Published: March 12, 2008 11:46 am            

Food for Thought

Food Bank strives to give those in need healthy nutritional alternatives

San Marcos — This time last year, a loaf of store-baked French bread set you back 99 cents at the local HEB. Pick one up today and it’ll cost $1.49.

It’s not just specialty items that are on the rise at local grocery stores, but staples like milk and eggs, too.

That translates into an even harder struggle for local low-income families, senior citizens and others on fixed incomes to eat a healthy diet, Hays County Food Bank Director Pat Tessaro said.

The continuing rise in food cost “is going to put a real hardship on our clients,” Tessaro said. “Low income people are struggling to feed their families to begin with,” she said, adding that the danger is their nutrition will suffer as prices rise.

“Food that’s bad for you is cheap. With nutritious items going up it will put a real stress on their health.”

Tessaro hadn’t recently run figures on how many more families may be turning to the food bank these days, but “our shelves are relatively bare. We could certainly use donations of canned goods.”

Typically, the food bank supplies needy families with breads, meats picked up from HEB stores, produce and “staple items, canned nonperishables like soups, macaroni and cheese and that kind of stuff.”

Even though the Texas economy is in better shape than is true in many other regions, Texans still have the highest rate of “food insecurity” in the country, Tessaro says. “Food insecurity” is defined as “lack of access to enough food to fully meet basic needs at all times due to a lack of financial resources.”

In Hays County in 2006, 11 percent of school aged children live at or below the federal poverty line of $20,000 per year for a family of four; and 62 percent of San Marcos CISD students (35 percent of Hays CISD students) qualify for free or reduced price lunches, according to the Capital Area Food Bank, an affiliate of the local food bank.

“People are having real challenges to feed their families,” Tessaro said.

Donations to the food bank are welcome at any time, and residents can also help out by writing a check or volunteering their time.

Or, they can buy a few cans of tuna, salmon, soups or stews prior to April 12, when Boy Scouts will be scouring neighborhoods all across the county in a coordinated food drive.

“All the food the Scouts collect in our area will come to us,” she said.

Typically, about 2,750 families use the food bank each month and last year, the agency distributed more than one-half million pounds of food worth more than $750,000. Almost half that, $300,000 worth, was passed to other local organizations that work with senior citizens, low income families, those who are sick, injured or disabled.

For more information, call the food bank at 392-8300 or visit haysfoodbank.org.

        

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