Persuasive Essay About Food Bank

Many of us have attended school once in our life. And many of us have tasted the dreadful school lunches that are served. Various people believe that schools need to provide more food in a meal. Society has been conversing about the nutrious value in a school meal and they wonder if the meat in the lunches are real or completely fake “beef”. School lunches have become even more unacceptable and need to be re-thought for the health of the younger generations.

One in six children in the United States do not know when they will get their next meal. Children who are facing hunger struggle in school, are more likely to repeat a grade, have developmental concerns and have behavioral problems. The National School Lunch Program has brought meals to millions of children from food insecure families for free or reduced rates.

Around the globe there are many who are at a state of no access to food. Not only does this effect the homeless, but also those with a family and children. Because of their low income or environmental state and even poverty, not everyone has a fair chance of a proper nutrition. This is where the role of food banks comes into place as it limits these problems to these individuals. Through charitable events at school, I have participated in giving canned food items or food items that will not rot within a couple of years or months. Participating in these events not only gave me a ticket to partake in the well-being for others, but it also gave me a more understanding as to how many people are really impacted with hunger as well as other forms of their needs.

More than 44 million people in 2009 were identified as living in food insecurity, the USDA’s current term for going hungry (Imhoff 17). The government, nonprofits and other organizations have been drafting potential solutions for a while to solve world hunger, but the number of food insecure people is still exceptionally high and on the rise. The complete abolishment of it is presumably unattainable, but reducing it to a much smaller amount is certainly possible and a necessity. All American citizens are targets. One economic depression or catastrophic mishap may leave you in food insecurity and desperate need for help. So don't you wish our country has a well-functioning system able to support us all? The US’s main answer to food insecurity is the Farm Bill. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs(SNAP) is the major program contained in the bill. From 2008-2010, 72.3% of the farm bill and 53.1 billion dollars was dedicated to SNAP, and current enrollment in it is at the highest (Imhoff 52). Is SNAP the best solution to widespread hunger? Should the United States dedicate so much money in effort to it? “The current SNAP program is so deeply flawed, the United States should draft another “food stamp” policy and remove it from the Food Bill.

Would you like to have no decisions on the healthiness of your food, and being able to only eat fast food, fried foods, etc. Most people would say no and rightfully so, people should be able to have choices on the foods they want to eat whether it’s healthy, unhealthy, fast food, farm grown, we shouldn’t have only unhealthy foods for our choices of what we eat. In the film Food Inc. directed by Robert Kenner there is a part in the movie that talks about the food choices of consumers. A point that was talked about for a decent amount of time in this part was how healthier foods are more expensive than fast food. This stood out to me because it’s true it cost more to eat healthy than it does to just go through a drive through. This is outrageous it should be the opposite, we should have to spend more for fast food than healthy foods. While at most fast food places there are ways you can eat healthy food but it is still more expensive than just buying a cheeseburger or chicken nuggets. During this part of the film a family was talking and saying that they have to choose whether to eat healthier food or get there father/husbands medicine so he could work. A family has to choose between those to things and that is not fair to anyone that has to make that decision. The family wanted to have better food and to not always be eating fast food meals but they don’t really have a choice and that is heartbreaking to see.

How much of people’s paycheck should pay for other people’s food? Well let’s all face it, everyday working people aren’t only working to support themselves they are also supporting those on government support as well. Over nineteen percent of Americans are on what the government calls food stamps also known as EBT. Of these people a large amount of them lie on their application and don’t actually need this government support(J.B. Wogan). The people are able to do this because the government doesn't regulate what people do with their food stamps enough, nor do they do enough background research before allowing people to receive food stamps. In order to be sure that these people aren’t lying and cheating the system the government should implement

The Field Education Experience I chose Food bank/ Pantry, is a non-profit, charitable organization that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough food to avoid hunger. Food banks/ pantries are usually faith based operations. However, they can operate on a much larger scale, such as a warehouse (Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, Raleigh, NC.). The warehouse act as a storage that holds large quantities of food for smaller agencies. Some of the smaller agencies are churches, schools, food pantries, homeless shelters, also soup kitchens just to name a few (www.foodbankcenc.org).

When I was volunteering in the food bank, there were very few new faces, and the most of them were our “regular customers.” They would show up seven days a week, come by car and fetch the whole family’s ration, or all the family members would come to take their ration. It hard to imagine that an entire family has to live such miserable life in such a long period of time. While I am grateful to those benefactors and Samaritans for assuring the food banks had adequate food storage and donations, I realized that this is not a permanent solution for poverty, as evidenced by the same group of people repeatedly showing up every week. As a charity, food banks are not meant to eradicate poverty; instead, they should be considered as a complimentary social service aid the most, which most people neglect to remember.

