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When you donate to a food drive, do you ponder the nutritional labels of the can in your hand? Or do you grab a packet of ramen or a bag of marshmallows from the dark corners of your pantry and hope it hasn't expired?

Healthfulness isn't typically a well-intended food donor's top concern, says hunger advocate Ruthi Solari. The ramen and marshmallows, along with a container of Crisco and a few other items, were basically the entire contents of a food box delivered to one of her volunteer's grandmothers who received food aid, Solari says.

"What would she even make with this?" she notes.

Solari's nonprofit, SuperFood Drive, works with food banks and pantries, schools and individuals on food drives that focus on nourishing, nutritionally dense nonperishables. And it offers materials, available for free download on its website, that groups and individuals can use to host their own healthful food drives.

"People think if it's nonperishable, it must be unhealthy," says Solari. "Instead of reaching in the back of the pantry for what's expired or undesired, we're asking people to really think about health."

That means donating items like lentils, canned tuna or canned salmon, peanut butter without added oils or sugars, brown rice, quinoa or kidney beans. With these sorts of pantry staples, she says, "you can have amazingly healthy food as the basis of any meal."

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Peanut butter, canned tuna and canned fruits in natural juices are among the "superfoods" on Feeding America San Diego's list of requested donations. Courtesy Feeding America San Diego hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy Feeding America San Diego

Peanut butter, canned tuna and canned fruits in natural juices are among the "superfoods" on Feeding America San Diego's list of requested donations.

Courtesy Feeding America San Diego

Though many people may not realize it, eating this way – with a focus on whole, unprocessed or minimally processed foods – can also be a lot cheaper, when you look at the cost per serving, Solari notes. A cost-comparison chart on Superfood's website shows how swapping in raisins for fruit snacks or rolled oats for instant oatmeal will get you a much better (and healthier) bang for your buck.

Giving food pantry clients this type of price information is key to helping them make better nutritional choices when they're shopping, too, says Jennifer Gilmore, executive director of Feeding America San Diego, a hunger-relief organization that serves some 480,000 people in San Diego County, Calif. She says 67 percent of families who frequent food banks make their food purchases "based on dollars, instead of anything having to do with nutrition."

One in 7 Americans visited a food pantry in 2013, according to a national survey conducted by Feeding America.

"These are the elderly, single parents, they're returning veterans," notes Solari. "They're people just like us, our neighbors who hard times have forced to choose between paying for utilities and food."

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Many of these people are also struggling with diet-related diseases like diabetes. So in recent years, hunger-relief groups have been putting an increasing emphasis on healthful eating, says Gilmore, who worked with Solari to revamp her organization's nutritional policies. That involved changing not only the types of foods that pantries solicited from donors, Gilmore says, but also educating volunteers and staffers about healthier cooking, so they can pass that knowledge on to the people they serve.

"It's one thing to distribute brown rice and quinoa and bok choy," says Gilmore. "It's a whole other thing to get families to taste it and cook it and eat it at home." Her group now hands out recipes with food boxes.

The goal, says Solari, is to make healthful eating approachable and "really debunking the idea that it's an elitist thing."

"It's not enough to fill empty stomachs," she says. "The opposite of being hungry isn't being full – it's being healthy."

Planning to donate to a food drive this holiday season? Here's SuperFood Drive's suggested shopping list. It's also just as efficient to give money to your local bank online.

food pantries

food banks

food insecurity

As the holiday buying season approaches, retailers remain open to the same attack — called a "point of sale" attack — that hit Target and Home Depot, security experts say. Those analysts say that retailers have their fingers crossed, hoping they're not next.

And leading companies are keeping very tight-lipped about what, if anything, they're doing to protect customers.

Is This Store Hackerproof?

It's easy to spot a scratched face on a watch. It's much harder to tell if the checkout machine that you swipe to pay for that watch is defective.

