Food Insecurity In Rural America

The argument was formulated from two stories in the documentary that are very eye opening. The first story is of Barbie, an unemployed single mother from Philadelphia, who struggles to feed both of her children on food stamps. Often times Barbie would skip meals to make sure her children have enough to eat. Unfortunately, she would occasionally have to send her children to bed on an empty stomach simply because she ran out of food stamps. The second story that supports the argument is that of Tremonica. She is a 2nd grader from Mississippi whose health is put at risk because of the amount of processed food she consumes because it’s cheaper than fruits and vegetables. Although it may not appear like Tremonica

Obesity-related conditions and health disparities are attributed to food deserts among underserved communities. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers. The term ‘food desert’ was not used when I was growing up, but it applied to my neighbor as well. There are some similarities between myself and Erika Nicole Kendall in “No Myths Here: Food Stamps, Food Deserts, and Food Scarcity.” The first similarity we share is our grandmothers making sure we didn’t go hungry, but during the week we rarely saw a vegetable on our plates.

Food insecurity is defined as when an individual has inconsistent and inadequate access to a sufficient amount of nutritious food preventing him or her from maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It is typically associated with limited financial  It is sometimes classified as a public health concern and is currently a growing issue as the number of individuals suffering from food insecurity is increasing according to Statistics Canada.   Food insecurity has its greatest impact on the individual itself and an impact on the Government of Ontario and mayors of the cities within Ontario.  It is an important issue as it can more issues to branch out from it  such as famine (long term hunger), increased health care costs and more. Thus, food insecurity has many impacts on the person itself and it can cause more issues to build upon this one issue.

M. Pia Chaparro (2012) found that in his research that the recession affected the state of California in a drastic way and that is one of the reasoning for the problem of food insecurities for so many. Found by the California food policy advocates over 35 percent of adults who live in Riverside California live in a household with food insectaries. The Texas Food Bank networks has a great description of food insectaries that makes its more simple to understand, “Acceptable shorthand terms for food insecurity are “hungry, or at risk of hunger,” and “hungry, or faced the threat of hunger.” Food insecurity can also accurately be described as “a financial juggling act, where sometimes the food ball gets dropped.” This description shows that someone who struggles with food insecurity does not only have to be affected by hunger but also the finances that it takes to keep ones household food

With the various reading this past week, I believe the government is doing enough, as much as they can to aid in the issue with food insecurity among its citizens. There are so many programs that cater to families and individuals in need. Especially women and children. Social welfare program, such as W.I.C, TANF, General Assistance, food pantries run by the government, etc. all work in efforts to eliminate food insecurities in homes across America. I believe the government is not at 100% percent responsible of the high percentage of food insecurities in America. People and families are at fault as well. I believe life is full of choices, when people do not make the right choices, or problems happen within a person life, such as losing a job or losing a loved one. This losses have high impacts at forcing families and individuals into food insecurities and tough spots in their life. The government should not be held responsible I believe for foreseen occurrences within a person’s life.

In 2013 almost 86% of households in america were food secure. This means that 14.3% of households in America were food insecure (meaning they were not able to provide food for themselves). 5.6% out of this 14.3% had extremely low food security. This means that these households had no money or resources available to acquire food. Although this amount of people being food insecure may seem high it has been slowly declining. In 2011, the amount of households that were food insecure was 14.9%. This decrease might seem very small, but in reality it means that thousands of households are now food secure.

Food insecurity affects more than 48 million Americans every year (McMillan). Those who reside in food insecure homes can generally not afford healthy foods, therefore increasing the incidence of obesity and other resultant chronic disorders. According to The American Journal of Public Health, “Food insecurity has been shown to diminish dietary quality and affect nutritional intake and has been associated with chronic morbidity (e.g., type 2 diabetes, hypertension) and weight gain” (Nguyen, Shuval, Bertmann, & Yaroch, 2015, p. 1453). Those who live without adequate access to nutritional food, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, have higher rates of obesity not because of the amount of food they eat, but the poor nutritional value of affordable meals.

Food insecurity is a term that indicates the limited capability to afford nutritionally adequate and safe food or the limited ability to obtain adequate foods in socially acceptable ways (1-2). In 2015, 13% of all U.S. households, which represents 42.2 million people (including 29.1 million adults and 13.1 million children), were food insecure (3) and food insecurity was found to be present in every county in the United States, ranging from a low of 4% in Loudoun County, VA to a high of 38% in Jefferson County, MS (4).

This academic conversation expands on the broader hunger-obesity paradox of the 21st century and also attempts to explain how it has become a prevalent issue. Although there are numerous factors that cause hunger, these articles focus on unforeseen factors that have been contributing to the rising obesity rates, in particular to the low-income populations in the United States. In other words, this conversation discusses the factors that do not initially appear to have an effect on obesity rates, such as racial inequality and federal food assistance programs, and argues that they do significantly contribute to the prevalent health issue. The articles analyzed for this paper are Baum (2011) “The effects of food stamps on obesity” from the Southern Economic Journal; Darmon and Drewnowski (2005) “The economics of obesity: dietary energy density and energy cost” from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition; and Broady and Meeks (2015) “Obesity and social inequality in America” from the Review of Black Political Economy. These authors all discuss the factors behind rising obesity rates, but do so from different perspectives. Although the topic of hunger requires authors to appeal to pathos, the authors addressing the hunger-obesity paradox approach similar conclusions by incorporating logos and ethos into their arguments to further allow readers to quantify the severity and dangers of the paradox in relation to the dangerously high and continually rising obesity rates.

In recent years, the rise in food insecurity, has led to researchers asking many questions and conducting many researchers seek to find out what percentage of various populations are living with inadequate access to healthy food. While several factors such as certain demographics contribute to food insecurity, income is probably the major determinant.

Although many Americans are lucky enough to live with a roof over their heads and a hot meal in front of them to eat every night, the United States has witnessed a surge in food insecurity and poverty levels since 2008 due to several things. Now there have been a few programs that have been implemented to aid in lowering the number of hungry people in this great nation. In fact, as shown in 2008, just over 28.2 million individuals were receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. In addition, only two years later, that number climbed by a whopping 50% to over 40.3 million people. Every year, this number

Food is a basic need; in an ideal world, food would be a resource that could be equally accessible to any and all persons. Although, in more recent times, terms such as food deserts and food insecurity have been the topic of many conversations that concern different socioeconomic groups and how that relates to their overall health. Food deserts are communities where occupants who live in an area in which affordable and healthy foods are not in close proximity or readily available. An article written by Nadine L. Camp, a nurse practitioner at Children’s National Medical Center stated that food insecurities have been on the rise in the United States with a prevalence within at least 15% of households and around 20% of households with children

M., Smith, S., Davis, J., & Null, D. B. (2016). The Prevalence of Food Security and Insecurity Among Illinois University Students. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 48(6). doi:10.1016/j.jneb.2016.03.013

Poverty in the us is a socioeconomic dilemma. It is regarding restricted social and economic assets. Obesity is involving poverty and can also be linked to disparities in entry to healthful meals.() introduced sugars and delivered fat are a

By definition, households that are viewed as food secure are able to enjoy a variety of foods without having any sort of limit, thus proceed to have an active and healthy lifestyle (Gregory & Coleman-Jensen, 2017, 5). Those who are food secure have no worries of when their next meal will be. In contrast, food insecurity is the lack of access to the basic necessity of food due to having low availability of money and other resources. This issue is also affecting many people today in America. Food insecurity is currently affecting 21% of families in the United States (Shankar, Rainjade, Deborah, 2017, 135).