Struggle often breeds innovation, a concept that Jeremy Cooley, CEO of Tangelo, an online e-commerce platform, understands. Cooley made it his mission to highlight the importance of nutritious food after 2017, when his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live. After proper nutrition helped extend…
Posts published in “SNAP+”
Food banks and pantries can look forward to increased opportunities to create more resilient, food-secure communities, thanks to comprehensive funding recently announced by the USDA that promises to overhaul the framework of the American food system. Announced June 1, USDA’s Food System Transformation framework fills in the details of a…
Technology nonprofit mRelief has already helped people access nearly $1 billion in SNAP benefits since its inception, and now it is looking to food banks nationwide to help it unlock even more funds. The Chicago-based firm, founded in 2014, specializes in increasing awareness of SNAP and simplifying the bulky process…
Legislation pending in California would supercharge the way healthy incentive programs (often known as Double Up Food Bucks) work, potentially having an outsized impact on the ability of SNAP recipients in the state to afford and eat more nutritious food. At the heart of the program is technology that automatically…
What’s the best way to strengthen SNAP? The sprawling program, which cost $113 billion in 2021 – nearly double the $60 billion spent in pre-pandemic 2019 – is guided by a vast set of rules and requirements. These stipulations ultimately dictate how many people are served by the program and…
A new food program introduced by the USDA draws on lessons learned from the Farmers to Families Food Box program to create an assistance program unlike any other in the hunger relief community. The traditional aims of USDA food programs – nutrition assistance and food security – are not the…
The USDA recently gave a nice boost to farm-to-food bank projects, awarding more than $7.5 million to support them, up from $3.7 million in each of the previous two years. But the Center for Science in the Public Interest thinks funding for such projects should increase to at least $25…
SNAP is already known to be effective at achieving its goals of reducing food insecurity and poverty. Now, new research suggests that the program is also bringing down healthcare costs — reducing Medicaid fees by as much as $2,360 per person. The new study, published in the Annals of Internal…
Not many food banks actively promote nutrition incentive programs that make fresh produce more accessible to low-income families. But the ones that do are seeing results that go well beyond increased produce consumption in their communities. These “Double Up Food Bucks” programs, which originated at farmers markets over 15 years…