When it comes to nutritional quality, a recent study has given the green light to the majority of foods in three USDA food programs at the heart of the charitable food system. The study assessed food items offered by the TEFAP commodity food program for food banks, the FDPIR program…
Posts published in “Food is Medicine”
It’s fair to say that every food bank in the country would like to prioritize health and nutrition in its policies and procedures. Today, Partnership for a Healthier America is releasing the results of an index it developed to help food banks do just that. More than two years in…
In theory, healthcare and hunger-relief entities are excellent partners in serving food-insecure people in their communities. In reality, there are often barriers to making those partnerships click. The Federation of Virginia Food Banks and the state’s seven member food banks are working to break down those barriers with a three-year…
As more people recognize that food is integral to health, more hospital-based food pantries are turning up. In Chicago, one hospital has pioneered an “open-access” pantry model that it contends can be more beneficial to public health than other approaches. The Feed1st pantry at the University of Chicago Medical Center…
Most food banks do a good job of tracking and talking about how many pounds of food they deliver. But they still have a ways to go in terms of knowing and sharing how much of that food is nutritious. Partnership for a Healthier America wants to change that by…
Early insights from Massachusetts show promising pathways for using Medicaid dollars to treat food and nutrition insecurity, but underscore that technology will be a big challenge. Hunger relief entities in Massachusetts got extra incentive to continue exploring ways to work with the healthcare community in September, when the state’s MassHealth…
In an effort timed to coincide with the White House’s convening on hunger, nutrition and health, the Department of Health and Human Services recently unveiled “groundbreaking” approvals that pave the way for state health care plans to use Medicaid funding to pay for nutritious food that would improve peoples’ health.…
Food banks have long emphasized better nutrition in the food they distribute. Now, serious structural changes are making elevated nutritional quality a lasting characteristic of food banking. The most important of these may be the development of nutrition guidelines specifically for use in the charitable food system. Introduced two years…
The charitable food system may be a risky incubator for diabetes intervention, but hunger relief organizations are experimenting anyway. And they are seeing encouraging results. Despite challenges, hunger-relief organizations are continuing to find novel and creative ways to address diabetes, a diet-related disease that afflicts about 10% of the U.S.…