The Hunger Of The United States And The Influences It Has Over The People Affected

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.

Obesity rates in the US are rising due to food insecurity. One in six people in the U.S. are food insecure, while two-thirds of adults and one-third Americans are overweight or obese.14 Studies have found that wealthy districts have three times as many supermarkets compared to the poor.15 Kevin Conocannon of the USDA noted in an interview that people in poorer areas sometimes have narrower variety of food options.16 SNAP recipients face barriers to achieving nutritious diets due to lack of availability in their neighborhood. Healthy food often comes with higher costs, so most people with lower income result to eating foods with lower cost and higher calories. According to a 2009 report by the USDA, as many as 23.5 million Americans live more than one mile from a supermarket with limited access to a vehicle.17 Food Deserts are particularly prevalent in low-income communities.18

Tom Vilsack once said “The lack of access to proper nutrition is not only fueling obesity, it is leading to food insecurity and hunger among our children”. In recent years an unruly amount of homes were classified as food insecure, which is a government measurement for when all people are not able to access nutritious foods to help maintain a healthy lifestyle. Hunger is a worldwide problem and is also a crisis in the United States of America. Because of this concern the federal government configured a temporary solution for society, called Food Stamps or now known as SNAPS. SNAPS stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Although this program helps to alleviate America’s hunger problems, it also created a new problem in the

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.

Did you know in 2014, 48.1 million households in the United States were food insecure? (Feeding America, 2016) Additionally, household with children reported higher rates of food insecurity compared to households without children. According to new research, a great proportion of college students are suffering from food insecurity (Hughes et al., 2011; Patton-Lopez et al., 2014). According to the United States Department of Agriculture, food insecurity is defined by “the state of being without reliable access to sufficient quantity of affordable nutritious food” (2015). Since 2006, the USDA introduced new terms to categorize food insecurity ranges. Marginal food security is described as “anxiety over food sufficiency or shortage of food in the house. Little or no change in diet” (Gaines et al., n.d.). Low food security “reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet without reduced food intake. Very low food security “disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.”

Mornings without breakfast transition to nights without dinner, but the situation does not change for America's poor and needy. The face of food insecurity is often invisible. Behind lowered blinds and shut doors, poverty establishes itself in many styles and we attempt to defeat it in numerous ways. Food assistance programs are the primary tool the government uses to alleviate the hunger pangs and empty diets caused by nutrition insecurity. Increased government oversight is generally not helpful, but in the case of America's SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), such government management would probably do good. Right now, there is an array of problems facing

The first intervention program this paper will review is called SNAP-Education, or SNAP-Ed. Assisting food insecure families through this program provides education on how to eat nutritiously and could decrease obesity rates among SNAP participants. SNAP-Education “supports evidence-based nutrition education and obesity prevention interventions and projects for persons eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) through complementary direct

How have we been able to leave earth and break unbelievable feats that sound nearly impossible, and still not be able to do the simplest thing and feed our people with enough nutrition? Like the great saying goes, "We have the means, we have the capacity to eliminate hunger from the face of the Earth in our lifetime. We need only the will." Stated by our former president from the 1960s John F. Kennedy but although there were only three billion people during his time we still have the means to eliminate hunger in the United States with methods that scientist believe could feed the world of today that has above five and a half billion people or more which was stated by “feeding the worlds people”. But we should

Currently acting as one of the largest nutrition assistance programs administered by the United States Department of Agriculture, The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, works to distribute aid through the form of food stamps to needy, low-income families. The program’s original objective, as stated by the Food Stamp Act of 1977, was to “alleviate hunger and malnutrition…by increasing food purchasing power for all eligible households who apply for participation.” However, while in the short term SNAP allows poor families to make it through the week without facing the same levels of starvation akin to third-world countries, it does not adequately address the crux of the problem, that is, the inability for needy families to become self-sufficient without the need for governmental aid. In actuality, the SNAP initiative is unsuccessful at increasing the purchasing power of its applicants, and ultimately fails to aid its applicants in breaking out of impoverishment or achieving financial independence. To further highlight the inefficiencies of the SNAP program, it should be noted that often the benefits offered through the program fail to even fulfil its short-term purpose of keeping the poor fed and healthy. Despite the fact that more citizens are receiving food stamps than ever before,

A study conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that “the literature is inconclusive regarding whether SNAP alleviates hunger and malnutrition in low-income households.” (Montgomery, 2013) The (GAO) also stated that, “those who choose to participate in food assistance programs generally have greater difficulty meeting their food needs and tend to be more food insecure compared to others that are eligible for programs but do not participate.” (Montgomery, 2013) What this study suggests is that the economically burdensome Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is not only lucrative in cost, but fails to meet its objective of making a sizable impact on food insecurity and hunger issues within the United States most nutritionally insecure counties.

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)

Food insecurity was defined as the limited or uncertain availability of foods that are nutritionally adequate and safe, or limited or uncertain ability to obtain acceptable foods by socially acceptable means" (Siefert, K. (2008). White, Hispanic, Black, and Asian families in the United States are all faced with hunger. Thus, this may lead to many problems such as: poor nutrition, anxiety, developmental and psychosocial issues, depression, and chronic diseases. In effort to reducing hunger in America, federal food programs were constructed. "The Food and Nutrition Service of the USDA administers 15 domestic food and nutrition assistance programs" (WHY, 2008).

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, “An estimated 12.3 percent of American households were food insecure at least some time during the year in 2016. That is essentially unchanged from 12.7 percent in 2015.” Upon seeing the numbers from this study, the assumption can be made that the US government is doing little to remedy this issue. It is important to realize how widespread and severe food insecurity actually is in order to empathize with those who are suffering. Due to the increase in food-insecure families, the number of food banks in the United States has increased since 1980 from 200 to 400,000.

Even though the United States has one of the highest standards of living in the world, food insecurity has been prevalent among households. The 2008 Farm Bill transformed the Food Stamp Program into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which serves as the first guard against hunger and other food-related difficulties like food insecurity. Poor health among children, lower academic success, and depression have all been linked to food insecurity, therefore this policy sought to provide greater funds to stop this problem and all its harmful effects (Ratcliffe, C., McKernan, S., & Zhang, S., 2011,

“Hunger in America is complicated. It 's not just getting enough food, but getting the right food — and making the right choices” (Fessler). Connie Williamson has $600 in food stamps to feed her family of five for an entire month, she spends hours looking for deals and trying to stretch her dollar, yet she still finds that, "you can get leaner cuts of meat, but then they 're more expensive, or you can get fresh fruit every couple of days and blow half of your budget on fresh fruits and vegetables in a week 's time, easy” (Fessler). Mrs. Williamson admits that her kids do not look malnourished, in fact, they are a tad on the chubby side. The Williamson family is not alone, according to the CDC more than one-third of United States children are either overweight or obese. Because many of the people who are going hungry in the U.S. are also the most at risk for obesity, especially among children, the government has implemented laws in an effort to “make school lunches healthier and to expand access to subsidized meals for low-income children” (Fessler).