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More Minnesotans visiting food shelves in 2022 than in previous years
More Minnesotans have visited food shelves this year than any other year on record, continuing an unprecedented surge in demand for food assistance that began with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Minnesota’s nearly 400 food shelves are on pace to record 5.1 million visits in 2022, according to preliminary data — the highest number in the state’s history and far surpassing the record 3.8 million visits in 2020 when the pandemic first hit, spurring furloughs and layoffs. From Bemidji to Burnsville, food shelves are seeing a jump in the number of people in need, especially older adults and families seeking help for the first time.
“We’ve got more people than ever coming through,” said Michelle Ness, executive director of PRISM, a Golden Valley nonprofit that’s serving more than double the number of people it did in 2019 and more than in the past two years. “This isn’t sustainable. We’re the safety net to the safety net.”
A steady stream of clients navigated snowy roads Tuesday to pick up toilet paper, apples, bread and other essential items from PRISM’s food shelf. There was a single mother who didn’t have child care and depended on free food to feed her two children. The Russian couple that moved to Minnesota two months ago and are eager to find work while navigating a new language. The 71-year-old retired airline mechanic who cares for his ailing brother.
“A lot of people out there, they do need this,” said Zandra Ankle, a 64-year-old retiree who picked up cereal and other items Tuesday to supplement her increasingly expensive trips to the grocery store. “When hard times come, people help each other.”
As of October, the state’s food shelves recorded 4.6 million visits — a million more visits than in all of last year, according to Hunger Solutions Minnesota, a St. Paul nonprofit that operates a helpline and tracks data.
While the state has historically low unemployment rates, more Minnesotans are living paycheck to paycheck, stifled by rising rents and soaring food prices. Wages, especially for low-income jobs, aren’t keeping pace. COVID emergency relief, from federal stimulus checks to the expanded child tax credit, buoyed families’ finances in 2021 — but once that ended, lines began to form again at many food shelves.
“It’s easy for middle class people to feel like, ‘Hey, we bounced back’ … but for those who were really struggling to start with, this has only made it worse,” Ness said.
Food stamps up
More Minnesotans are also receiving food stamps this year. Nearly 450,000 people were enrolled in the federally-funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in October, nearly 20,000 more than a year ago. While that’s lower than the post-Great Recession record of 538,000 in 2013, it’s 70,000 more people on food stamps than in 2019.
“Those numbers are really high,” said Tikki Brown, assistant commissioner of children and family services at the Minnesota Department of Human Services. “Traditionally, when folks think about their budget, they’ll pay for their electricity, they’ll pay for rent, and food tends to be the last.”
Brown said a small part of the increase in food stamps was due to the state’s expansion of income limits earlier this year. Under the new limit, a family of three with an annual income of up to about $46,000 before taxes is eligible. During the pandemic, the state also made it easier to apply for food stamps online at mnbenefits.mn.gov.
Still, a large portion of the new Minnesotans using food stamps are lower-income residents, who usually take longer to stabilize financially after a crisis, Brown said.
During the Great Recession of 2007-09, the number of Minnesotans visiting food shelves doubled and never returned to pre-recession levels. Nonprofit leaders now expect the elevated need to continue into 2023 or beyond, straining organizations divvying out more food for a third consecutive year — and all while facing increased food costs and declining donations.
“Everybody is feeling the pressure to do everything we can to get the food out there, but it’s not as accessible as it once was,” said Colleen Moriarty, executive director of Hunger Solutions. “We’ve got to pitch in and find food for people in a way we haven’t done before.”
During the last legislative session, Hunger Solutions pushed for $8 million for food shelves, food banks and meal programs, and $15 million for capital investments such as expanding food shelves. Neither proposal passed.
While the food is free for its customers, PRISM must buy most of it. Grocery stores are scaling back donated food, Ness said, forcing PRISM to spend more and purchase about 60% of its produce, baby diapers and other items this year. With less money coming in from donors than in the past two years, the organization will end the year in the red.
“If we weren’t purchasing food,
IBD 50: Energy Drink Stock Celsius Soars On Pepsi, Martial Arts Partnerships
Celsius (CELH) is building a cup base with a buy point of 118.29. Shares reclaimed their 50-day moving average last week and are holding above that key level. Volume surged as they cut past the 10- and 50-day lines. The somewhat asymmetric cup of this energy drink stock has a near-ideal depth of 34%.
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Celsius is on the carefully selected IBD 50 and IBD Leaderboard lists of growth stocks that are proving to be market leaders.
The energy drink stock ranks 9th in the Beverage-Non-Alcoholic group, which holds 60th place among IBD’s 197 industry groups. The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company has a less-than-ideal 74 Composite Rating as a result of erratic profit performance in the last year.
However, the Relative Strength Rating of 97 confirms the defensive play’s popularity with investors, placing it at or above 97% of all publicly traded stocks. Its RS line is also at a 52-week high, showing superior performance compared to the S&P 500.
Energy Drinks Drive Strong Partnerships
Third-quarter sales grew to $188.2 million, a whopping 98% year-over-year increase. However, the 28 cents-per-share loss for the quarter was steeper than the prior year’s 13-cent loss.
