Because of COVID's economic impacts on our state, even more Utah kids are going hungry. For some of them, the only healthy meals they get are at school. So, they don't have food on the weekend. Now that some kids aren't in school, the situation is dire.
Experts predicted that Utah would worsen by 75 percent with food-insecure kids because of the pandemic. Now we have 1 in 5 Utah children with insufficient or no food every day.
56,000 Salt Lake Valley children qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches and 20 to 25 percent require weekend food aid.
USANA Kids Eat is working to change that. USANA Health Sciences, a global nutrition company headquartered in Utah, established USANA Kids Eat non-profit organization to pack and distribute over 800 backpacks of food every weekend to help kids make it to Monday with food.
Seven meals are in each backpack, which means up to 5600 meals are provided each week.
For longer school breaks, like the one we are now in with coronavirus issues, USANA Kids Eat are providing 3000 larger bags of food to help kids have something to eat.
Over 65 Wasatch Front schools and organizations from Ogden to Herriman are supported by USANA Kids Eat.
There are two main ways you can help.
1. Join the Weekend Bag Program and come pack food in bags for kids. You can sign up at UsanaKidsEat.org.
2. Adopt a school. This can be done among families or business teams. Each person, team and company can make monetary donations for food for kids. 100 percent of the donations goes to food for kids. UsanaKidsEats.org has all of the information to donate and sign up today.
