WASHINGTON — In the United States, hunger is a problem for 42 million people. For 20 million children, summer is a struggle to find enough to eat, and it’s an extremely serious struggle for 9 million children.

“It’s the most fundamental and debilitating condition that people experience today,” said Vince Hall, chief government relations officer, Feeding America. “That is a serious grade national crisis.”

Mr. Hall was speaking on a panel that discussed hunger, nutrition and government programs addressing these issues at the 2023 Bakers Fly-In and Policy Summit, held Nov. 13-15 in Washington, DC. The event was sponsored by the American Bakers Association, the American Society of Baking and the Retail Bakers of America. Also on the panel were Cindy Long, administrator, US Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service; Claudine Kavanaugh, director of the Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling, US Food and Drug Administration; and panel moderator Larry Soler, founder, Convergency.

“When you see school-based distribution and children lunging for food products because of the summer they’ve just endured, you know how counterproductive this is to our humanity, and how counterproductive it is to our national economic interests,” Mr. Hall continued. “We want kids coming back in the fall nourished, fit and ready to learn.”

Fortunately, Congress passed a bipartisan bill last December to fund a summer feeding program that helps address this issue, Ms. Long said.

“We had a summer feeding program for a long time that operates at summer rec centers and camps, but it only reached about 20% of the kids that got free and reduced-price school meals,” she said. “But now we have new tools, and those new tools include being able to provide families who have kids in that income category with an EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) card with funds for groceries in the summer, specifically to make up for the gap. This is a really historic opportunity. We are working closely with the states to make sure that every state possible gets that program up and running, and we’ve had an opportunity to make a real dent in the summer hunger gap.”

The panel touched on several issues, including government research and consideration of front-of-package labels that identify areas of concern, such as foods high in sugar, sodium or saturated fats. It’s a program that’s been adopted by other countries and would be aimed at helping consumers make healthy choices.

“It can help consumers identify healthier foods,” Ms. Kavanaugh said. 

Sodium content in school lunches was another topic discussed. Past efforts to reduce sodium in school lunches had reduction goals that were hard to follow, so a less aggressive approach has been adopted.

“We are absolutely committed to moving toward the recommendations of the dietary guidelines,” Ms. Long said. “We also know that whatever we do needs to be feasible in schools. It needs to be within the realm of products that are being consumed in other venues.”

The panelists thanked the baking industry for not only helping to curb hunger but also aiding its efforts toward developing more nutritious foods that are lower in sodium, saturated fat and sugar. They encouraged further innovation in these areas.

“Use your ingenuity, your creativity, your marketing prowess to think about not only how we meet the needs of these federal program issues, but how do we more broadly successfully market these products that are moving toward a more up-to-date nutrition profile to all of America,” Ms. Long said.

Ms. Kavanaugh echoed that request.

“Making your products more nutritious, whether it’s lowering sodium, added sugars or increasing whole grains, really can have an impact,” she said.

Mr. Hall touched on the importance of the Farm Bill, which is legislation passed every five years and sets national agriculture and nutrition policy, among others. An extension was approved by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden on Nov. 16, giving Congress 10 more months to work on a new bill.

“From a Feeding America standpoint, the Farm Bill is critically important legislation because it’s going to set in stone for five years the major requirements, the major benefits and the major regulations surrounding two of the most critical programs for food banks,” he said.

Those programs are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which Mr. Hall said provides nine meals for every one that food banks provide in the country, and The Emergency Food Assistance Program, which moves food directly from local farms to local food banks.