BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – The Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank serves over 50,000 people a month, right here in the capital region.
“You don’t realize it may be your neighbor, somebody in your church, and they are embarrassed to mention it,” said Mike Manning, President and CEO of the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank.
The food bank is a bridge for people who may be on other forms of assistance, but the people at the food bank have concerns about how that will continue. They worry about cuts in President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”.
“We can’t do it because we don’t have sufficient funds, sufficient access to donated foods to be able to raise to the level of SNAP, because if we can do one meal, they can do nine. It’s a tremendous multiplier that we don’t have the advantage of,” added Manning.
Trumps administration says the bill would make changes to things like SNAP benefits to put more money back into taxpayers’ pockets and, in turn, the economy. Speaker Mike Johnson, who is in favor of the bill, says if the bill fails, every American will see the largest tax increase in history. But members of the Anti-Hunger Coalition think this could do more harm than good.
“For children in particular, food insecurity has severe effects on developmental health, other childhood disease rates, and their performance in school. If children do not have access to nutritious meals, they cannot learn,” explained Jennifer Avegno, the Director of the New Orleans Health Department.
Avegno says Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” could cause 178,000 people in the state to lose some or all their SNAP benefits and cause an unhealthy America.
“We know that food insecurity in general is associated with worsening rates and worsening severity of specific diseases, like obesity, hypertension, and diabetes, which are really the top killers of our residents here,” explained Avegno.
They are also concerned that by reducing SNAP benefits, you are lowering the income for independent grocers and other stores that accept SNAP.
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