Learn About Roadrunner Food Banks Program to Link Health and Hunger

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Quarterly Meeting on Tuesday, February 9  12 Noon

First Presbyterian Church (I-25 and Martin Luther King Blvd.)

Alissa Barnes, director of Community Initiatives at Roadrunner Food Bank, will talk about the food banks new program on health and hunger.  Alissa is a member of the Interfaith Hunger Coalitions Advocacy Committee.

Our Education and Advocacy Committees will also present updates of their work over the past several weeks.  We are also seeking volunteers to serve on a committee to plan an Interfaith Service for World Food Day on Sunday, October 16, 2016

Data shows us that food insecurity and health go hand in hand. Food-insecure individuals are more likely to experience colds, stomach aches and migraines and suffer from generally poorer health than food secure individuals. In 2014, Feeding America conducted the Hunger in America study and found some staggering statistics  about New Mexico’s pantry clients:

• Nearly half (46%) report being in poor or fair health;
• 59% report choosing between paying for medicine or medical care or buying food at least once in the past 12 months;
• 44% of hungry households said they have medical bills to pay, and;
• 75% report purchasing inexpensive, unhealthy food as the most common way to have at least some food at home to eat.

As a food bank , we are focused on addressing Health and Wellness and leading in the national trend of food banks partnering with health organizations. We were pleased to share some of our Health and Wellness Initiatives with the Beyond Flexner Conference.  The conference brought a group of medical students, educators, and physicians together  to discuss social determinants of health.

More information in these links:
Healthy Hubs – Partnering with Organizations to Increase Health Outcomes

Working Together for a Healthy and Well Nourished New Mexico

Healthcare and Food Delivery Advisory Council Meeting Report

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Dear Member of Congress Please Prioritize Support for Maternal Child Health Programs

10:47 AM in Aqua, child, congress, dear, for, health, maternal, member, of, please, prioritize, programs, support

Photo: Twin Cities Bread team

Year after year, the leadership team in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area has put together great Offering of Letters workshops, maintained a website focused on the years letter-writing campaign and provided resources for churches in the area to organize their letter-writing Sundays (or weekends).

Here is the example that the Bread leaders in the Twin cities put together for the 2016 Offering of Letters, entitled "Survive and Thrive," which urges Congress to prioritize support for maternal and child health programs, emphasizing nutrition.

STEP 3 
Sincerely
Your Name
Address

STEP 4
Address your letter to Congress
U.S. House of Representatives, Washingon, D.C. 20515
 U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510

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Report Examines Impact of Proposed Food Tax on Health and Hunger in New Mexico

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Reinstating a tax on the sale of food for consumption at home could harm the health of New Mexicans who are already food insecure—meaning they don’t always have enough to eat. And while the revenue generated from a tax on food could be used to mitigate some of the damage the tax would do, the report finds that it is unlikely governments would spend the new revenue toward that end. -New Mexico Voices for Childrens report“A Health Impact Assessment of a Food Tax in New Mexico

There are many efforts underway to examine the relationship of health and nutrition to hunger. This week, the Bread for the World Institute published a comprehensive report on this issue, entitled The Nourishing Effect.  On Tuesday, we posted a piece about this report earlier this week.

The New Mexico Voices for Children also published a report on the same topic this week. The report, funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, is more specific to New Mexico.  This report examines how proposals to reinstate a tax on the sale of food for consumption at home could harm the health of New Mexicans who are already food insecure. 

“When all is said and done, taxing food will hurt those New Mexicans who are already hurting the most,” said Veronica C. García, Ed.D., executive director of NM Voices. “Almost a third of our state’s children don’t get enough to eat—even with school meals, SNAP benefits and food banks. How can we, in good conscience, expect them to do with even less food?"

The report looks at three possible outcomes of a food tax: that families would maintain their current food purchasing patterns, leaving less money for other necessities such as medication and health care; that families would spend the same amount of money on food, but be able to purchase less of it (or substitute less-expensive, less-nutritious foods); and that state or local governments would collect more revenue, which could impact their spending patterns.

Health Impacts of a Food Tax on Family Economic Security: Taxing food would cost each New Mexico household around $350 per year, or $29 per month, on average. Highest-income earners in New Mexico would spend about one-half of 1 percent of their income on a food tax, while the lower half of New Mexico earners would spend around 1 percent of their income on the food tax alone—double the rate that high earners would pay. Research and calculations show that a food tax would exacerbate the tax system’s regressivity—that is it would hit low-income earners harder than it would hit high- income earners—and could harm family economic security, which could have negative impacts on mental health and stress levels, income available for other necessary purchases besides food, need and demand for public assistance, childhood development, ability to pay for health services and medicine, economic equity, and the ability to manage chronic conditions through diet.

