Food Insecurity Research Paper

Hunger in America can be hard to recognize. With how the economy is now, the effects of hunger are more severe. Many Americans are relying on food stamps and private organizations to help with this crisis. Millions in this nation are currently suffering from hunger in America. Half of that being from job loss. More than 12,000,000 children suffer from food insecure hunger because of limited or uncertain access to nutritious food. About 900,000 are hungry in the three- country Detroit metropolitan area alone. The hardest hits are the elderly, the unemployed, immigrants, and the mentally and physically impaired.

Food insecurity is the “state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food,” according to the Oxford Dictionary. It is a widespread problem on college campuses across the nation. While food insecurity only impacts 14% of households, 48% of college students claim to be food insecure. This problem disproportionately impacts first generation college students, students of color, and students who need financial aid, as noted by the National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness.

The term poverty is often used when referring to third world countries like Sudan or Darfur. Painful images of families suffering from malnutrition are often the first thing that comes to mind. Yet, sadly, the same struggle is happening here in the U.S. and even worse, it’s happening right here in Ohio. The Columbus Dispatch reports that three years ago the state of Ohio was 12th in the nation for food insecurity because there were so many people who did not know where their next meal would come from. Now Ohio is ranked 6th in the nation for food insecurity. Many blame the troubles with the unemployment on the state’s difficulty recovering from the recession. Ohio’s poverty rate is rising as the national rate is leveling off (Candisky, 2011). According to the Ohio Poverty Report, Ohio’s individual and family poverty rate are lower than the nation’s average. Urban areas have higher rates but there are still people living in poverty in rural areas. Rates vary between characteristics and circumstances. Many families who receive cash assistance do not usually get out of poverty (Larrick, 2014)

According to the USDA's Economic Research Service, the food-insecure are those families in America that at times didn't know whether they had or could find enough food to meet their needs. This was due to the lack of money or other resources, such as government assistance or community food banks (USDA ERS - Food Security in the U.S.). In it's most recent study, the Economic Research Service found that as of 2013, 80.5 percent of families in the U.S. were food secure, leavinf over 49 million people food-insecure (USDA ERS - Food Security in the U.S.). Of that 49 million, nearly 9 million children lived in food-insecure households (USDA ERS - Food Security in the U.S.).

In 2010, 17 million US households were food insecure. Of those households, approximately 5% reported very low food security (Coleman-Jensen, et. al., 2011). 21% of surveyed students in Hawaii were food insecure, while 15% had low food security and 6% had very low food security (Chaparro, et al., 2009). Oregon State University conducted its own study, which revealed 59% of students surveyed were food insecure at some point in 2013 (Patton-Lopez, 2014). Additionally, a study conducted at two community

According to Feeding America, statistics show that 43.1 million people in the United States in 2015 are in poverty, including 14.5 million children. When we think of that number of people in poverty we know that living in poverty directly relates to food insecurity. A slightly higher number of people are food

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.

America, known for its economic success, livestocks, and some of the world’s most fortunate people, still leaves us pondering with one question: who does such a vast amount of our population go hungry? Exploring hunger in parts of the United States, it all comes back to the same statistics: one-sixth of American’s don’t have enough to eat. 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. By whatever name, the number of people going hungry has grown dramatically in the U.S., increasing to 48 million by 2012. This is a fivefold jump since the late 1960s, including an increase of 57 percent since the late 1990s.

in addition, poverty can destroy family relationships and creates hostile environments and interactions.3 In 2000, 10.1 percent of Clayton County population lived below the poverty line, and in 2008, it has increased by 37.1 percent, which resulted in a current rate of 13.9 percent that are living below the poverty line.2 This rising trend of poverty in Clayton County is troubling and should be cause for great concerns for all parties

In this article, the authors analyzed different studies to investigate the causes of food insecurity. The studies concluded that physical and mental disabilities, stress, and financial problems all contribute to food insecurity. On the other hand, they found that education is not directly related to food instability.

So in my previous visual report about poverty I discussed the reasons why Poverty continues to grow and who that affects in our society. To begin off as I had stated in the visual report I live in an area of rural West Virginia where some of our small towns considered at 100% poverty levels. We were once an area thriving with the railroad and coalmines, our town was even once known as “The Heart of the Million Dollar Coalfields” is now mostly doctor’s offices and closed shops. Our town died with the coal mine closings and it will only continue to decline. Unfortunately poverty is an all too real thing for a lot of people in my area. I wanted to see if poverty is something that is seen in every state now, not just ours and to see as well who poverty really hit the hardest. The results I was able to fine were both surprising and informative. In my first line graph the information shows the number in millions in poverty as well as the poverty rates between 1959 and 2010. We see a large dip in the 1970’s after the great depression and higher numbers of people in poverty with the recession in 2010. The next question I had was who does poverty effect. This particular chart goes more into who and what ages that poverty hits the hardest. The information states that females head of households with no husbands, people under the age of 18, native born and whites are the hardest hit with poverty for our country. So, to follow up the previous

Food Insecurity is defined as access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life, and at a minimum includes the following: the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods and the assured ability to acquire personally acceptable foods in a socially acceptable way, qualified by their involuntariness and periodicity. Even though food insecurity affects everyone in the household, it may also affect them differently. Food insecurity mostly exists whenever food security is limited. Uncertain or limited availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods results chronic diseases psychological, and suicidal syndrome (Cook & Frank, 2008)

Food insecurity is only one problem in our food system, but it is a large one. Food insecurity is the state of being without access to nutritious food on a regular basis. This is different than hunger because someone can be food insecure without being hungry. In food deserts, people may have

One of most common problems in the world is food insecurity. It is not only happening in the third world countries, but it is also happening in the richest country in world, the USA. Food insecurity occurs when a family does not have enough food for all family members. The USDA confirms that 12.7 percent of U.S households are suffering from food insecurity. Food insecurity can be of two kinds: low food insecurity and very low food insecurity. In low insecurity households, family members just eat enough calories for their body, but their food is not nutritious. Low food insecurity makes up 7.4 percent of 12.7 of food insecurity households in the U.S, (USDA). The other type is very low food insecurity. The family members do not have enough food at specific times in the year because they lack money. This type makes up 4.9 percent out of 12.7 percent in the food insecurity, (USDA). Food insecurity most often happens in the households with children, especially households with children headed by a single man or a single woman. The USDA estimates that households with children headed by single woman have 31.6 percent chance of experiencing low food insecurity, and households with children headed by a single man have 21.7 percent chance for low food insecurity. The South has highest rate of food insecurity with 13.5 percent. The rate of food insecurity in the Northeast (10.8 percent) is lower than Midwest (12.2 percent). The rate of food insecurity according to states in the three

At the county level, poverty as defined by the US government is an immensely rural problem, with the most remote rural places at the greatest disadvantage. It would seem obvious that where and how an individual lives would matter in a person’s ability to rise above the poverty level. However, federal policy that addresses poverty is not specific to rural areas or metropolitan areas. Within the context of all policy, rural areas are unique and policy makers ought to consider this when addressing legislation to help citizens in these