food

Trending / SNAP: Single largest and permanent benefit increase in food stamp history | News

This fall, individuals and families in Columbia County, across Oregon and the nation who depend on food stamp assistance will see what the Biden Administration calls a significant and permanent increase in benefits.

It is reportedly the largest single increase in the food stamp system’s history, which now operates as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).



Largest Permanent Increase

This change will increase SNAP benefits distributed in Oregon by $337 million. For SNAP households this change on average will be about $36 more in money to buy food per person.




Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS) Press Secretary Jake Sunderland said Biden Administration made the announcement Monday, Aug. 16, and his department is still analyzing the changes and what they will mean to SNAP in Oregon.

“According to federal government, this change will increase SNAP benefits distributed in Oregon by $337 million,” Sunderland said. “For SNAP households this change on average will be about $36 more in money to buy food per person – or about $1.20 per day.”

The change in benefits takes effect Oct. 1.

Currently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most SNAP households are temporarily receiving the maximum benefit amount for their household size, according to Sunderland.

“These are called emergency allotments and we have been providing these emergency allotments since March 2020,” he said.

SNAP benefit amounts vary depending on household size, income and other factors. SNAP benefits range from $0 a month (while receiving other services like employment and training services) to the maximum benefit amount for

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Flint Eats hosting launch party for app that connects residents with healthy food

FLINT, MI – A mobile app designed to connect Flint residents with healthy food by using map interface and information sharing will host a launch party this weekend.

The launch party takes place from 3 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 18 at the Ophelia Bonner Park, 5300 North St., in Flint.

Flint Eats will enable residents to share and discover information about local food for purchase at retailers, share quality and cost of food at local food retailers and share food preparation and nutrition tips, according to the Flint Eats news release.

The event also marks the re-grand opening of the park, which has been cleaned up to become a community gathering place once again.

The event will include food, kickball, raffle prizes and a community resource fair. Attendees should bring a lawn chair to the event.

The mobile app was designed and is managed by Flint Innovative Solutions. The platform allows residents to share information about quality food that is available from retailers. In addition, local food providers are able to advertise healthy food to residents through the interface.

Users can download the app from Google Play Store or the App Store.

“Our goal is to get local retailers to provide high quality healthy food to Flint residents,” Athena McKay, executive director for Flint Innovative Solutions, said in a Flint Eats news release. “We also want to educate residents on how to make smart eating habits.”

Flint Eats allows residents to share information with each other through the

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Smoked food is everywhere this season, and North Fork chefs told us how to do it at home

A selection of smoked meats from 8 Hands Farm and smoked fish from Hook & Net. (Photo Credit: David Benthal: Food Styling: Alice Falcone)

I feel in control in my kitchen, but the grill has always intimidated me a little. High heat? Low heat? How do I know when something is done? Turns out, all I needed to learn was how to turn my grill into a smoker. It’s easy, hard to mess up and there’s plenty of control. Once you get it down, you can smoke just about anything you can eat. And chefs on the North Fork do. I got their tips and tricks for embracing an old-fashioned cooking technique that is trending in a big way in 2021.

Set up your smoker

At 8 Hands Farm in Cutchogue, Erik Morgan smokes the farm’s own pork shoulder, spare ribs, chicken legs, hot dogs, kielbasa, bacon and charcuterie twice a week in a propane-fueled behemoth made by Myron Mixon. “The propane setup fires flames, below a large pan of water,” he said. “That helps whatever you’re smoking stay moist.” The giant black box smoker uses a mix of technology and old school, as Morgan put it. A high-tech panel monitors the temperature and regulates it so the burner cuts off once it hits 250 degrees. The wood is the old school. A chamber off to the side is where it’s stoked for smoking. 

Fortunately, you don’t need a commercial Myron Mixon to smoke at home; a large grill that

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Lidl Pledges To Increase Total Sales of Healthy Food To 85% By 2025

Lidl GB recently announced a new healthy food commitment called the ‘Healthy Eating Pledge,’ which its CEO, Christian Härtnagel, says is the discounter’s most ambitious target yet. The initiative aims to encourage healthier diets and increase sales of nutritional products to 85% or more of total sales by 2025, based on tonnage volume.

Lidl’s specialist nutrition teams developed a nutrient profiling system (NPS) to measure the healthy level of foods. The NPS is based on Public Health England’s nutrient criteria for front-of-pack traffic light labeling, which focuses on fat, saturated fat, sugar, and salt quantity, ranking all products as healthy, healthier, or least healthy.

The nutrition teams are also reviewing over 200 lines annually with potential for improvement to meet the healthy or healthier criteria. Furthermore, Lidl says it will engage with suppliers to boost its more nutritional products.

This commitment follows close behind Lidl’s investment in a separate ‘Get Fresh’ initiative. That one aims to offer more healthy choices by increasing the range of fresh, healthy products available to customers in-store. To make this increase of fresh-food options possible, stores have been upgraded with energy-efficient chillers that can stock over 100 products on shelves. In addition, to get customers inclined to buy these items, Lidl will be prioritizing placing the fresh, healthy produce prominently at the front of the store.

Härtnagel said:

Our Healthy Eating Pledge is our most ambitious healthy eating target yet and is focused on helping families make healthier choices when they shop with us, without

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Growing From the Heart promotes healthy food, sharing

HANCOCK, Mich. (AP) — Dr. Michelle Seguin of the Portage Health Foundation has banded together with other like-minded health food lovers to share that love with the community by forming a group called Growing From the Heart.

“In 2020, right when the pandemic started, we developed a program that was kind of modeled off the nationwide program called Plant a Row for the Hungry, which encourages people to plant literally an extra row in their garden to donate to food pantries,” Seguin said.

Growing From the Heart began as a mission to donate home grown produce to those in need during the pandemic, The Daily Mining Gazette of Houghton reports.


“Instead of focusing only on the food pantries during the pandemic, because we knew that a lot of people wanted food, and needed food during that time, we wanted to promote what was already going on, which was gifting and sharing with our neighbors,” Seguin explained. “We were also reaching out to the food pantries to see if they would accept fresh produce, and then facilitate that, and encourage people like, ‘Hey, I have 60 pounds of zucchini. What do I do with it?’ instead of doing a ding-dong dash and dropping stuff off, which is great, you can drop it off at Little Brothers on the third Monday of the month, in Calumet at the Free Store on Wednesdays. We facilitated those kinds of relationships.”

With the pandemic seemingly winding down, Growing From the Heart took on more of

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