Health Impacts of a Food Tax on Food Security, Diet, and Nutrition:Taxing food could also have an adverse impact on food security, diet, and nutrition by prompting purchases of less food or cheaper, less nutritious food. This could have important and harmful implications for health, particularly nutrition-related chronic conditions, the ability to manage chronic conditions through diet, childhood development and learning capacity, malnutrition issues, the incidence of low birth-weight and/or preterm babies, and the need and demand for food assistance from public, private, and nonprofit sources.

Health Impacts of a Food Tax on Government Spending: It is also possible that the negative health impacts of taxing food could be mitigated by how that revenue is spent. If food tax revenues lead to overall increased government spending on direct health services, food assistance and nutrition programs, programs that provide recreational opportunities, and education, then the food tax could have positive implications for health, or at the very least have no net negative implications. However, it is more likely that food tax revenue would be used to make up for decreasing revenue and so be used to maintain current service levels. Though it is possible that any increases could be spent on the programs noted above, for most program areas, it is unlikely, particularly at the municipal level.

Here are links to the executive summary and the full report

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2016 Hunger Report Looks at Relationship of Health and Hunger

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The Bread for the World Institutes 2016 Hunger Report, The Nourishing Effect, was the talk of Twitter on the day it was released on Monday, November 23. #HungerReport was the #1 Twitter trend in Washington and was the #6 trend in the nation.

Several VIPs were on hand for the release of the report at the National Press Club, including Kevin Concannon, the Undersecretary of Agriculture, and Deb Eschmeyer, who runs the Let’s Move program in First Lady Michelle Obama’s office.

Here is  an excerpt from the executive summary.

Hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition ruin health. But good nutrition is preventive medicine. Hunger leads to poor health and poor health contributes to descents into hunger and food insecurity—especially among people who must choose between paying for food or medicine. In the United States, the issues of hunger and health have been seen as two separate and distinct challenges. But that is beginning to change as the system adapts to an ambitious reform agenda driven by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA is moving the U.S. healthcare system to focus on prevention and to address the root causes of chronic diseases.

Photo: Bread for the World

The Bread for the World Institute and Bread for the World will host a Twitter conversation this (Tuesday) morning at 11:00 A.M. Eastern Time (9:00 A.M. Mountain Time).

If you have any questions or observations about the report, please share them with the hosts of the Twitter conversation: Kelvin Beachum, an anti-hunger activist who plays for the  Pittsburgh Steelers; Lisa Scales of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, and Asma Lateef, director of the Bread for the World Institute. If you want to participate, follow @BreadInstitute on Twitter.

Download the full report

Here are some tweets related to the release of the report.

US spends more on health care of all rich countries, yet sees poorest health outcomes. #HungerReport #health pic.twitter.com/m3DmmpUmkQ

— Bread Institute (@breadinstitute) November 23, 2015

#hungerreport: socioeconomic inequality largely responsible for #hunger in US. @bread4theworld @breadinstitute pic.twitter.com/3gTZDhFFrk

— AllianceToEndHunger (@toendhunger) November 23, 2015

TOMORROW 11 a.m EST: Twitter chat about the linkage between hunger & health. #HungerReport https://t.co/GDhlOSV1oS pic.twitter.com/5JoByam7Fh

— Bread for the World (@bread4theworld) November 24, 2015

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Health of the Seafood Supply

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The words Health and Seafood are often used to describe the human health benefits derived from eating Seafood. But, this post is different it’s about “the health of the seafood supply”.

"Can the Oceans keep up with the Hunt?" is a documentary about the exhaustion of fish populations due to over-fishing. The film reported that the overall catch has been decreasing since the 1980s due to more advanced fishing techniques such as otter trawling that capture fish faster than the populations can reproduce. "by-catch" is also becoming a major problem.

By-catch refers to animals that are caught as a by-product of fishing for a certain kind of fish and are generally not included in quotas or if retained count toward total fishing allotments. By-catch species are often less valuable and are often just discarded. This practice also plays a major factor in declining populations.

Illegal fishing also contributes the problem. It is difficult and expensive to enforce international treaties on the open ocean and getting an agreement among all stakeholders, to properly police and reduce illegal fishing, is often mired in politics.

As a result of the exhaustion of fish populations, the supply for seafood cannot meet the demand through fishing alone.

During the Save Seafood tour at Hamilton College, on April 11, Jennifer Dianto from the Monterey Bay Aquarium spoke about the Seafood Watch Program the aquarium started. The goal of the program is to empower consumers and businesses to make choices for healthy oceans. "Our goal is to conserve the ocean. All of our recommendations are science-based," she said.

