To ensure that everyone in our communities has the nutritious food they need every day.

What We Funded

We provided support to increase the Food Bank’s infrastructure capacity for fresh food by increasing additional cold storage space to provide fresh produce as well as other nutritious cold and frozen perishable foods; to expand distribution methods for nutritious perishable foods, and to provide nutrition education for its member agencies in Cuyahoga County.

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What Is The Need

There is a relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption and obesity: 7 out of 10 states with the highest rates of obesity were also in the bottom 10 for adult fruit and vegetable consumption. With 65% of adults either overweight or obese, Ohio ranked 13th in the country for obesity and 34th in fruit and vegetable consumption.

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Why We Funded This Work

The Healthy People strategy seeks to reduce obesity by supporting efforts to provide healthier food choices. The Food Bank’s commitment to changing the content of the food that they provide and the magnitude of their reach

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The Impact

• Record attendance at Agency Nutrition Conferences indicate agencies’ increasing interest in the health and nutrition of their clients.
• Piloted more intensive nutrition education classes to understand how they could impact agencies and their clients.
• Graduated eight Nutrition Ambassadors to teach clients about healthy eating and lifestyles.
• Observed a real openness to new programs and ideas for distributing more nutritious perishable foods from agencies and programmatic partners.
• Annual increases in the distribution of healthy and nutritious food.

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