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Food Bank News

TEFAP Backstops the Food Banks

Funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program ($374 million in 2017) may be small potatoes compared to SNAP ($68 billion), but TEFAP holds the distinction of being the largest source of federal aid aimed directly at the nation’s food banks. Nearly 20% of the food that gets distributed by America’s…

CACFP Faces New Rules on Nutrition

Started as a way to bring food and nutrition to pre-schoolers in day-care centers, the Child and Adult Care Food Program has expanded robustly since its beginning in 1968, to now support day-care clientele of all types:  elderly adults, disabled people of all ages, and pre-schoolers cared for in private…

WIC Has Room to Grow

As the third largest federal nutrition program, WIC receives more funding than the School Breakfast Program, but about half as much as National School Lunch. The $5.6 billion it got in 2017 is about one-twelfth the amount used up by SNAP, the largest program. Though WIC enjoys bipartisan support in…

Summer Meals Program Has Long Way to Go

The Summer Food Service Program is a bit player among the federal school-related nutrition programs, commanding only $418 million of funding in 2016, a fraction of the amounts for school lunch ($13.6 billion) and breakfast ($4.2 billion). Though the program has been around in one form or another since 1968…

School Lunch Leads School-based Aid

The National School Lunch Program is the largest of the school-based food-assistance programs, receiving $13.6 billion in federal dollars in 2017, more than three times the amount as the School Breakfast Program. It is available in 95% of the nation’s schools, and served about 30 million children every day in…

SNAP Dictates Need for Food Banks

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is the big daddy of all the food-related federal aid programs. At $68 billion in 2017, SNAP was five times as large as the next biggest program, National School Lunch. At least 42 million people (about 13% of the nation’s population) participated in SNAP in…