What to expect from the White House summit on hunger this week

The last time a Presidential administration held a summit on hunger, Richard Nixon was president – giving way to the federal food stamp program we know today.

On Wednesday, President Biden will hold his own hunger summit in DC, aiming to bring food and nutrition into the practice of medicine and healthcare.

“It took years of work to get the White House to consider having its own conference, which they’re calling Hunger, Health and Nutrition,” said food policy writer Corby Kummer, whose organization the Aspen Institute is involved in the conference and who will be attending.

Kummer said one concrete action that will come out of the conference will be recommendations to expand paid, medically tailored meals, as well as access to SNAP.

“And then the real work will begin of actually enacting them,” said Kummer.

Corby Kummer is executive director of the Food and Society policy program at the Aspen Institute, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy