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Two Kansas City mothers are bridging a gap in food assistance by delivering safe groceries to families with food allergies, sensitivities, and restrictive eating disorders.
“Safe foods” are items someone can eat without risking allergic reactions or worsening restrictive diet disorders like ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder).
The initiative, called Help Get Safe Foods, started during the pause in SNAP benefits but continues to serve families who struggle to find suitable food options through traditional pantries and meal programs.
"When you are limited to just five to 20 safe foods, they're really hard to find at food pantries, assuming you even have transportation to a food pantry," said Rachel Sewell, co-founder of Help Get Safe Foods. "That is what motivated Meg and me to start this."
For families dealing with severe food restrictions, finding safe foods can determine whether they eat on any given day. Meg Anderson and Rachel Sewell’s program helps address this by creating a system that delivers exactly what families need directly to their homes.
The process works through an order form where families list their safe foods, then the co-founders carefully place orders, pay special attention to substitutions, and arrange home delivery.
Sewell explained that while food pantries and meal programs provide valuable community resources, they often cannot accommodate highly specialized dietary needs.
"We realized SNAP was never enough to cover this for most people," Sewell said. "For those family members who have individuals who can only have certain foods they can eat, that's where we are concerned, and we're seeing that people are just not eating because they run out of their safe food."
The moms plan to continue the program as long as requests come in. Click here to get help, donate, or learn more.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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