The role of public and private food assistance in supporting families’ food security and meal routines

Abstract

“Backpack” food programs administered through public schools are a potentially powerful additional source of nutrition for low-income students and their families. Typically, backpack programs send non-perishable foods home with children to supplement school meals. Power Packs Project (PPP) is a unique backpack program, in that it provides fresh food alongside accompanying recipes, with the explicit goals of not only reducing food insecurity but also facilitating home cooking and improving nutrition for the whole family. Using daily, repeated surveys sent via text-message to program parents (N = 178), this study is the first to examine the effect of picking up a Power Pack in a given week on parent and child food insecurity and meal routines. Additionally, it explores whether effects differed for families who also received federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Results indicate that Power Packs is associated with lower parent and child food insecurity; this relationship is even stronger among families who did not also receive SNAP. Power Packs also promotes home cooking, but only among families who did not receive SNAP. Analyses of program usage revealed that SNAP recipients were far more likely to pick up their packs at the end of their SNAP month than they were just after SNAP benefit distribution, suggesting they use the program to smooth food consumption in tandem with SNAP. Implications of these findings for food assistance programs and policies are discussed.