Nutribank

We've all experienced it. The painful emptiness, the embarrassing growl of an empty stomach, usually the result of a meal skipped, whether unintentionally, or in a misguided effort to lose weight. It's not a good feeling. It aches. It is psychologically debilitating. It makes us sleepy, or irritated, sluggish and lethargic. Nutrisystem understands this, and has long provided its customers with well-researched, healthy, balanced nutrition choices to help consumers lose weight, without feeling hungry.

Even so, the irony has not been lost: Nutrisystem helps hundreds of thousands of people who have to manage daily exposure to over-abundance even as hundreds of millions of people around the world have to cope daily with hunger and famine.

1 in 7 people around the world will go hungry tonight. That hunger will contribute to the deaths of 5 million children under the age of five in 2011. In Somalia alone, 29,000 children died in one 90-day period last summer. An additional 640,000 remain acutely malnourished. Waiting to die.

That so many children are starving to death in this age of remarkable technological advancement and abundance weighs heavily. When we began to discuss partnering for the launch of Nutrisystem's new SUCCESS™ program, our conversation evolved, quickly, from a dialog about hunger and control to one about the devastating effects of starvation. Janet has travelled the world to connect with people through music. And in too many places, she has borne witness to individuals, families and whole communities suffering from malnourishment - and the listless despair that accompanies it. Together, we resolved to address the grave disparities of nutritional access.

And from those discussions, NutriBank™ was born. The idea is simple: NutriBank is a repository for two things - nutritious food and monetary resources. It's also a platform we'll use to drive awareness not just about hunger, but about how to engage in a solution.

We recognize that there are a lot of organizations, both in the US and around the world, that have been grappling with the hunger crises for decades. We will not reinvent the wheel. We will work with them - supplying nutritious Nutrisystem® food and financial support to help solve hunger one meal at a time.

And here's where you can get involved.

To help launch NutriBank and weave into the fabric of the Nutrisystem experience, for every pound lost on Nutrisystem in 2012, the Company will match it with one dollar's worth of nutritious Nutrisystem food to be delivered through NutriBank to selected hunger relief agencies for distribution to those in the most need. The Company has committed to donating up to $10 million in food contributions to NutriBank in 2012.

Please join us in bringing an end to hunger. We can do it. Working together. One meal at a time.

Thank you for coming by our new site. Please check back in as we add more information about the projects NutriBank is supporting and as we provide progress reports on our food and financial donations.