Food bank to start healthy food co-op

ATLANTA - The Atlanta Community Food Bank says it will use a $100,000 grant to create a co-op that it says will help provide the needy with healthy food in the nearly 40 counties it serves, some of them in northeast Georgia.

The grant was made by the Humana Foundation.

The Food Bank says the co-op will offer rarely donated food items and other necessities to its partner agencies.

Food bank executive director Bill Bolling says items such as shelf-stable milk, peanut butter, canned and frozen meats and other high-protein foods will soon be made available to Georgians served by the Food Bank.

The food bank distributes nearly 22 million pounds of food and grocery items each month to more than 800 nonprofit partner agencies in 38 Georgia counties.

Those counties include nine in our area: Hall, Gwinnett, Forsyth, Dawson, Lumpkin, Union, Fannin, Gilmer and Pickens.

(AccessNorthGa.com's Ken Stanford contributed to this story.)