Food Distribution And Establishing Food Security For The Citizens Of The Nation

Fortunately there are programs that assist families in crisis and can help to feed the children of the United States; however the number of hungry children is growing. Child hunger in the United States has been described as an increasingly complex problem and has been called the “silent epidemic.” (Goldstein, 2009)

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers food assistance programs that help provide food for low to no income families. It is their goal to increase food security and reduce hunger by increasing access to food, a healthful diet, and nutrition education for low-income Americans (Caswell, 2013, para. 1). Some of the current nutrition assistance programs include “the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)”(Caswell, 2013, para. 1). SNAP will be the primary nutrition assistance program of the paper at hand. No matter how morally good it is to try to help reduce hunger and increase food security within the United States, there are still many questions regarding issues with SNAP. This paper will be discussing why there is such a strong support for the program, how it helps the United States as a whole, problems with the program, and why some people are against SNAP.

After reading the extensive “The New Face of Hunger” (Tracie McMillan), my eyes became more open to the overall issue of hunger, faced by many people today. In a few words, I was absolutely shocked by the true meaning and examples provided of what exactly food insecurity is. Honestly speaking, when I hear the word “hunger” I think of a human who has no food, living on the streets. “The New Face of hunger” brought to my attention that food insecurity is much more than simply having no food. In fact, “In 2006 the U.S. government replaced “hunger” with the term “food insecure” to describe any household where, sometime during the previous year, people didn’t have enough food to eat” (The New Face of Hunger). Not only was I able to see the harsh

Events such as the Poor People’s March in Washington D.C., the airing of “Hunger in America” on CBS, and the National Nutrition Survey of 1967 all brought widespread attention to the issue of poverty, hungry, poor nutrition trends, and lack of healthy food resources for pregnant women, mothers, infants, and children in low income households and communities through heavy media coverage in the 1960s. With these issues heavily publicized by media outlets around the country, citizens now had a bird’s eye view of impoverished women and children with scarce options to effectively alleviate hunger in their households on a consistent basis, let alone have consistent access to healthy foods. Society often

The United States faces many social problems. One of these problems is child hunger. It has sociological origins and challenges for government and citizens alike.

It has become impossible for low-income families to provide healthy meals for their families. Government, Farm policies and the food industry itself are main reasons as to why the cost of healthy foods has become harder for American families, especially low-income families, to provide the healthy foods needed to fight the obesity epidemic. With low- income families being the main focus point on the problem of

It was difficult to read that countless millions of federal dollars and many of our country's most successful efforts to halt the spread of childhood hunger and starvation have recently been withdrawn. And as a result, this problem of childhood hunger is not getting better but is actually getting worse. The most recent estimates compiled by the USDA in 1999 indicate that 36.2 million Americans live in food-insecure households, which means that their access to adequate and safe food is limited or uncertain. This too is very disturbing information.

Hunger in America is very important and dangerous. Hunger means that people are in need of

Malnourishment is no longer an issue seen only in the indigent population and developing countries. Many Americans are also plagued with this issue, largely due to unhealthy food choices. Providing a multidisciplinary approach to public nutrition

In Janet Poppendieck's “Want Amid Plenty: From Hunger To Inequality” she argues that America puts excessive focus upon hunger issues among the poor when there are many other important issues that go unnoticed. Poppendieck believes that it is time to find a way to shift the discourse from undernutrition to unfairness, from hunger to inequality. In today's society, there are many food banks, food drives, soup kitchens, etc. Food is extremely abundant in America, therefore Poppendieck's statement is proven true when she states that there is too much focus on hunger. Throughout this text, she strongly supports her claims about hunger, equality, and poverty in general.

We live in a nation where a large percentage of its inhabitants suffer from economic hardship and are left with no other option but to pick and choose between certain necessities over other fundamental needs due to a lack of financial resources. Many of these people are forced into having to choose between taking their life-saving medications and being able to eat for that day, while others simply have no choice at all. These people simply have no other choice but to go

It is also clear that there is evidence that shows a great need in improving people of low-socioeconomic status health because the government has been making efforts. However, what have not been addressed are the barriers that people in low-income communities still face even with government resources. Furthermore, it is also clear that the government saw the importance of making sure that low income families had access to health care when they created Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. While access to health care is also a very important piece to a healthy lifestyle, it also becomes counterproductive when people still continue to have a poor diet and end up having to seek medical help at some point. Giving people the chance to have a better nutrition would also help decrease the number of doctor visits for those who do seek medical attention, and for those who don’t seek medical attention it would at least keep them

Information is readily available at the feedingamerica.org website. Hunger in America 2014 reveals that each year, 46.5 million unduplicated individuals receive charitable food assistance through the Feeding America network. This translates to an estimated 1 in 7 Americans or 15.5 million households served by the network each year. In a further breakdown of the statistic, 58,000 food programs reach our Americans 389 Million times a year. 55% are 18 to 59 years old and 17% are 60 and above. That sadly means only16% of all American homes are food secure (Weinfield4). According to the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, food secure is defined as the existence of the necessary conditions for human beings to have physical and economic access, in socially acceptable ways, to food that is safe, nutritious and in keeping with their cultural preferences, so as to meet their dietary needs and live productive and healthy lives. The main way food security is even possible is 79% of American homes have to purchase inexpensive unhealthy food to feed their families. Due to unhealthy foods we have obesity, high blood pressure, and other health issues. Speaking of families, 89% of households with children are food insecure. Furthermore, 20% of Feeding America households have a member who has served in the US military. Should you have to choose between eating or

The United States prides itself on its freedoms and the many rights it guarantees to its citizens. A person has the right to religious freedom, to a trial by jury, to free speech, to free expression – but what about the right to healthful food? At this point, no right in the United States explicitly guarantees citizens access to nutritious, affordable food. A possible reason for this is that guaranteeing equal access to food across the nation is a daunting task. How does one even begin to accomplish such a goal? But despite its difficulty, this is an end to which the nation must work. It is too important an opportunity to miss because of indolence. Access to healthful, affordable food should be a right of citizenship in the United States because the nation recognizes such access as a basic human right and because such access is arguably a more important right than many that we currently enjoy. While practically, realizing this goal will be a challenge, the United States can do so by simply protecting other human rights, such as the

Food insecurity is one of the leading public health challenges in the United States today, since millions of people (children and adults) are food insecure because of insufficient money income and other socioeconomic and demographic factors. (Seligman, Kushel, & Laraia, 2010)