Analysis Of Food Insecurity: A Modern Day Plague

Food Insecurity: A Modern Day Plague How often does one think about when his/her next meal will be? If you are the average American, the answer will most likely be “in a couple of hours”; however, there is a good chance that you might also be one of the fifty million Americans that would most likely answer “I don’t know… whenever I can afford it, I guess.” Roughly every one in six Americans would have some sort of response like the one presented because that is how many are considered food insecure. This is obviously one of the most important social problems afflicting America in modern times, but what can be done about it? A Place at the Table displays three scenarios: Barbie, a struggling mother of two; Rosie, a fifth grader living meal

While their health falls partially on what they do extracurricularly, a majority of the responsibility falls on their family situation. In Barbie’s situation, she is an only mother of two working one job. Tremonica lives alone with only her mother. Rosie has the most complex family with seven members living in one trailer (yet only two are shown.) So what bonds these three stories together? They are all lacking some sort of patriarch (as far as the viewer is shown) and they are all living in “food deserts.” These areas are “parts of the country vapid of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthful whole foods, usually found in impoverished areas. This is largely due to a lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and healthy food providers” (American Nutrition Association [ANA], 2015). Food deserts seem to be the key issue here. Almost every child in Tremonica’s class has never seen a honeydew. If the family can barely afford food, moving to a place that is plentiful in food will never cross their minds. So what do the social paradigms say about social problems involving family? To start, functionalism believes that family is the root of one’s stability. Family can be seen as the anchor to a person’s balance in society. Men are seen as the provider for the household, while the women are the masters of the abode. If there is no two parent household (such as Barbie), there is no balance. If Barbie has to be

The whole reason A Place at the Table exists is because every single person documented in the movie cannot afford sustenance to survive or cannot afford to move out of the food desert to which they are confined. Seeing as poverty is the biggest social problem the United States faces, each theory has a blatant belief for poverty’s existence. Functionalists see wealth and poverty as natural phenomena, specifically poverty in this case. Barbie states that she grew up in poverty and is constantly striving for her children to have a better upbringing than she had. From a functionalist perspective, she sees wealth as something to earn, something she must constantly work towards to better herself and her children. Rosie has a similar feeling; she knows that this was the hand she was dealt, but wants to attend school as often as possible to gain a higher education and earn a job that has a higher pay than anyone in her family has. Another argument for functionalist theory is that if there was no poverty, then food drives and food banks (as seen in the documentary arranged by local churches) would have no purpose. To counter functionalism, conflict theorists argue that the gap between the wealthy and poor is created to cause conflict. This is the base on which conflict theory was founded; the bourgeoisie (the