Nutrition Education

We acknowledge that there is a health disparity among socio-economic and racial lines that food banks have a unique opportunity to contribute to changing.  For example, one in ten Americans have diabetes, however three in ten people that use food banks (nationwide) have diabetes. It's time for change.

  • Lynnwood Food Bank's director is a preceptor with Seattle Pacific University, providing supervision during the community rotation of a dietetic internship. Graduates with degrees in Nutrition and Dietetics or Food and Nutrition or Food and Nutrition with Sports and Exercise Emphasis are required to do a one-year internship program before they can take the test to become a Registered Dietician. Lynnwood Food Bank hosts and supervises interns throughout the school year.
  • Nutrition education materials are distributed to customers, along with social media posts to increase understanding of how food affects our bodies.
  • Cooking demonstrations take place live, twice per month. Additional cooking demonstrations are filmed and posted on our YouTube and Facebook pages to teach people new recipes, new techniques, and more nutrition about the foods we eat.
  • Nutrition Tips are shared in our nutrition handouts, but we also film nutrition videos for our social media pages to increase access to all this wonderful information.
  • Dietetic interns spend time with customers, offering one on one time to talk about food and how it affects our health and to answer questions.

Culture in the Food Bank

We recognize that racism is a root cause of food insecurity, and it is important that Lynnwood Food Bank participates in anti-racism work.  We do this by:

  • Celebrating our differences as a diverse community.
  • Educating our volunteers about the history of racism as a root cause as well sharing our cultures, the cultures of the people we serve, and how food is culture.
  • Recruiting and welcoming people from all backgrounds, ethnicities, religions, languages, LGBTQ+, etc. into our volunteer family.
  • Specific outreach into immigrant communities.
  • Partnering with other organizations that specialize in specific cultures, immigrant/ refugee work, etc.
  • Offering culturally traditional food to our customers.
  • Having a multi-lingual volunteer community and utilizing translation/interpretation tools when appropriate.
  • Offering nutrition education materials in multiple languages.
  • We are always willing to learn more, to be better, and to make changes. Feedback is always welcome. 

Students

Healthy students are better learners. Research shows that regular nutritious food and healthy behaviors are connected to academic achievement.


Lynnwood Food Bank partners with:

  • Nourishing Network, Foundation for Edmonds School District, and Edmonds School District to provide nutritious groceries to schools across the District.  LFB participates in three pop-up pantries; Meadowdale High School, Alderwood Middle School, and Spruce Elementary School.
  • Edmonds College to provide nutritious groceries to Edmonds College students and staff.  This weekly distribution serves approximately 300 students per month with food.

Other Programs

Department of Social and human services

Lynnwood Food Bank delivers emergency boxes, non-cook bags, lunches, and children's snacks each week to DSHS. As DSHS serves the community, their programs do not activate immediately, and these food services provide people with something to eat while they wait for their programs to activate.

veterans and seniors

VETERANS

Lynnwood Food Bank brings the food truck to local Heroes Cafe meetings so that veterans are easily able to access groceries. 


We also make non-cook bags for Heroes Cafe volunteers to deliver while doing homeless outreach with homeless veterans.


SENIORS

Coming Soon

Health

Lynnwood Food Bank has partnerships to help increase health amongst our community.

  • Medical Teams International has been serving our customers with a dental van for approximately 20 years.
  • American Heart Association has distributed more than 100 blood pressure cuffs to customers with hypertension.
  • SeaMar Medical Clinic to distribute Heart Healthy boxes of food to hypertensive patients.
  • ClearWater School and WAGRO to provide COVID testing kits and hygiene supplies.
  • Snohomish Health District to provide COVID testing, and classes on a variety of subjects.