But Davi Ottenheimer knows how. He's a security researcher at EMC, a Hopkinton, Mass.-based data storage company. He's been auditing retail for a decade. And we're looking at how "hackerproof" stores are this holiday shopping season.

We walk into a Rolex Store in San Francisco, and the diamond-studded watches don't catch Ottenheimer's eye. A tablet that's sitting by the counter, with a little square card reader plugged in, does.

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"They're not even looking at us," he says as a sales representative walks away. "We could replace the card reader with our own card reader. I have several of those at home."

Never mind that an armed guard is patrolling the door. This store is ripe for a microscale cyberattack. Sure, it would just get a few dozen customers. But, Ottenheimer says, "they spend a lot of money, so if I want to get high-value cards, this would be a place where I could get them."

Rolex and Tourneau, the company managing the store, did not respond to NPR's request for comment about on-site security.

Over at Macy's, Ottenheimer wanders over to an empty corner and stares at a lonely register. He points to a little green icon that's blinking on the hard drive. "It has a network light on the front," he says.

That means it's speaking to other machines that are grabbing card numbers.

Ottenheimer is concerned that crooks could use this unprotected machine to try to break in. "They came over to help us with the jewelry but not with the fact that we're standing and staring at a PC in the corner," he says.

NPR reached out to Macy's to ask what it's doing to protect the customer information feeding into these machines. Is the retail chain scrambling and encrypting card numbers? Is it cordoning off the financial data, so that people with access to one point of entry can't break into others?

Macy's declined to provide a single detail about the most general security measures it's taking.

'Security By Obscurity'

Orla Cox, a security expert at Symantec, helps retailers behind the scenes. And while she can't name her clients because of nondisclosure agreements, she criticizes companies for acting like they can achieve "security by obscurity."

"A lot of times, a lazy approach to security is just to make information difficult to get," she says. "Just because you're not talking about it isn't actually making you any more protected."

According to a recent Symantec report, hacks have gotten bigger and more frequent. Cox and other security insiders say that just about every retailer remains open to the exact same attack — a point-of-sale attack that lifts information from credit card readers — that got Target and Home Depot.

“ Just because you're not talking about it isn't actually making you any more protected.

- Orla Cox, a security expert at Symantec

It's not clear if or when that'll change. NPR contacted two dozen of America's largest retailers — which include Sears, Kohl's, Best Buy, Dollar General, the TJ Maxx company — and none of them would indicate whether their budget for online security has increased in this last year of megabreaches.

"I would think that it's fairly innocuous information anyway," Cox says. "Giving a number out there shows that you're taking it seriously."

A Lack Of Incentives

Visa and MasterCard are nudging retailers to take on a bit more liability. By October 2015, merchants who don't have the more up-to-date EMV chip card readers could have to pay for certain credit and debit card theft in stores.

"There is no silver bullet," says Ellen Richey, Visa's chief risk officer, who's on a national campaign to get retailers to invest.

But, many say, there aren't enough incentives for retailers to address the issue.

Retailers make tiny margins — say 2 percent. They don't want to spend on IT support. When credit card data are stolen, they don't typically have to pay. Even if the retailers' lax network security is at fault, financial institutions typically pick up the bill.

That includes credit unions, like LGE Community Credit Union in Georgia. Its president, Chris Leggett, says he is tired of paying for replacement cards after a hack. "It sure would be nice if the merchants would be willing to share in the cost of cleaning it up due to their lax security," he says. "The issuers are paying the brunt of the expense."

The Credit Union National Association is asking lawmakers to intervene, so that retailers are held to stricter security and disclosure rules.

Card Thefts Become Routine

Among victims, a kind of fatalism has set in. People have come to expect the theft.

Kate Anderson in Minnesota has had to replace her cards five times in the past year. "It always seems to happen on a Friday or a Saturday. So usually that's kind of when I kind of really get like, 'Well, should I really go shopping or not?' " she says.

