food and nutrition

As Administrator of the Food and Nutrition Service, I know that our 15 nutrition assistance programs help a wide variety of people around the country. But there’s nothing like getting out of the office to personally witness the boots on the ground efforts by those who administer and promote our programs on a daily basis. I recently traveled to the FNS Southwest Regional Office in Dallas to meet federal and state personnel and partners and to tour several centers that make up the first line of defense in creating our nation’s safety net against hunger.

One place that I found particularly impressive during my travel was the Dallas Community Baby Café, sponsored by the City of Dallas WIC program. The Women Infants and Children or WIC program provides aid to low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding mothers, and their children up to age five who are at nutritional risk. Conveniently co-located next to a WIC clinic that serves over six thousand participants a month, the café is the newest member of a family of 12 centers located around the United States. It provides a relaxed, non-clinical place for pregnant and breastfeeding moms to get advice about lactation from professional and certified consultants free of charge.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The standards covered by this 2012 blog have been updated.  Read our updated cage-free standards & egg infographic: http://blogs.usda.gov/2016/09/13/usda-graded-cage-free-eggs-all-theyre-cracked-up-to-be/

Whether you prepare them for Easter dinner or as part of a Passover Seder Plate, eggs will certainly be the rave this weekend.  Coupled with egg dyeing, decorating, or hunting, it’s likely that you will find yourself searching for eggs in the super market. The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) wants to pass along some information to help make your trip to the store a success.

When strolling down the dairy aisle, you will see that the egg displays are full of several brands, each garnering various grading shields and marketing claims.  Remembering a few key points will help you make an informed and egg-celent choice:

Just ahead of the official start of Passover this Friday at sunset, the U.S. Department of Agriculture hosted its second Food and Justice Passover Seder. The traditional Jewish seder commemorates the Passover holiday and the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. USDA’s symbolic seder, held in partnership with Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, highlighted the intersection of food and justice issues in the modern world.  This year’s event centered on the themes of hunger, access to healthy food, sustainable food production, and fair treatment for farm workers.

There have been a lot of questions over the last few years about the quality and purity of olive oil.  USDA has expanded our Quality Monitoring Program to include extra virgin and organic extra virgin olive oil.  This program already evaluates a variety of commodities including canned, frozen and certain fresh fruits and vegetables.

March is Women’s History month, a time when we highlight everything woman.  In the midst of farming and biofuels, research and forestry would you believe that the USDA also finds time to promote breastfeeding?  The answer is absolutely!  You already know that the agency supports a myriad of nutrition programs to help make America’s children healthy and hunger-free.  Research has shown that there is no better food than breast milk for a baby’s first year of life. Breastfeeding provides many health, nutritional, economical and emotional benefits to mother and baby. Since a major goal of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC) Program is to improve the nutritional status of infants, WIC mothers are encouraged to breastfeed their infants. WIC promotes breastfeeding to all pregnant women as the optimal infant feeding choice, unless medically contraindicated.  So what exactly is WIC doing to support breastfeeding?  The answer is a lot!

It’s been a little over two weeks since we launched the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass (PDF, 13.9 MB), which includes a multi-media PDF narrative (PDF, 13.9 MB) and an accompanying interactive map. Together, they’re designed to help you navigate USDA’s grant and loan programs and learn how USDA supports the development of local and regional food systems. You’ll hear about people across the country putting these resources to work. We hope you’ll be inspired and perhaps get some new ideas to try out on your farm or ranch or in your community.

We never intended to launch the KYF Compass and call it a day. This is just the beginning of what we hope will be a long-term conversation about new opportunities in local and regional food. We’ve reached out to you through a webinar, over Twitter, in our blog and in events with stakeholders to hear your feedback and ideas. And you’ve certainly kept up your end of the conversation!

When I was a kid, my mom used to tell us to eat our breakfast because it’s the most important meal of the day. Well here we are decades later and there are studies that prove kids who aren’t hungry perform much better scholastically. In fact, a recent study from the Food Research and Action Center shows that classroom behavior improves, the number of school tardies is reduced and test scores increase when children eat breakfast. Here in Dallas we’ve made great strides to make it easier for kids to eat a healthy breakfast by making school breakfast available in the classroom in over 60 schools.

USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service’s (FNS) mission is to provide all eligible children, families, and low-income individuals with the nutrition assistance they need to help them get back on their feet. In order to accomplish this goal, we work with a vast network of partners who help us in the fight to end hunger. In particular, we are hoping to increase access to nutrition assistance in Hispanic communities through improved participation in the  Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, our nation’s largest anti-hunger program.

In December, more than 120 Spanish-speaking community partners joined FNS as we hosted our very first all-Spanish webinar on the eligibility requirements for SNAP.  In collaboration with USDA's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the webinar informed bilingual community leaders about SNAP policy, shared information about our work, resources, and tools that benefit Latino outreach, and answered questions regarding  immigrants and SNAP eligibility.

Yesterday, I had my first-ever “virtual conversation.” It included Jon Carson, Director of Public Engagement for the White House; Sam Kass, Senior White House Advisor on Food Policy, and 60 other local food practitioners. We came together to talk about the new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass and were joined “virtually” by hundreds of others using the Twitter hashtag #KYF2.  The result?  An exciting and inspirational conversation about USDA’s work on local and regional food systems involving people from around the country.