How Improving Federal Nutrition Program Access and Quality Work Together to Reduce Hunger and Promote Healthy Eating

Too often reducing hunger and promoting healthy eating among children are viewed as competing interests in the federal child nutrition programs. In fact, as this paper will show, they can be mutually reinforcing and complementary strategies: expanding participation in federal nutrition programs reduces childhood hunger and improves children’s diets. At the same time, improving the quality of these federal programs, with a primary goal of preventing obesity, may well increase participation.

This brief first will examine quickly America’s childhood hunger problem and the childhood obesity epidemic, and then examine why and how the hunger reduction and healthy eating strategies can and should be mutually reinforcing.