On a Thursday morning, Jane Scott picks up a package of chicken from the freezer. She places it next to a brown bag full of food and then hands it to the family waiting at the window, free of charge.
Scott is the president of Project Homestead in West Point — a food pantry offering food to families in need. The program mostly enrolls families eligible for the state Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and provides each family with a month’s worth of groceries based on their family size. Many of those families have children.
“We have 44 kids […] from zero to five years old,” she said. “We have 188 children from six to 18.”
Project Homestead is one of many organizations in the Golden Triangle area that help feed low-income families. The need for those feeding programs is particularly evident in Mississippi, where the statewide child food insecurity rate hovered at 22.9 percent — higher than most other states — in 2017, the latest when data is available, according to Feeding America, a national food bank network. The rates remained above 20 percent among all of Clay (26.6), Lowndes (23.1) and Oktibbeha (20.2) counties. As of 2017, one in five Mississippians was struggling with hunger. One in four children was food insecure.
Many children rely on their school meals under the National School Breakfast and Lunch programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), but when school is out, students in need often have to turn to summer meal sites to stay fed. School districts and eligible groups can apply to run those sites following USDA standards and be reimbursed by the agency.
More than 850 sites in Mississippi were providing USDA-approved feeding programs as of May 26. Only 43 sites were located in the Golden Triangle area and only 26 of them were still running at that time.
Where summer meal sites are lacking, community initiatives, such as Project Homestead, are stepping up to fill the void. Other regional groups also are planning to offer free grab-and-go meals amid the pandemic.
Stephanie Gibson, Christian mission director at the YMCA, said the organization partners with the Mississippi Food Network, a Jackson-based food bank that provides local food pantries with products at a lower cost or for free. Gibson said the organization plans to offer summer meals during June and July for school-aged children, providing each child with five lunch meals once a week. The site served roughly 60 kids a day and about 300 meals a week last year.
Ron Thornton, CEO of the Golden Triangle Boys and Girls Club, said the organization plans to serve summer meals but has yet set a date to reopen. The Columbus location could serve roughly 300 meals each for its breakfast and lunch programs. The Starkville and West Point locations would serve 100 to 200 meals for each program.
Balanced diet
A balanced meal should include five components — grain, protein, dairy, fruits and vegetables — which are vital for children’s growth, said Ginny Hill, a licensed dietitian and child nutrition director at the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District. The district could offer about 1,700 breakfasts and 1,700 lunches a month during the summer, she said. The portion needs to be balanced, too.
“We want to make sure they have good portion control,” she said. “If you were to think about how much meat for your student (per serving), you could think about the size of a deck of cards, that would be about a two- to three-ounce serving.”
Gibson said the protein component, such as a chicken breast or hamburger patty, should be the main dish of a meal, and the proper size is about the palm of the children’s hands. Fruits and vegetables, she said, should be about three-fourths of the protein size.
“Your grain […] could be a roll on the side or it could come as a tortilla you had your chicken wrapped in,” she said.
Parents should also encourage water drinking instead of sugary drinks or carbohydrates and eating green vegetables instead of starch.
“This is the most unhealthy thing that you can do for a growing child,” she said. “It will fill them quickly. Kids love them, but it’s not body nutrition for their brain, for their growing organs.”
Eat healthy within a tight budget
For many cash-strapped families, however, a healthy diet can be costly. At Project Homestead, Scott said she has seen families who rely on SNAP benefits as low as $14 to $20 a month.
“Good Lord, you can’t buy milk and bread,” she said. “I don’t have any idea on how they do that.”
To design a healthy diet for their kids, Hill said families with a tight budget should take advantage of the feeding programs and repurpose some ingredients for later use.
“Even though their child might not eat the raw carrots right now,” Hill said, “that might be something the parents could repurpose at dinner time. Maybe steam those or put them on the salad for everybody.”
For Gibson, parents should incorporate vital nutrition into their meals whenever they can. Canned vegetables, although not as nutritious as fresh produce, can come at a lower cost.
“Try at least once a day to get a palm-sized protein into your child,” she said. “And then try to complement it [with] something green.”
Thornton said families can also consider growing their own food.
“Now is a good time for gardening,” he said. “(It can) get you some fresh (products), get you out and do something different.”
Feeding programs available in the Golden Triangle area
USDA-approved summer meal sites
Varying times and locations
www.fns.usda.gov/meals4kids
Food pantries in all Mississippi counties
myresources.mdhs.ms.gov/MRProviderServices/Index?service=Food
Project Homestead, West Point
9-11 a.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays
222 Mary Holmes Drive, West Point
Jane Scott, 662-418-1020
YMCA, Columbus
No set time or location yet
602 2nd Avenue North, Columbus
www.columbus-ymca.com/
Golden Triangle Boys and Girls Club
No set time or location yet
1815 14th Avenue North, Columbus
662-244-7090
911 Lynn Lane, Starkville
662-615-9980
634 East West Brook, West Point
662-418-7285
www.bgcgoldentri.org/
Yue Stella Yu was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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