Choosing to Be Healthy: Using Laws and Policies to Increase Access to Healthy Food Options in Mobile Food Shelves, Meal Programs, and other Emergency Food Services

Many individuals and families rely on food shelves, meal programs, shelters, and other emergency food sources to meet their basic food needs.  While the focus of these efforts is often on ending hunger, there is an increasing recognition of the need to provide healthy food and not just putting any food on the tables of those in needs. Emergency food sources often struggle to provide healthy food (fresh fruits and vegetables, lean protein, dairy, legumes, etc.) to their customers, even as customers increasingly ask for more nutritious food.  Community groups are increasingly using policy and legal tools to increase the availability of healthy food to their customers.  However, policy and legal issues can also be a barrier to efforts to increase healthy food.

This session provides an overview of new and emerging policy and legal tools that emergency food providers are using to increase access to healthy food for their customers, along with a discussion of some challenges faced when developing and implementing policy and legal initiatives in these settings.  Some policy and legal tools being explored by emergency food providers include nutrition policies for donations and tax incentives for donations of local, fresh food.  The discussion will draw on work with mobile and other food shelves, food banks, emergency meal programs, shelters, and other emergency food providers in Minnesota seeking to increase access to healthy food for low-income individuals and families.