One reason for the mixed results: Celsius sells energy drinks and protein bars, which tend to perform according to seasonal variations. The third quarter may be a seasonally-weak period, with folks taking summer breaks and students heading back to class.
Last week, it announced a multiyear deal with the Professional Fighters League (PFL), the second largest mixed martial arts sports organization, triggering an 11% share spike. As a result of the deal, Celsius will be the official energy drink partner for the organization, starting with the 2022 PFL World Championship on Nov. 25 at Madison Square Gardens.
Celsius’ products include sparkling and nonalcoholic beverages and powder packets, all under the CELSIUS brand name. It also sells Celsius Heat, which provides pre- and post-workout amino acid supplements.
According to the company, its energy drinks increase metabolism while burning calories and body fat. It comes as a drink supplement as well as in an “on-the-go” powder form.
Products are available in US grocery stores, convenience stores and fitness specialty retailers. Other countries where Celsius products are available include Puerto Rico, Sweden, Finland, Norway, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Kuwait, Bermuda and Australia.
In August, Celsius entered into several agreements with PepsiCo (PEP). These include a securities purchase, a lockup agreement, a distribution agreement and a channel transition agreement. Through these agreements, the company issued 1,466,666 shares of Series A Convertible Preferred Stock and received $550 million in cash.
In return, Pepsi will become the primary distributor of Celsius products in the US and certain overseas markets.
Strong Institutional Interest
Institutional interest is very high for this market leader, which came public in May 2017.
Mutual funds own a staggering 80% of outstanding Celsius shares. Strong institutional interest is a further indication of the energy drink stock’s technical and fundamental power, according to the CAN SLIM stock picking methodology. Among ETFs, the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) and the Vanguard Small Cap ETF (VB) hold shares.
Follow VRamakrishnan @IBD_VRamakrishnan for more news on stocks.
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At 35, I found out I had gout. Imagine having to give up everything you like to eat and drink | Daniel Levelle
I wake up to the searing pain in my right foot, the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Worse than the time I broke my back after plummeting 16ft from a cricket practice net, worse than when a rusty nail, jutting out from a rickety armchair, bored into my soft infant arm and worse than any grief from my teeth over the years. I switch on the light, gently remove the covers and discover an angry red lump, the size and shape of a golf ball, pulsing on the big toe of my right foot. I have no idea how this happened. It’s like I’ve been sucked into a cartoon overnight, and Daffy Duck has whacked me with an Acme hammer.
In my non-expert opinion, the toe looks broken. I think I should go to a hospital, but I reason that the NHS is too busy and what can they do about a broken toe except say “you have a broken toe” and send me on my way with crutches and painkillers. Also, I’m too lazy. In fact, that’s the real reason I don’t go; the NHS bit was to make me look good in your eyes. Soz.
Anyway, after much lazy and desperate calls to the hotel I’m staying at, a kindly receptionist collects some crutches from an Argos next door and delivers them to my room. Somehow, I manage to collect my effects and hobble with my new sticks to Euston station.
When I return home, my mum torpedoes my plan to just let the toe heal itself. She tells me my foot could be sore and disfigured for life, or I could end up like Bob Marley, who, she says, famously dismissed a sore toe and died of cancer soon after. The Marley story inspired enough sense of peril in me, and I let Mum drop me off at the Royal Oldham hospital.
After a surprisingly short wait in A&E, I get to tell a triage nurse about the mystery. “Do you think I knocked it during the night?” I ask her, hopefully. The nurse glances at my toe, “No, it’s gout,” she says. “Gout!?” I say. “That’s right,” she says, a bit too gleefully, as she taps away on her desktop keyboard. I don’t believe it. Gout is a condition I associate with elderly rich gluttons or ancient bigamist Tudors, but apparently I’ve managed to cram a lifetime of greed into just 35 years.
Gout occurs because the kidneys can no longer efficiently filter uric acid out of the body. The acid eventually crystallizes in the joints and can lead to severe inflammation.
All the nice things in life can trigger it: foods rich in purines – chemical compounds that form uric acid when metabolized – such as red meat, seafood, booze and cake. It’s why it’s called the rich man’s disease because, for centuries, only a king like Henry VIII could afford to live like that. Now, anyone with a Just Eat app can order their way to an early death. Or, at least, a very painful foot.
If I don’t want this to happen again, I have to quit almost everything I like, and it’s high time, too. This shouldn’t be too difficult, as I don’t dislike healthy food, but cooking is something I did in the noughties when I was skint, long before I could get a meal with just my fingertips. I don’t even have to hand over cash any more; all I have to do is raise my head slightly from my cushion like a tardy tortoise poking its head from its shell, make eye contact with my camera and facial recognition does the rest.
If only it was as simple as switching to healthy food, though. It turns out that oily fish such as sardines and mackerel – universally recognized as being good for your heart due to all the omega-3 they have – may as well be hydrofluoric acid for my gouty kidneys. The fact that red meat and offal risk causing flare-ups is not surprising, but broccoli, spinach? It turns out that even these superfoods can lead to crutches.
I’m doing all right, though. This was the wake-up call I needed. At least the first major warning was an excruciating toe rather than feeling like an elephant had sat on my chest.
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