The U.S. is battling the highest food inflation in 17 years and it could get worse.

By Ashley Prchal NCC News

With America's economy in a tailspin, rising food prices are hitting low income families the hardest. In Central New York, food pantries are struggling to keep up with a new trend.

Claire Pietra is a Pastor at Valley Worship Center in Syracuse, New York. She runs the weekly food pantry.

"You're seeing more young people. More single mothers. More children coming to shop for them and their families," says Pastor Claire.

One of those is Deborah Wrightson, a single mom of 8 year old son Anthony. Deborah is on social security and workman's comp. She can't work because she hurt her back. So she must stretch $79 dollars a month in food stamps to buy groceries.

"I'm on a limited budget so you have to count every penny. And by the end of the month, the last week is very hard," says Wrightson.

Food stamps help, but a lot of families don't qualify. When it opened nearly 30 years ago, the Food Bank of Central New York was supposed to be a temporary fix for hunger. Now more people are using food pantries as supplemental foods rather than emergency food because more people are in crisis all the time.



Stephanie Crowley is Development Associate for Food Bank of CNY. She says, "We even have some people that are working two and three jobs and they are still not able to make ends meet and get enough nutritious food for their families."

The Department of Agriculture says food prices rose 4 percent last year and it's predicted to hit 4 and a half percent this year.

Organizations all over Onondaga County are feeling the pinch. Meals on Wheels is dealing with a 16 percent increase in operation costs.



Mason Kaufman is Executive Director of Meals on Wheels. He says, "It's a triple wami for us. We're seeing food prices go up, we're seeing gas prices o up and the economy is uncertain."

If the economy doesn't improve, volunteers say there'll be more families relying on food banks. For now, Deborah Wrightson is just thankful for a helping hand...

"I'm taking it one day at a time. Cause you have to. If I don't I'll go crazy," says Wrightson.

Deborah is just one of may families struggling to survive through these tough times. But the key to making it out alive, program directors say, is to put your pride aside and ask for help.

Stevia: The dietary supplement Coca Cola wants

Stevia is the newest trend in non-caloric sweeteners, but unlike the more popular Splenda and Sweet’n Low…Stevia isn’t a sugar substitute.

“I don’t know that there are dangerous compounds in there, but there are a lot of compounds that haven’t been identified yet," Chemistry Professor James Kallermerten.


And that’s why Stevia is labeled under a dietary supplement…because the FDA hasn’t yet approved it.

“Consumers really like Stevia right now because it’s all natural, there’s no side effects, it’s zero glycemic index and it has good taste,” says Tracy Bowers, team leader of Wegmans' natural foods section.

Stevia is derived from a plant native to Paraguay and has been used as a sweetener for centuries, but has yet to be mass marketed to the American public.

Nearly two years ago, the sugar free foods market accounted for almost 6 billion dollars. And now Coca Cola is trying to tap into the market by getting Stevia FDA approved.

“There are protocols that you have to go through to make sure that things like this are safe. You need to first of all identify the compounds so that you can test these compounds for toxicity in the short term and the long term," Professor Kallermerten.

However, dietician Jodi Kearns says sugar substitutes are beneficial for some people.

“They’re sweeteners that do not have any calories, any carbohydrates and they do have a role in the meal planning for the common person with diabetes and also for the person trying to lose weight.”

But how healthy are artificial sugars? According to the FDA, a person weighing 150 pounds can safely have about 18 sodas filled with aspartame in one day, or up to 12 packets of Sweet’n’Low, or 6 cans of you favorite Splenda beverage.

“Your liver’s actually amazing at taking compounds that are totally strange compounds to the body and breaking them down and turning them into something your body can excrete, says Professor Kallermerten.”

Splenda is marketed as the sugar substitute made from real sugar, but after visiting a laboratory, Splenda grows three chlorine molecules. Professor Kallamerten says products with chlorine molecules are questionable.

“Typically chlorinated compounds are not particularly healthy. They tend to be what we call alkylating agents and alkylating agents are often associated with cancer,” Kallamerten.

And the professor says aspartame, which is found in Equal and NutraSweet, really doesn’t look like a sugar-like molecule, but it resembles sugar just enough to trick the brain.

So next time you shop for sugar keep in mind what is FDA approved and what you may be ingesting. Chemists go by the rule; if you don’t know what it is, then don’t put it in your mouth. For NCC News. I’m Ashley Prchal.

New York State Goes Green to Save Energy

William Scranton and his family live in an old house in Norwich...complete with cracked windows, poor insulation and holes in the floor...a house he admits is falling apart and costing way too much to heat in the wintertime. “Our utility bills here are astronomical. They’re hovering around six hundred dollars a month," says Scranton.

That's why the Scranton’s are among a growing number of Americans willing to invest in a new and greener house this year.



“We feel moving into a new home with more efficient heating, lighting and everything, we could save fifty percent or more,” says Scranton.

Green homes are sprouting up across New York State under an energy program with an ambitious goal of making the state thirty-percent more energy efficient.

Kevin Stack owns Northeast Natural Homes and is a LEED inspector, an organization that provides green building standards. Stack says, “If you take a holistic approach to building, how you design and build a structure, it doesn’t cost more, it actually costs less. For every day it’s alive, every year, every month. It’s going to use less energy and be less of an environmental impact.”




Angelina Maynard is a carpenter for Von Wettberg Builders. So far she has assisted the company in building two green homes. She says, “There’s no one set way to do green. It’s all a fairly new process. It’s still developing.”

A green home takes into account how a house it built, where it is built, the materials used inside the home and many other elements. “You just try to create the least amount of waste that you can in the process of building. And that encompasses a lot of the green building,” says Maynard.

The Scranton family is in the beginning stages of designing their new energy efficient home. The plan is to build a single level home with an open floor plan. The kitchen, living room and main bedroom are on one side of the house. The guest rooms are on the opposite side. So the Scranton family can partially heat their home, saving energy and money.

If you’re looking to go green take baby steps: exchange your current light bulbs for Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs, buy energy efficient products by Energy Star, and hire someone to inspect the energy efficiency of your home.

And here’s a tip for everyone in the cold country: if you have icicles streaming down from your roof, that means you have poor insulation and heat is escaping from your home.