Now, she and her husband know the drill: "Reset all of our passwords and our PIN numbers and every place that we do auto debits from."

Texas resident Hunter Hargrave has replaced his cards twice following hacks. "I wouldn't be surprised if it happened again," he says.

The 25-year-old is turning away from the world of plastic and using old-school money a lot more. "Whenever I get paid, I take out the vast majority in cash, and then I put the rest on a debit card. But the debit card's only for emergencies," he says.

Even if people ditch their cards, they're not ditching the stores. While the cost of cleaning up a hack is climbing, according to a recent survey by the Ponemon Institute, the cost of doing nothing — and hoping for the best — is not.

Sales at Target and Home Depot have been exceeding expectations. Experts say that as long as we're spending, retailers don't have to spend on protecting us.

This story is part of the New Boom series on millennials in America.

If Noelle Johnson had a bachelor's degree, she'd be able to live closer to work, she says. She wouldn't have to spend so much of her free time hustling for baby-sitting gigs. She'd shop at the farmers market. She'd be able to treat her sister to dinner for once. She and her husband could go on trips together — they'd be able to afford two tickets instead of one.

There are dozens of ways that not having a college degree and dealing with student loans affects Johnson's life.

Johnson, 27, lives in Manassas, Va., and commutes 90 minutes each way by bus and train to Arlington, Va. She likes her job as an office manager at a nonprofit and makes around $40,000 a year. That compares with a national median income of about $34,000 for households led by young adults with some college. The capital region has a higher cost of living as well.

But households led by young college graduates have a median income of about $58,000. And after nine years of changing schools, trying to choose a major, dealing with an illness and managing tuition costs, Johnson has about $20,000 in student loan debt and no degree to show for it.

Millions of millennials are in the same boat. More than 40 percent of households headed by young adults with some college are dealing with student loans. And without the increased earnings that usually come with a college degree, managing even just a few thousand dollars in loans can be a huge challenge.

Richard Fry, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center, says the real impact of student loans for those with no degree isn't even on how much money they make — it's on their overall wealth.

"The 'some college educated' household that doesn't have the student debt? Their net worth is about $10,000, $11,000," he says. "As opposed to that, for the ones that are still sort of servicing their student debt? They have a net worth of about a grand. So you're looking at about a tenfold difference."

Fry says households with student loans are also more likely to have other kinds of debt, like credit card debt and car payments.

That's true of Johnson and her husband. "We've done payday loans, and, you know it just — it gets out of control," she says. The couple also dipped into their rainy day fund. "We had so much more in savings, but we had to put a lot of that toward school."

That's savings, earnings and debt, all going toward tuition — which is higher than ever, and still rising.

That means lots of students like Johnson have to make calculations: Draw school out so there's time to save up — putting yourself at risk for dropping out altogether? Or take on more student loan debt?

When Johnson hit the $20,000 mark, she realized she needed to step back.

"I had to say, 'Well, I can't take out any more loans and I definitely don't have the cash for it.' So I have to stop, and then save, and then pay for that semester, and then do that all over again," she says.

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Johnson decided against taking out more money when her student loan debt reached $20,000. "So I have to stop, and then save, and then pay for that semester, and then do that all over again," she says. James Clark/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption James Clark/NPR

Johnson decided against taking out more money when her student loan debt reached $20,000. "So I have to stop, and then save, and then pay for that semester, and then do that all over again," she says.

James Clark/NPR

She's still at it, and she has a plan to get to graduation. Her job has a tuition reimbursement program, she says, "but that means I do need to be able to pay first, so we're just working on getting some money together so I can pay for my next semester, and then it'll be reimbursed."

She has about 1 1/2 years to go to finish her bachelor's in nonprofit management at Liberty University. "I think I'll be able to knock it all out pretty easily," Johnson says.

Fry of Pew says it's a good idea for students not to drag out attaining a degree for too long. "Most people who are going to finish bachelor's degrees, they've got 'em by age 30."

