Lipton Tea announced a new partnership with Full Cart, a program within nonprofit U.S. Hunger, and the first nationwide fully virtual food pantry, to make heart-friendly nutrition and grocery assistance more accessible.
Lipton is contributing US$275,000 to Full Cart to help fund 5,000 shelf-stable food delivery boxes. These boxes will be delivered to 2,500 families in need and provide approximately 350,000 servings (see footnote 1) of heart-friendly food.
A total of 2,500 food insecure families in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Miami, Montgomery, Nashville and New York City will each receive two of Full Cart's shelf-stable food boxes. Each of Lipton and Full Cart's collaborative boxes includes a variety of heart friendly, shelf-stable pantry items such as dried vegetable pasta, whole grain brown rice, beans and vegetable risotto, alongside one box of Lipton Unsweetened Green Tea and one box of Lipton Unsweetened Black Tea. The boxes will also include nutritious recipes to help educate recipients on how to make easy, affordable, family meals at home.
“One of the biggest roadblocks inhibiting people from eating nutritious meals is the lack of accessibility to healthy options," said Dr. Joy Dubost RD, Head of Scientific Affairs and Nutrition at Lipton. “At Lipton, it is our goal to help those in need access heart friendly options. By joining forces with Full Cart, we can reach a community whose members may face such challenges. This is one piece of a long-term commitment to helping to make health and wellness more inclusive, and we are eager to continue to support, educate, and ensure heart-friendly products are more accessible.”
Unsweetened Tea to Support a Healthy Heart
As a brand working to create a world where wellbeing is always within reach, Lipton said it understands that hunger can be a contributor to heart health issues. Thus, they’re on a mission to make heart-friendly nutrition more accessible. Unsweetened tea – like Lipton Unsweetened Green and Black Tea – is a budget-friendly beverage that can also help support a healthy heart due to the fact that it’s hydrating, contains zero calories, zero added sugars and provides flavonoids. Tea is one of the best sources of flavonoids in the diet, which are natural, dietary compounds associated with heart health benefits.
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death (see footnote 2) in the United States, and the prevalence of heart disease/cardiovascular disease (CVD) is six times higher (see footnote 3) in households with very low food security. While food pantries provide much needed support, many people can't get to them because of lack of transportation and time constraints. According to recent data from U.S. Hunger, of families requesting food assistance, 42.6 percent report a lack of access to transportation to go to grocery stores that provide fresh and healthy food options (see footnote 4).
Bolstering Nutritional Impact Through Tea
Rick Whitted, CEO of U.S. Hunger, said, “Lipton is connecting the dots to what data has been telling us for the last three years. Seventy percent of people who request food assistance through Full Cart report managing a chronic illness [see footnote 4]. This innovative partnership proves just how committed Lipton is to bolstering nutritional impact.”
Full Cart is a virtual food bank, that partners with generous donors to cover the cost of food and ship it directly to the front door of those in need. Unlike a traditional food bank model, Full Cart does not rely on food donations to provide assistance. Instead, they have an innovative food security solution that combines their wholly-owned core meals like Red Lentil Jambalaya with a variety of partner-sponsored Consumer Packaged Goods and other options.
The partnership between Full Cart and Lipton is part of Lipton's broader long-term commitment to ensure that wellbeing is inclusive and accessible by supporting heart health programming and initiatives, including sponsorship of the American Heart Association's Life is Why program from 2021 through Q1 of 2025.
Lipton is one of 34 brands owned by ekaterra, the leading global tea business, with world-class purpose-driven brands including Lipton, PG tips, Pukka, T2 and TAZO. With production factories in four continents and tea estates in three countries, ekaterra is focused on growing a world of wellbeing through the regenerative power of plants.
To learn more about ekaterra, visit ekaterratea.com. For more information on Lipton Tea's partnership with Full Cart, visit Lipton.com/us/en/Full-Cart.
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Footnotes:
1. The number of servings were calculated using values declared on the Nutrition Fact Panel of the products in Full Cart boxes. This does not account for any changes to labels or products that may occur.
2. https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/index.htm
3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666667721001586
4. https://ushunger.org/blog/transportation-food-insecurity/