Serving children for 25 years; food stamps have made a difference, say officials in one of the first food stamp counties

Food and Nutrition, Jan, 1987 by Brenda Schuler

Serving Children For 25 Years...

In a quarter of a century, much hasremained unchanged in eastern Kentucky. Coal mining is still the primary industry; unemployment is still high; and many area residents still get by on very little income. One thing that has changed for the better, however, is the health of the region's children.

The era that brought about improvedhealth and nutrition for Kentucky's children began in 1961 in Floyd County, where a pilot food stamp program started. Floyd County was one of eight "economically depressed" areas of the country chosen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to test the effectiveness of food stamps as a means of providing additional nutrition to needy persons.

Before 1961, Floyd County operatedUSDA's Needy Family Program, distributing monthly packages of surplus commodities to low-income county residents. The packages at that time consisted primarily of stapletype items, such as flour, corn meal, and powdered milk. Participants did not receive any meats or fruits and vegetables. Families with no money subsisted entirely on the commodities and whatever fresh food they could grow.

Children suffered

from many problems

Earl Compton, director of the FloydCounty Health Department has worked for the department since 1955. He recounts how children's health has changed since the late 1950's and early 1960's.

"There were numerous cases ofnutrition-related illnesses then. The only food children got was what their parents could raise and can at home. Some families received surplus foods, but not everybody who needed the food participated in the program," he says.

"Children got enough food to survive,but they weren't getting a balanced diet. Some were going to school hungry."

The county health departmenttreated cases of children with rickets (a disease caused by vitamin D deficiency), many cases of intestinal parasites, and various other nutrition-related illnesses in those years.

"Now we don't see nearly as manynutrition problems," Compton says. "The outlook for children today in terms of health and nutrition, as compared to 25 years ago, is almost like the difference between daylight and dark. The need was so great back then, and we had so few resources to tap."

The resources began to expand onJune 1, 1961, when the Food Stamp Program was launched in Prestonsburg, the county seat of Floyd County. A host of dignitaries, including former Kentucky Governor Bert Combs and U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Frank J. Welch, were present whe the county's first food stamps were issued to a mother with two children.

Seventy-five families received foodstamps by the close of the first day, and by the end of June, more than a thousand families, comprising 6,000 persons, had participated in the new program.

Bonnie Bradley, a principalcaseworker specialist with the Floyd County Department for Social Insurance, came to work for the agency the year the Food Stamp Program started.

"I began work as a clerk, and I sawmost of the children who came into the office. I noticed their thinness, as if they hadn't had a good meal and their sunken eyes," she recalls. "After the program operated a while, the children looked better. They weren't as lifeless.

"I think they're better off now," sheadds. "In addition to getting food stamp benefits, their parents are better educated and know what foods to give children. You can see the difference in the children every day."

From the beginning

food stamps helped

As part of the evaluation of the pilotfood stamp project operting in Floyd County and the seven other areas, the Department of Agriculture assessed the impact of the program on retail food sales, household food consumption patterns, and diets of participating families.

Findings from that assessment providedevidence that what Bradley observed about children's improved health was due to better diets resulting from the Food Stamp Program.

After the program began in FloydCounty, retail food sales there increased 11.6 percent. Meat sales alone increased 10.3 percent, and produce sales rose 11 percent.

In the two pilot areas surveyed forfood consumption and dietary changes, participating families spent substantially more money per person for food--particularly for dairy and meat products and fruits and vegetables--after they joined the Food Stamp Program.

Also, considerably more low-incomefamilies participating in the Food Stamp Program had good diets than did low-income families who were not participating. (A good diet was defined as one which supplied the families with 100 percent or more of the required daily allowances for each of eight nutrients.)

Nutrition education played an importantpart in Kentucky's first food stamp program. Carl Horn, a lifelong resident of Prestonsburg and the first food stamp issuance supervisor for the county, says that many food stamp recipients in the county in 1961 had rarely, if ever, shopped for food in grocery stores. What food they had, other than USDA commodities, they grew or bought from neighbors.