We’ve all heard the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
This well-known adage underscores the strong connection between food and health. Knowing how important food is to overall well-being, the Food Bank prioritizes distributing nutritious food.
As part of this effort, we adopted a system in 2024 to help our nonprofit partners know the nutritional value of the foods they were selecting for their hunger-relief programs.
Called the Healthy Eating Research (HER) nutritional guidelines, foods are ranked and labeled as “choose often,” “choose sometimes,” and “choose rarely.”
The categories are based on the quantities of saturated fat, sodium and added sugar — all of which are related to an increased risk for diet-related chronic diseases, like hypertension and diabetes.
Once foods are ranked and labeled, they move to our Nourishing Network. This is where our 120 nonprofit partners shop for food items for their hunger-relief programs. When deciding which items to choose, partners can prioritize the items that have the most nutritional value. In this same way, HER helps to guide which food options that the Food Bank purchases.
Expanding access to nutritious food was a component of our strategic plan, a three-year vision that guides our goals, decisions and growth as an organization.
HER is only one example of the way that we prioritize nutritious food options.
From the shelves of our No Cost Markets to the made-from-scratch meals in our Nutritious Kitchen to our distribution to our agency partners, nutritious foods are a foundation to what is provided to our community. In fact, fruits and vegetables account for 44% of the food distributed through our hunger-relief programs.
With HER in place, we can continue expanding access to nutritious foods so people in our community can choose what they need to live active, healthy lives.
