CalFresh Healthy Living at Cal Poly loses funding

The funding for the Cal Poly’s CalFresh Healthy Living program was terminated effective Oct. 1, according to the program’s post on Instagram. 

Cal Fresh Healthy Living is a program that offers nutrition education about good nutrition, physical activity and healthy community changes, according to the Cal Fresh Healthy Living website. 

This funding cut comes from Congress’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, that eliminated funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention Grant Program. This grant program funded SNAP Ed, and the California SNAP Ed program is known as the CalFresh Healthy Living Program. 

The main goal of the CalFresh Healthy Living program at Cal Poly is to provide nutrition education through lessons, cooking classes and outreach events, according to Roxy Hudson, CalFresh healthy living facilitator and nutrition senior.

Hudson said it’s heartbreaking to see that they are unable to complete their mission after years of trying to get their program up and running.

“I think it’s absolutely devastating,” Hudson said. “I think it’s maybe something that a lot of people don’t even really know about, but I think we have seen such a huge impact on students that we have worked with. I do think it’s a really important program and a really important lesson for young adults to learn how to cook and eat for themselves and that’s something that everyone should know.”

Hudson said they still care about the mission and hope to find other ways to complete it. 

Cal Poly’s healthy living program receives funding from the Center for Healthy Communities (CHC) at CSU Chico, said Olivia Watts, CalFresh program manager at Cal Poly.

Through the CalFresh Healthy Living on College Campuses project, CHC implements SNAP-Ed activities at 13 CSU campuses, including Cal Poly, according to the Center for Healthy Communities website. CHC receives its funds from the California Department of Social Services and the United States Department of Agriculture SNAP. 

Kinesiology senior Cassidy Serino uses the recipes from CalFresh Healthy Living and attended some of the cooking classes they offered.

“It’s definitely disappointing,” Serino said. “I think that there’s so many important things right now that are being threatened to cut the funding or just being shut down all together, which is super disappointing, especially because it’s things like nutrition and research and healthy living.”

Serino said the recipes and cooking class are important to have.

“I think it is just so important for college students to be able to make healthy meals especially since we are so busy and a lot of us are on a budget,” Serino said.

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