Targeting Obesity Alongside Hunger

In many areas where lots of people receive aid, good, nutritious food can be scarce. The District's Ward 8 went nine years without a full-service grocer. (By Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)
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One is the Wholesome Wave Foundation, an organization that works to make locally grown food more widely available. In the spring, it launched a program that doubles the value of food stamps and fruit and vegetable vouchers of low-income mothers and seniors who use them at farmers markets in Connecticut, Massachusetts and California.

The Wholesome Wave matching grants were an instant hit at the City Heights market in San Diego. On the first day that matching funds became available, sales using government-issued electronic benefit cards soared by more than 200 percent. In subsequent weeks, the line to receive matching vouchers formed at 7:30 a.m., and the available funds were exhausted by 9:30 a.m., just 30 minutes after the market opened.

"We're not taking away your benefits because you spend them on Twinkies," said Michel Nischan, a Connecticut chef and president of Wholesome Wave. "But if you decide you want to spend it on fresh tomatoes, you'll get double your money."

With the Child Nutrition and Women, Infants and Children Act set to be reauthorized next year, public health advocates are lobbying for the implementation of stricter standards for school breakfast and lunch programs, based on recommendations from the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academies.

Nutrition standards for school meals were not established until 1994, and public health advocates say the standards have failed to keep pace with scientific research. Even so, as few as 15 percent of elementary schools and 13 percent of secondary schools met the recommended standards for saturated fat in the 2004-05 school year, according to an Agriculture Department study. One percent of schools met the recommended guidelines for limiting sodium.

Advocates also are clamoring for funds to improve nutrition education.

"Research is clear -- handing out nutrition brochures does not work," Eileen Kennedy, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said in testimony before the Senate Agriculture Committee this month. She called for more education for parents about how to prepare healthful meals as well as closer links between school, after-school and parental programs to reinforce nutrition education.

"In the current economic downturn, the role of the child nutrition programs becomes even more critical as an essential part of the nutrition safety net," Kennedy said.