It is safe to say the government has crippled the citizens of the United States, through economic based spending. Approximately 52.2 million (or 21.3 percent) people in the U.S. participated in major means-tested government assistance programs each month, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report. Participation rates were highest for Medicaid (15.3 percent) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the food stamp program (13.4 percent).In today's economic climate, millions of Americans find themselves struggling to make ends meet. Despite improvements in the job market and a housing bounce back, there are still many people who need help to stay afloat financially. In many ways, the America of today mirrors that of

Billions, that’s how much money is being spent every year for food stamps alone. Billions could be spent on college or getting people out of abusive relationships or saving us from the crippling debt that we as Americans are facing. Rather , we are buying unhealthy people pop , candy, and cigarettes.

Food banks provide prevailing economic need as a distribution outlet for the federal government (USDA), and national local food sources. Food banks serve and help create an infrastructure of member’s agencies, food panties that provide food directly to food insecure seniors and other food insecure populations, soup kitchens and relief organizations. Food banks networks provide food support for over 37 million Americans yearly including 14 million children and over 3 million older adults. As of 2015 there were over 15, 000 food pantries throughout the United States. The majority of seniors that use food banks receive some social assistance, over 41% lived alone, and over 22% of food bank recipients in food insecure senior households had sought help from food banks, soup kitchens, or other charitable agencies to feed themselves in the past year (AARP, 2014, p. 29-30).

Most of these food pantries are sponsored and supplied by local churches and community coalitions. A food pantry’s mission is to serve the local community food needs for residents who suffer from hunger and food insecurity within a specified area ("Food pantry," 2015, p. 1). A food bank is defined as a centralized storehouse or clearing house for millions of pounds of food or other products that are directly given to people in need of food free of charge (Food bank," 2015, p. 1) However, food banks and pantries are not the same, but they do share the same commitment to combat food insecurity. Food banks have become powerful advocates locally and nationally feeding and empowering the elderly. Food banks provide emergency food that become local food security, turning empty calories in nutritious foods, turning malnutrition & poor health into health and food literacy, and finally turning charity for the needy into empowered

Even if food cannot always be donated, it can still be recycled instead of just thrown in the dump. According to the USDA, “Americans waste enough food every day to fill a 90,000 seat football stadium” (USDA). If students donated and recycled waste it would decrease that number and it would reduce the amount of waste in landfills because they would be donating and recycling the food to food banks. The food that the schools donate would go to the needy. Also, according to David Seifman, writer for the New York Post, New York spends way too much money on food waste saying they spend “more than three hundred million dollars to ship ten thousand, 800 tons of trash every day to landfills” (Seifman). If every school donated and recycled food rather than throw it away, cities like New York wouldn't have to spend as much money and they would also save the amount of trash going into landfills because if people donate and recycle, food isn't going into the trash. Lastly, Too much food is wasted. According to CNN, “40% of food goes to waste” (Beasley). If schools would donate and recycle, that would decrease the amount of food that goes to waste because the schools wouldn't be throwing food away and it would decrease the amount of food waste in landfills. Therefore, donating and recycling food will be beneficial in reducing

Poverty is a social problem that affects everyone on an economic, political and social level. The problem of human suffering is one that we must combat strategically on many levels. According to the United Nations, “in 2015 more than one billion people around the world live in a state of poverty, lacking the basic goods food, clothing, and shelter that humans need to survive” (“Poverty”). There are a great number of areas that keep individuals poor, such as lack of resources, inadequate income, lack of education, language barriers and the high cost of child care. Being able to work and provide basic necessities is our basic human right and we should not be deprived of these basic human rights that individuals need in order to live satisfying lives. The government has the responsibility of helping individuals in need with the economic assistance to feed, clothe, house, educate, provide health care and decent wages for every individual. They should ensure that individuals have access to resources that will help them build a better future. There are several ways that we can work together to strategically find solutions to end inequality among the poor individuals in our society.

The definition and viewing of poverty is a topic that many find highly debatable and close to the heart. Poverty is what most people see as not having enough to live on, and struggling to get anything more. Race and location are often looked at in conjunction to poverty. The author of the first article, McMillian, focuses on redefining poverty to a general audience by limiting her word choice and choosing a more personal appeal to the intended audience. In the other article, the authors Fram, Miller-Cribbs, and Van Horn write for an expert audience of social workers to frame the cause of achievement gap in U.S. southern schools by increasing their credibility through specialized language and resources. By examining the specialized language