Texas Non Profit Helps The Underprivileged Get A Healthier Diet

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There’s an underside of healthy and sustainable diets that’s rarely discussed. Taking the choices to improve your diet and being aware of how your diet affects the environment is something that’s mostly the concern of the US middle and upper classes.

At the same time, it’s the underprivileged that would benefit from healthy diets and sustainable farming more than anyone else. Luckily, there are non-profits out there that have noticed this disparity and are working to make it better.

How It All Began?

The program started in 2012 thanks to the efforts of Lisa Helfman, a real estate attorney and a mother of two. She entered into Community Supported Agricultural program that was designed to send fresh and healthy produce to her address each week. Noticing how successful the program was for her family, she tried to bring similar programs to the low income communities in Texas.

The first to use the program were 150 fourth graders in Huston public charter schools. This was organized in cooperation with Huston Food Bank foundation that already had experience in this field of work and it proved to be a great success.

What Did It Look Like?

In the beginning the program was simple. The families of the 150 fourth graders got 50 to 60 fresh servings of produce every week. This was enough to cover the need of a family of four with two fruit and vegetable servings a day. It consisted of 10 different types of fruits and vegetables.

However Lisa Helfman saw this as only a beginning. She wanted to deliver the produce in thoughtful and dignified way so that it’s put to good use. That’s why each grocery bag had of a small recipe card as well.

Brighter Bites

The program was called Brighter Bites and it started to expand from there. The parents go involved with sorting and packing the produce which in turn made them more invested in the project as a whole. Additional education content was provided by a non-profit called CATCH.

They produced bilingual reading materials, written on third grader reading level that taught the basics of cooking and food literacy. The curriculum rallied on the state provided nutritional guidelines as well as on the content of produce packages themselves so that the parents can use their knowledge in practice.

The Study

An important part of the program was following along and quantifying its results. There was a study that was produced the following year with this goal and scientific approach in mind. The results show that 96 percent of the families used all of the produce and that their eating schedule overall improved.

The parents also saved about 34$ a week on their food bill and there were anecdotal evidence that the kids eat more vegetables at school now when they are used to it being a part of their diet. The results of the study helped the program move on and get public funding.

The Funding

Once Haufman had the data available she was able to expand the program and ask for the public funding needed to continue and expand it. It started with the funding provided by The Texas Department of Agriculture which provided 1.2 million $. Additional funding was provided by the federal government via SNAP programs.

Private organizations followed along. Supermarkets have a known problem of not knowing what to do with the excess of produce they can’t sell. Donating them to such programs is a much better way of dealing with it than throwing it away.

Looking Towards The Future

At this point, the program has delivered 8 million pounds of produce to 20.000 families in 90 districts all over Texas. It also started to cooperate with schools, head start organizations and YMCAs. There was also a hearing on the Senate floor about the future of food stamps and the representative of Brighter Bites was there.

Soon there will be an additional study covering two years of work on a large scale. It will probably lead into additional funding and expanding the program beyond Texas. It’s a true success story of modern farming and governmental work.

Conclusion

Brighter bites is a Texas non profit with a goal of bringing healthy produce to those who needed it the most – underprivileged kids from Texas charter schools. It started as a small program started by a local woman who used to get her healthy food from a local community farming group. She tried to bring the same level of quality to the lower classes.

This was picked up by the local businesses, local farms and the government both state and federal. It has succeeded in its goal and made life better for those who use the program and it will probably grow in the years to come.