Dianto presented the results of a 2003 study that showed all of the oceans in the world are showing the same trends as far as fish populations -- 90 percent of large predatory fish are gone. She also noted that seafood consumption has doubled since 1973 and that the U.S. may be close to replacing Japan as the number one consumer of seafood. The decline in fish populations poses risks to societies that depend on fishing. In addition, the unknown is a major factor in why we should do something about it. "What is this going to do to the ocean? What is this going to do to the ecosystems?" asked Dianto. The answer is, we do not know. Hamilton College article.

One of the clear answers to fish supply shortages is to farm more fish. Aquaculture practices have been proven to create more supply while also working to enhance existing populations through hatchery production and restocking.

Aquaculture isn’t the total answer; however it is driven by need and it has clearly demonstrated the ability to create more food supply while reducing our reliance upon capture fisheries.

Fish farming does face challenges; one being feed. The fish that are often used to feed the carnivorous farm raised fish are now declining in numbers and often come from polluted areas. This creates issues with sustainability and could affect the quality of the end product. The good news is that considerable real science is being applied to find alternative and more sustainable methods of producing fish feeds, such as using higher vegetable based ingredients to supply more of the nutritional requirements carnivorous fish, which in turn reduces the amount of ocean based protein required.

Farming of fish such as Tilapia in land based farms is already a highly sustainable practice and 100% of the feed requirements can be supplied from renewal plant based sources. Combining land based fish farming with Aquaponic plant production further enhances sustainability while creating additional food sources for both human and animal consumption.

Fish farming has also been subjected to bad press, much of which can be traced as a result of considerable and organized efforts of capture fishery lobby groups. Well funded lobbying and “Junk Science” efforts have been designed to paint Aquaculture as the bad boy of seafood supply.

It is recognized by farmers and researchers alike that aquaculture does have problems that need addressing and much effort is already taking place to solve these problems. However, for the most part fish farming is more of a threat to the companies that have a vested interest in raping the oceans for immense profit, than it is to the environment and the seafood supply. Careful review of the history, statistics and regulatory measures / status, supports this opinion.

In my opinion all stakeholders in the seafood world most work together toward a common goal to ensure sustainable and continual supplies of seafood. A collective approach should be taken, one where clear objectives are set out and real development and regulatory efforts are made to reach goals and objectives. There is also a real need to eliminate “junk science” designed to cloud the truth or to prop up ailing and antedated practices of seafood harvesting.

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Summer Feeding Program in Albuquerque Linked Hunger and Health

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The Bread for the World Institutes 2016 Hunger Report, released on November 23, took the broad view of hunger as a health issue. A report published the same week by New Mexico Voices for Children examined the impact that a proposed tax on groceries would have on health and hunger in our state.

There are other local efforts underway to link hunger, nutrition and health.  First Choice Community Health Care launched a pilot program this past summer aimed at addressing child hunger as a health issue. The program, which took place June 1-August 7, was developed in partnership with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD) and the Bernalillo County Office of Health and Social Services.

The pilot program was put in place at the South Valley Health Commons in Albuquerque, offering any child between the ages of 1 and 18 access to a nutritious free lunch. The pre-packaged meals distributed at the Commons met USDAs nutrition standards and were prepared by APS Food Services, which has created a balanced menu that includes fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and low fat milk.

The program was the first of its kind at a primary care clinic, where pediatricians look for signs of malnutrition, including obesity.

First Choice is considering the possibility of expanding the program to its seven other locations in the metro area, as the USDA seeks places to expand its impact beyond the traditional school breakfast and lunch programs nationwide. “Hunger is a health issue in many ways,” said Dr. Will Kaufman, a local physician who specializes on nutrition and health. “Families report skipping meals and buying cheaper food to stretch their budgets, which can mean food that is high in fat, sugar and calories, and low in nutritional value.”

The children’s feeding program is one of several strategies First Choice is using to address hunger and nutrition. Patients also participate in La Cosecha Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, which sells low cost bags of fresh, vegetables grown by South Valley farmers each week of the growing season, delivered to the South Valley Health Commons.

The CSA food is subsidized by Presbyterian Healthcare Services, which helped organize a summit in Albuquerque on health and hunger in May of this year, in partnership with ProMedica and The Alliance to End Hunger.  Clients also participate in the WIC program, which provides supplemental food for children and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, including vouchers to spend on produce at Farmers Markets.

First Choice also helped launch a mobile farmers market that made stops throughout the South Valley and International District of Albuquerque during the summer. The mobile van, provided by Bernalillo County,  featured healthy cooking demonstrations, a mobile pantry stocked by The Storehouse and recipes.

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