Published: July 2022

Publisher: Healthy Eating Research

Authors: Harnack L, Lorenzana Peasley J, Mitchell N, Nones M, Erickson D

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Over the summer of 2020, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Emergency Meals-to-You (eMTY) program provided meals to rural children in households with lower incomes through home-delivered boxes of shelf-stable food. The program was run by the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty in partnership with Chartwells K12, PepsiCo Food for Good, and McLane Global. Every two weeks, a box containing food for 10 breakfasts and 10 lunches—enough for two weeks—was delivered to the student’s home or to a centralized location when necessary. The meals were planned to meet the USDA Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) nutrition standards. In total the eMTY program delivered over 37 million meals to the homes of over 275,000 rural children in 43 states. The purpose of this report is to present results from an evaluation of the nutritional quality of meals provided through the emergency Meals-to-You program, which delivered shelf-stable food boxes to children in rural lower-income households over the summer of 2020. This evaluation was carried out by the University of Minnesota Nutrition Coordinating Center.

Click here for the full report, or download the executive summary here. 

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