• BROOKINGS, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota State University will lead a nearly $4 million study aimed at giving needy families across the country healthier nutritional choices at their local food pantries, the U.S. Agriculture Department announced Wednesday.
• South Dakota State researchers and colleagues at Michigan State, Purdue, Missouri, Nebraska and Ohio will work with local food policy councils in a dozen test communities with the hope that the program can be replicated elsewhere, said Suzanne Stluka, who will lead the five-year Voices for Food project.
• Stluka, director of the Food and Families Program at South Dakota State, said families who get their food from emergency and supplemental nutrition programs are often limited in their choices.
• "Poor nutrition today does not necessarily result in starvation, but it results in chronic diseases such as obesity or heart disease or cancer," she said. "So we're dealing with a whole another round of food access and food security. And financially challenged and underrepresented citizens are at the highest risk."
• The award is part of more than $75 million in USDA research grants given to 21 schools across the country that were announced by Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan on Wednesday.
• Merrigan, speaking Wednesday at South Dakota State University's student union, said consumers want nutritious and locally grown food, but many simply don't have access to it.
• They live in what are called "food deserts" -- low-income communities in which a substantial number of residents are at least 10 miles form a large grocery or supermarket -- so the convenience store or liquor store down the street might be their only option.
• "They're paying more money for less quality food," Merrigan said.
• Stluka said Voices for Food will draw from varied expertise, incorporating nutrition, youth development, agriculture, community development, social marketing and evaluation.
• Researchers will spend the first year will identifying two test communities in each of the participating states -- South Dakota, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska and Ohio -- and develop their research protocol. The following three years will be spent in the learning communities, developing food policy councils, teaching about nutrition and increasing the healthy choices, Stluka said.

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