FOOD AND NUTRITION
HEALTHY AND HUNGER-FREE USDA’s Food and Nutrition Programs By Craig Collins
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f you’d been in attendance at the East Dallas, Texas, recreation center Feb. 10, 2012, where a special episode of the Bravo channel’s Top Chef was taped – the one in which first lady Michelle Obama appeared with several Dallas Cowboys and Top Chef contestants to host a cooking demonstration before hundreds of cheering students – you would have had to conclude the American diet is getting more attention than ever before. Personalities such as Top Chef host Tom Colicchio, a partner in the White House’s healthy school lunch initiative, are keeping food and nutrition in the spotlight. White House head chef Sam Kass’ least important job, arguably, is preparing meals – in fact, he’s not often found in the nation’s capital. As senior policy adviser for Healthy Food Initiatives, he travels the country, often with the first lady, promoting White House programs designed to battle the obesity epidemic through exercise and healthy food choices. The U.S. Department of Agriculture welcomes the attention. The department, which published its first dietary guidance in 1894, has long recognized the benefits of bringing farm-raised produce to American communities. In the 1930s, as both farmers and poor urban residents suffered through the Great Depression, the USDA launched its first commodity-donation programs – primarily school lunch and food stamp programs – designed to bridge what then-Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace described as “a gorge, with farm surpluses on one cliff and under-nourished city folks with outstretched hands on the other.” When you consider the variety of ways in which the USDA’s nutrition assistance programs
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AMERICAN AGRICULTURE
continue to serve people in both rural and urban America, it’s easy to understand why they account for more than half of the USDA’s annual budget – and why funding for these programs has increased by more than 140 percent since 2001. During the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, these programs are more important in the fight against hunger and malnutrition than ever before: In 2010, 48.8 million Americans lived in households that had difficulty putting food on the table. Federal nutrition assistance programs now reach one in four Americans every year. The USDA administers more than 15 of these programs in partnership with state and local governments, food banks, anti-hunger organizations, faith- and community-based organizations, individuals, and corporations. Together, these allies work to carry out the primary mission of the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS): to increase food security and reduce hunger by providing children and low-income Americans with access to healthy food and nutrition education in a way that continues to support American agriculture and inspire the public’s confidence. School Meals
Through its school meals programs, the USDA pursues two main goals: making school meals nutritious and ending childhood hunger. One of the largest and farthest-reaching of these programs, the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), makes nutritionally balanced meals available to 32 million children in about 101,000 schools and child care centers every day. There are two parts to the NSLP: First, the department reimburses participating schools