c48004023289.

· More is better: Eating more than the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables a day reduces the odds of suffering a stroke, according to British researchers. A review of eight studies that examined the effects of produce consumption on stroke showed that the more fruits and vegetables healthy people consumed the less likely they were to have a stroke, according to a paper published in the January 27, 2006 issue of The Lancet, a British medical journal.

People who ate more than five daily servings of fruits and vegetables had a 26 percent reduction in the incidence of stroke. The research review encompassed more than 250,000 people in the U.S., Europe, and Japan.

“It has been known that fruit and vegetables seem to reduce stroke but it wasn’t known how much they did it by,” said Graham MacGregor, a professor at St. George’s Medical School at the University of London. “It is a very important finding because it really shows that the quantity of fruit and vegetables you should be eating is more than five a day,” he added. To learn more, go to: http://www.thelancet.com/.

· A growing industry: Revenues from “obesity industries” are expected to exceed $315 billion this year – nearly three percent of the overall U.S. economy – and that is a conservative estimate, according to William Weis, a management professor at Seattle University. Weis counts $133.7 billion in spending at fast-food restaurants, $124.7 billion for obesity-related medical treatment, $1.8 billion for diet books, and more.

“Put simply, there is a lot of money being made, and to be made, in feeding both oversize stomachs and feeding those enterprises selling fixes for oversized stomachs,” wrote Weis in an academic paper last year. “And both industries – those selling junk food and those selling fat cures – depend for their future on the prevalence of obesity.”

Reports from the Field

From an article in the January 23, 2006 Rocky Mountain News in Denver, CO come these observations about poverty then and now:

“Margie Rotkin, who runs family shelters for Emergency Family Assistance in Boulder, Lafayette, and Longmont … has been helping Boulder’s poor for 20 years, but she’s never seen anything like she’s seen the last couple years.”

“When I first came here, someone would ask for help while they were looking for a job,” Rotkin said. “It would take a couple weeks, they’d get a paycheck, rent a place, and move out of the temporary shelter.”

”Nowadays, the typical client is already working. But a crisis comes along – car trouble, medical bills, loss of health insurance.”

“They will have been evicted, or are about to, because they can’t afford to pay the high rent,” she said. “Boulder has become more and more difficult to live in” without a secure, high-paying job complete with medical benetits.”

Small Bites

U.S. lags in organic growth: Though sales of organic products are growing 20 percent a year in the U.S., American consumers are among the least likely shoppers in the world to regularly purchase organic food and beverage products, according to A.C. Neilsen.

Organic around the world: In an analysis of purchase data from 38 countries, Neilsen found that only 15 percent of U.S. consumers regularly buy organic eggs, compared to 32 percent globally; 15 percent of Americans buy organic vegetables versus 29 percent elsewhere, and for dairy products, it was 14 percent U.S. against 23 percent worldwide.

Why not organic?: Neilsen research found that the top reasons people do not buy organic items is that they are too expensive or are not sold where they shop.

Foreign can be organic: To display the green-and-white USDA organic seal on their products, foreign farms must be inspected by a USDA-approved certification agency. There are 99 companies and government agencies approved to certify organics, and 43 of them are based overseas.

Organic may not be domestic: More and more organic food is being imported. Most U.S. manufacturers and retailers of organic products, including Organic Valley, Cascadian Farm, and Trader Joe’s, use at least some imported organics.

Think globally, act locally: Organic producers in the U.S. have reservations about imports. “It’s great to clean up China and Argentina,” said Wende Elliott of the Wholesome Harvest organic livestock producers cooperative in Colo, IA, “but that doesn’t help our local drinking water situation in Iowa.”

Make News and Share It!

Foodlinks America is seeking stories and ideas for articles from its readers. We ask you, who are on the front lines of the war against hunger and poverty in this country, to tell us about new approaches and projects that are working in your community to improve food access and nutrition for low-income people. Send your thoughts to: zyweinberg@281.com.

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