Ultimately, though, how long it takes you to finish matters less than whether you do.

"For a bachelor's degree, you're looking at at least an extra $600,000, $800,000 over a working life, compared to if you'd stopped your education at high school," Fry says. "College is expensive, but it's a good investment."

Johnson has no illusions that finishing her degree is going to make her rich or solve all her problems. "I don't expect, because I have a B.A., I'm going to make an exorbitant amount of money."

But she does think it will relieve some of the paycheck-to-paycheck pressure she and her husband feel every month. They'll be able to build their nest egg back up and think about having kids.

"I really want it to work. We really want to be able to be successful," she says. "I know that having my degree is definitely going make the difference. ... It's going to do everything for us."

Correction Nov. 21, 2014

In the audio of this story, as in a previous Web version, we incorrectly say that Noelle Johnson makes about $10,000 more than the national average for people with some college education and that young college graduates make an average $58,000 a year. The story should have said that the median income for households led by young adults with some college education is about $34,000. And it should have said households led by young college graduates have a median income of about $58,000.

Millennials

student loans

paying for college

college loans

debt

college tuition

Samuel Gbazeki is fed up.

"How can we cope?" he asks.

The university professor, who teaches freshmen and sophomore English, has been out of work since July when Liberia's government suspended schools because of the Ebola outbreak.

"Ebola is very, very dangerous because it kills and has no boundaries," he says. "But people don't know what to do. They go to bed hungry because jobs have stopped."

The trim man is wearing a tan baseball cap, pressed khaki shorts and a spotless white T-shirt. He will admit to being "something over 60 years old."

Gbazeki says Ebola has hit at a particularly bad time for Liberians. It's one of the world's 10 poorest countries. But things had started to look up. A little more than a decade after a brutal civil war had brought the impoverished nation to its knees, authorities say Liberia was beginning to stabilize. The gross national income, for example, has been on a slow but steady upward trend.

Then came the outbreak. Unemployment has soared. Today, Liberia has become a nation of peddlers.

Gbazeki is standing among a small crowd in front of the Daily Talk news board. The board, which stands 10 feet high and 15 feet wide on busy Tubman Boulevard in downtown Monrovia, is an innovative and low-tech approach to sharing news in a nation where many don't own a television or a radio and can't afford a newspaper.

The board is the brainchild of Alfred Sirleaf, a journalist who created it in 2000, three years before the war ended. He updates the blackboard by hand several times a week, writing headlines in white chalk. A river of people flows past including pedestrians, laborers and multiple vendors of food, clothes, clocks, eyeglasses, kola nuts, shoes. Many stop to look at the day's news.

The headlines on Dec. 2 include: "AFTER KILLING NEARLY 6,000 PEOPLE IN AFRICA, DEATH RATE DROP WITH EBOLA ON THE RUN; DUE TO KILLER EBOLA FEAR SUPREME COURT HALTS ELECTIONS, ORDERS CANDIDATES TO STOP ACTIVITIES; CRIMINALS ENTER PRES SIRLEAF'S COMPOUND FROM BEACH SIDE STEAL WINDOW GLASSES.

Gbazeki is stunned by this last bulletin.

"This is very astonishing," he says. "Because a president is supposed to have maximum security. If criminals can do this, it's very astonishing"

Gbazeki says he is not a daily visitor but has been stopping by the board recently for updates on elections due to be held Dec. 16. Liberia's Supreme Court is reviewing a petition that the elections be postponed due to Ebola. But President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's government wants them to go ahead, even though it has banned mass gatherings.

Gbazeki reflects the opinion of many standing around him when he says he doesn't understand the logic.

"According to our president, because of Ebola we should not assemble," he says. "Now they are saying elections should be held."

Gbazeki says life was hard before Ebola.

Now?

"If Ebola closes everything, where do people get money to feed their family?," he asks. "People can hardly put food on the on table for their family. We are hurt."

ebola

Liberia