Meal Programs

Home-delivered meals are what keep people like 84-year-old Evelyn Osborne living in her Anaheim home and out of nursing facilities--saving taxpayers big money, social service experts say. But the three nonprofit organizations that bring her and 4,000 other Orange County seniors their meals say they are running out of money to keep the food coming. They say they will have to cut the number of people they serve if the county does not step in to help.

Nonprofit organizations that provide thousands of homebound seniors with what is often their only meal of the day say they are running out of money to keep the food coming. Social service agency officials in Los Angeles and Orange counties say they may have to limit the number of elderly people they serve if federal funding fails to keep pace with the demand for home-delivered meals. Federal officials have relied on 1990 U.S.

Nonprofit organizations that provide thousands of homebound seniors with what is often their only meal of the day say they are running out of money to keep the food coming. Social service agency officials in Los Angeles and Orange counties say they may have to limit the number of elderly people they serve if federal funding fails to keep pace with the demand for home-delivered meals. Federal officials have relied on 1990 U.S.

Lunch at Berkeley High School is delivered by a guy on a recumbent bike. His flatbed holds organic salads, hand-tossed pizzas, savory burritos, fresh-pressed apple juice, hormone-free chicken and a chow mein made with fresh vegetables from the local farmer's market. It's gourmet fare from local restaurants, about as far as you can get from corn dogs and chicken fingers without a waiter and a wine list.

Stormy weather doesn't make cafeteria manager Linda Dinkins worry about her students the way she once did. The children of Russell Elementary School now eat lunch inside warm bungalows on cold mornings and rainy days. Cafeteria workers prepare meals in a portable kitchen on campus instead of hauling food via golf cart from the kitchen of a nearby middle school.

Ask anybody around skid row and they will tell you about a spiritual oasis. At the corner of 6th Street and Gladys Avenue, hundreds of hungry and homeless line up waiting to be served free food and drink. But unlike the dank atmosphere of some soup kitchens, here people dine in a sun-drenched outdoor garden. Colored streamers hang from the trees and float in the breeze. A fountain gurgles as big, orange goldfish swim in the pond.

When classes start this week, many of the kids who play at the Garden Grove Boys & Girls Club will heartily welcome the hot lunches they get at school. They don't always taste great, the kids say, but it feels good to have a full stomach.

Students in six Orange County school districts will face higher lunch prices when classes begin this month, an increase officials said is being driven by the rising cost of food and heftier pay for cafeteria workers. After 19 years of keeping prices steady, Garden Grove schools have increased the lunch charge to $1 in elementary schools and $1.25 in middle and high schools.

Irving and Helene and Franklin and Dorothy all know it's Friday. They can set their clock by Vikki Sanhamel, who knocks on their door every week with a hot meal, a smile and a simple question: "How you doin' today?" Sanhamel volunteers for the Organization for the Needs of the Elderly, or ONE, a nonprofit group that delivers 200 hot meals daily to homebound seniors in the San Fernando Valley.

Worried about the fat in children's meals, federal officials want to let schools and day care centers serve tofu, veggie burgers and other soy products as meat substitutes in federally subsidized lunches. The Agriculture Department is proposing to drop its restrictions on how much soy can be used in meals. Under existing rules, soy can only be a food additive and only in amounts of less than 30%.