San Bernardino County Soup Kitchens Get a Healthy Boost

On any given day in San Bernardino County, the Community Action Partnership of San Bernardino County (CAPSBC) Food Bank is busy providing food to over 32 congregate feeding sites (soup kitchens) that are on the front lines of addressing hunger and poverty by serving meals to homeless and very low-income individuals who may otherwise go hungry. The CAPSBC Food bank addresses issues of hunger by providing food to soup kitchens which helps to serve approximately one million meals annually. The $25,000 Kaiser Permanente Foundation grant will enable the Food Bank to purchase much needed fresh fruits and vegetables for the soup kitchens, assist them in the adoption of their own healthy food policies, support activities such as nutrition education and healthy cooking demonstrations. In February, the CAPSBC Food Bank adopted a "Healthy Food Banking Wellness Policy," and has made great strides in the past several years to increase the amount of healthy foods that pass through its warehouse to the low income community. CAPSBC is acutely aware of the health nutrition problems that affect the low-income of San Bernardino County and is working in many ways to improve access to healthy food options for the low income. "Improving the health of the communities we serve has always been a central part of our mission," said Jennifer Resch-Silvestri, Senior Director of Public Affairs and Brand Communications. "We are pleased to invest significant resources that increase access to healthy food for our underserved and food insecure populations." Kaiser Permanente Foundation has been CAPSBC's "Partner in Health" providing grant funds to CAPSBC for healthy food initiatives. As a concerned community partner, Kaiser Permanente advocates for and funds targeted projects that are in alignment with their objective of providing healthy food choices that are vitally important to health in general. These projects include CAPSBC's formal Healthy Food Banking Wellness project, the creation of the Food Policy Advisory Council (FPAC) serving San Bernardino County, funding for Healthy Food Purchases. FPAC appealed to its partner Loma Linda University, School of Public Health, Nutrition and Dietetics, to evaluate the nutritional quality of San Bernardino County Soup Kitchens. The report, titled "Nutritional Assessment of San Bernardino County Soup Kitchens," noted that the nutritional quality of meals served at soup kitchens showed that the meals are inadequate to support a healthy diet and are not always providing healthy nutrition for the homeless and food-insecure populations. Meals are high in calories, fat, saturated fat, and sodium which could lead to the upward trend of overweight and obesity among these populations. Mark Winne, a Senior Advisor with the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and a nationally recognized food policy expert said, "The San Bernardino FPAC demonstrated the important role of a food policy council which is to identify the community's food needs and find the resources necessary to solve the problem. The FPAC did just that: they documented that the community's most vulnerable families were in need of healthier food and now they are finding a 'fix'. CAPSBC CEO Patricia L. Nickols-Butler stated, "Kaiser Permanente continues to be a strong supporter of our mission of alleviating hunger in San Bernardino County. We are grateful for our long-standing partnership and our collective work to impact hunger. It is because of a recent healthy food donation at the CAPSBC Food Bank. donors like Kaiser Permanente, that we are able to sustain our work and provide food support to over 177 partner agencies in San Bernardino County each month." CAPSBC has recently received funding from San Manuel to begin on-site construction of a new freezer and cooler to increase its capacity to store and seek more healthy food products. CAPSBC Board Chairperson, Dr. Margaret Hill, stated "We are very proud of the work towards increasing healthy food flowing through our Food Bank warehouse. There are so many families, children, seniors, veterans and others in need of healthful food assistance. We are grateful to Kaiser, and all of our donors, partners, and concerned individuals who are helping us keep this good work going."