It was good to see both area congressmen at the Western Massachusetts Food Bank in Hatfield on Friday to support its unveiling of a major initiative to fight hunger in the region.
We hope that James McGovern of Worcester and Richard Neal of Springfield follow through on their pledge to lead efforts in Congress supporting programs such as boosting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and expanding tax credits for low- and moderate-income working families.
That leadership is critical now because, as McGovern pointed out, President Donald Trump’s proposal to increase military spending would result in decreased funding for a host of domestic programs, including those providing food and nutrition benefits.
McGovern suggests that ending hunger should be a goal in defining the nation’s security. “Making sure you can live a life without having to worry every day whether or not you’re going to go hungry — that is national security,” McGovern said. “To me, that’s more important than how many bombs we have in our arsenal.”
McGovern said it is shameful that 42 million people are hungry in the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world. In western Massachusetts, an estimated 223,000 people — or about one-quarter of the population — struggle with food insecurity, which the Food Bank defines as uncertainty about having enough nutritional food. About 13 percent of those people live in Hampshire County and 8 percent in Franklin County.
“Although the popular perception of the ‘face’ of hunger is that of a homeless person on the street, the truth is far more complex and widespread,” according to a report by the Food Bank’s Task Force to End Hunger released Friday after more than a year’s work. “Food insecurity strikes entire families, seniors, military veterans, children, and persons with disabilities.
“Many of the people who struggle with food insecurity have jobs, but are still not able to make ends meet. A great number of people are forced to make anguishing choices between eating and paying for medicine, putting food on the table or paying for heat, buying groceries or putting gas in the car to get to work.”
The report notes that hunger in the U.S. often looks different than it does in other parts of the world where it “can lead to serious weight loss, starvation and death. In the so-called ‘developed world,’ hunger is often manifested as malnutrition; people may consume enough calories, but those calories often lack adequate nutritional value.”
Andrew Morehouse, executive director of the Food Bank, said, “We are not only experiencing heightened levels of food insecurity in our region, but it is, in fact, becoming the new normal. And it’s a new normal we can’t accept.”
The Food Bank is using the task force’s report as a road map to increase the tools it uses to fight hunger. One especially promising initiative is partnering with health care organizations to promote “food as medicine” by identifying families at risk of food insecurity and connecting them to the Food Bank. “The idea of ‘food as medicine,’ which used to be seen as something without much scientific validity, is increasingly becoming accepted in the health care industry,” according to the report.
The Food Bank will start a pilot program this spring with the Holyoke Health Center, where doctors will screen pediatric patients and their families for food insecurity. They would be referred to the Food Bank, for resources including assistance with getting SNAP benefits, nutritional advice and information about emergency sources of food in their neighborhoods.
If the program is successful, the Food Bank would seek grants late this year to expand it to other community health centers and hospitals throughout the region.
Three teams will also work on other initiatives identified by the task force. Among those critical to rural areas of the region are improving access to fresh, healthy food by increasing the number of farmers markets; supporting state funding for the new Massachusetts Food Trust that will provide loans, grants, and technical assistance to support food retailers in low- and moderate-income communities; and delivering food to places such as schools or places of worship for people who do not have cars and lack convenient public transportation.
All Americans should have access to adequate nutritional food. We hope that the ambitious programs identified by the Food Bank, combined with leadership in Congress promised by McGovern and Neal, go a long way toward meeting that goal in western Massachusetts.