Food Research and Action Center

THE FOOD RESEARCH and Action Center (FRAC) is a leading national organization working to improve public policies to eradicate hunger and undernutrition in the United States. Founded in 1970 as a public interest law firm, FRAC is a nonprofit and nonpartisan research and public policy center that serves as the hub of a network of antihunger advocates throughout the United States.

Believing that hunger reduces children's ability to learn, decreases workers’ productive energy, and weakens elderly persons’ resistance to disease, FRAC works to achieve the full productive potential of the United States by harnessing national resources on behalf of those least able to provide for themselves. FRAC conducts research; monitors legislation and regulations affecting the poor; provides program support to antihunger advocates; collaborates with national and local antihunger organizations; partners with associations of educators, nutritionists, physicians, and labor and business leaders to enhance antihunger advocacy; and develops media and public information campaigns to promote changes in public attitudes and policies toward hunger and poverty.

FRAC conducts research on the extent of hunger and hunger's impact on low-income families with children. Its 1991–95 Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project (CCHIP) documented the seriousness of hunger and food insecurity in the United States. The study's methodology has been adopted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Agriculture as the basis for annual reports on hunger in the United States.

FRAC reviews and analyzes major developments in legislation, regulations and policy proposals at the national level that affect food assistance programs. It works closely with a national antihunger network of advocates, food banks, program administrators and participants, and policymakers, providing them with program information and analyses. FRAC focuses especially on programs that help children grow and learn—Food Stamps, the School Breakfast Program, the Summer Food Service Program for Children, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and programs that provide meals and snacks to children in daycare and before- and after-school programs.

FRAC develops media and public information campaigns to help promote changes in public attitudes and policies. Campaigns have included the National School Breakfast Expansion Campaign (1987), the Campaign to [Page 374]End Childhood Hunger (1991–present), the Mickey Leland Childhood Hunger Relief Act (1993), the Building Blocks Project (1994–present), Save Our Nation's Nutrition Programs (1996), the Hunger Has a Cure Campaign (1997), and the National Nutrition Summit (2000). FRAC has been a leader in national efforts to protect and expand food stamps, the program that, after employment, is the nation's defense against hunger.