Bank On It: A Food Bank Blog

The official blog of the Food Bank For New York City – the major hunger relief organization for the five boroughs – Bank on It provides an insider look into the struggle to fight food poverty with posts on topics ranging from what it takes to run a soup kitchen to public policy, volunteering and more.

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Weekly Roundup: Food Stamps Down, Holes in the Safety Net

This week, the USDA released figures showing that the number of Americans using food stamps (SNAP) was down in October and November 2011, after near-steady increases since December 2008. But, as the Daily News illustrated this week with the story of a mother who resorted to desperate measures to feed her children, the federal safety net may not be strong enough to adequately support the very poor. In nutrition news, about half of public and private elementary students could buy unhealthy snacks at school during the 2009–2010 school year, according to survey results released Monday. This represents no change in the ability to get the snacks like cookies, candy and chips since the study began in the 2006–2007 school year. Also: the battle against trans fat appears to be successful, and a surprising finding on where the salt in our diets comes from.

USDA: Food Stamp Numbers Down, Obama Foodorama, 2/2
About 46.134 million Americans received aid in November of 2011, down 0.2 percent from USDA's revised 46.228 million for October. In August of 2011, after three years of increases in Food Stamp numbers, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack characterized the nutrition safety net as a "direct stimulus" for the economy that was creating and saving jobs.

The ‘poor’ that Mitt Romney ignores, Daily News, 2/7
Margaret Deming crossed the line on Saturday when she entered the Pathmark in Coney Island, asked the deli man for a pound of ham, turkey and cheese, and then grabbed a box of yeast “to bake my own bread” and dropped the items in a shoulder bag. She was nabbed by a female store detective as she left. “I did something I will have to live with for the rest of my life,” she says. “I shoplifted food for my family because I was pushed up against a mental wall of despair of seeing my kids hungry.”

Access to unhealthy snacks at school unchanged, CNN, 2/6
"Given increasing attention in recent years to the problem of childhood obesity, we would have hoped to see decreases in the availability of junk food in schools over time," said study author Lindsey Turner, health psychologist at the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Our hope based on these data is that the guidelines that are developed will be comprehensive and will consider all venues," Turner said. "Also that those regulations will be strong and that they will be specific- that they will address things like fat content, energy content and portion size."

Blood Levels of Trans Fats Are Declining in Americans, "Well," New York Times, 2/8
The intense battle that public health advocates have waged against trans fats appears to be working: A new report shows that since 2000, levels of trans fats in Americans’ bloodstreams have plummeted nearly 60 percent. The study was financed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and carried out by scientists there and at the National Institutes of Health. The decline in trans fatty acids “shows substantial progress that should lower cardiovascular risk in adults,” said Hubert W. Vesper, a CDC scientist and lead author of the study.

CDC: Bread beats out chips as biggest salt source, Associated Press, 2/7
Bread and rolls are the No. 1 source of salt in the American diet, accounting for more than twice as much sodium as salty junk food like potato chips. That surprising finding comes in a government report released Tuesday that includes a list of the top 10 sources of sodium. Salty snacks actually came in at the bottom of the list compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Breads and rolls aren't really saltier than many of the other foods, but people tend to eat a lot of them, said Mary Cogswell, a CDC senior scientist who co-authored the report.

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