Summer is Here!
Meredith Knopp

Summer is here – which means sunshine, longer days to enjoy the outdoors, and time to catch up with family and friends. It can also be a time of incredible stress and uncertainty if you are struggling with food insecurity.

Someone recently asked me, how can I understand, more simply, what it means to be food insecure? This is a great question, because many of us know the “academic” or “official” answer provided by the USDA, however, more simply put – it’s when people don’t have enough to eat and don’t know where their next meal will come from.

We shared the results of the most recent Map the Meal Gap study, conducted by Feeding America, and the statistics were sobering. Within the bi-state area, 1 in 7 adults, and as many as 1 in 6 children face food insecurity. When kiddos are out of school, they no longer receive the meals provided by schools during the school year, which means an added financial responsibility for far too many families in our region. That is when stress and uncertainty can kick in for families.

This summer, the State of Missouri is looking to join Illinois and others states by participating in the SuN (Summer Nutrition) Bucks program. SuN Bucks is a new program to help families buy food for their school-aged children during the summer months of June, July, and August. Families will get a one-time $120 benefit per qualifying child loaded onto an EBT card. These funds can be used to buy nutritious foods at authorized locations. While this program will absolutely help, it will not “solve” the problem. Most students are away from school approximately 90 days, which equates to $1.33 per day with this program.

So the question now is, what can you do, and how can you help us help keep kids nourished this summer, so everyone has a chance to relax and recharge a bit?

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Meredith Knopp

Everywhere you look, there are signs for going back to school: school supplies, clothes, and, my favorite, the “must-haves” plastered across physical and online stores. As I glance at the signs, posters, and pop-up banners, I cannot help but notice something glaringly absent from all the marketing campaigns: food.

Interestingly, a protractor and a specific brand of watercolor paints are “necessary” for parents to purchase—alongside the sneakers, jeans, and designer accessories to ensure our kiddos “fit in” with everyone. Yet nobody is talking about the 1 in 6 children right here in our region who are food insecure. Kiddos will struggle to reach their full potential because it is hard to concentrate when your stomach is growling and your head is pounding because you haven’t eaten in almost 24 hours. 

For mainstream businesses focused on bottom lines and tax-free weekends, this isn’t something they will talk about. However, at the St. Louis Area Foodbank, we focus on ensuring all our kiddos across the bi-state region have the foods they need to thrive throughout the school year. One of the many ways we do this is through our school markets program. Thanks to amazing corporate sponsors like Emerson, Boeing, and Bayer, we can operate beautiful, fully stocked markets inside schools across the region. These school markets provide students and their families with access to the healthy and nutritious foods they need to live their best possible lives. 

With more on the way, these 35 school markets across the region are bright and vibrant – with refrigerators, freezers, and shelves filled with produce, dairy, protein, and shelf-stable food items. They allow students and families to choose what foods they want; other resources are available to assist them if needed. They de-stigmatize the need to ask for help and, according to school leaders, are “game changers” when it comes to attendance and performance in the classroom. 

This year, in addition to our school markets, the St. Louis Area Foodbank is also rolling out a new program, school pantries. This is an excellent option for schools with less space to devote to a market. School pantries are quicker and more accessible for the St. Louis Area Foodbank to set up, and they provide a wide variety of shelf-stable products for students and families to select from every week. School pantries already exist at four (4) higher education locations across the region, with more on the way on both sides of the river. Our goal is simple: ensure students at all levels of education have enough healthy and nutritious meals to perform at the top of their class this year.  

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Meredith Knopp

Today Feeding America released publicly the annual “Map the Meal Gap” results. Map the Meal Gap (MMG) is Feeding America’s annual study on local food insecurity and food cost. The 2024 release features data as of 2022, the most recent year available.

The insights from this year’s study confirm what we hear from people facing hunger: elevated food prices and overall inflation are making hunger in America worse. This powerful tool helps us understand the local impact of food insecurity and underlines that we can choose to end hunger in America by coming together as a nation.