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Solutions to poverty and hunger
Child hunger in america
Essays on child hunger
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According to No Kid Hungry, “1 out of 5 children go to school every day hungry.” This issue of childhood hunger in America is an issue that needs to be more addressed than it is. Sure, there is a lot one can do through organizations. There is donating, volunteering, and just talking about it, but not enough people are doing it. It is not enough to try and decrease the amount of children that are going hungry. It is not enough to help these families who cannot feed their children. It is not enough to end hunger. We maybe be able to stop it, and the answer may be looking towards school.
How, in a country full of 318.9 million people, are there 16 million children that are not getting the food they need? It is crazy to think about it possibly even being your son’s or daughter’s friend. “1 in 7 people struggle to get enough to eat,” the organization, Feeding America, claims. The main questions we need to ask when assessing this is how, why, and what can we do? So, how? Approximately 46.7 million people are in poverty, and that includes 15.5 million children. If a family is in poverty, that normally means they are going hungry. Why? The reasons can be endless, it could be
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How are there so many children that do not have enough food to fit their needs? The answer is poverty; the families in that are impoverished specifically. Why is this? Why is there poverty at all? There are too many reasons that people go into poverty to even comprehend, but one main reason that families struggle to feed their children is when parents are unemployed somehow. What could we do? There is much we can do, but more things we should is get schools more involved. Schools could offer classes to help children, offer more free opportunities for food, and possibly start a support group for these kids. Schools could help. Schools can help. The first step, is changing all the “could’s” to
In Anna Quindlen’s essay, “School’s Out for Summer” she identifies a more unknown or even suppressed problem within America; child hunger. Throughout this essay her use of resources and information gives readers insight into a problem maybe they hadn’t known existed here in America. Quindlen gives many great facts and really gives a reality check that this is a problem that needs to be stopped. “That’s right. In
Child hunger is a major struggle for many families. The article “School's Out for the Summer”, by Anna quindlen explains when school is let out for the summer there is less food for the kids who need it. The problem is we don’t recognize that this is happening within our country.
The United States is known as the wealthiest country in the world. But, there are many people that can't afford to buy food for their families, many are also homeless. “While hunger affects people of all ages, it's particularly devastating for children even short-term episodes of hunger can cause lasting damage."(“Child Nutrition Programs") Child hunger in the United States is caused by poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and food shortage; however there are many solutions to this problem like FRAC strategies, food banks, summer feeding programs, and backpack feeding programs.
Of those, 46.5 million were in poverty (Hunger & Poverty Statistics, 2012). For some individuals’s food insecurity is only a temporary situation, for others it may be for an extended period. Food insecurity due to temporary situations such as unemployment, divorce, major medical or illness can become more long term. The vast majority of these are families with children. The Faces of Food Insecurity Food insecurity does not discriminate; it reaches many segments of society (Whitney, DeBruyne, Pinna, & Rolfes, 2007).
In most cases, when we think of the term, “ hungry children”, we think of third-world countries; We don’t think about the millions of children suffering in the prosperous nation of America. Anna Quindlen identifies the problem, that in America, a small but significant minority of children are starving; and she’s questioning whether to have year-round school to help feed them. Anna provides sufficient and effective evidence to help support her claim: She announced that school helps low-income families get their child at least one quality meal.
Gundersen, Waxman, Engelhard, and Brown (2010) found in their study that 50 million people (including 17 million children) were food insecure in 2010. Poverty and food insecurity affects the lives of billions of people worldwide and millions of people in the United States. More than two billion pe...
Food insecurity is an issue faced by millions of Americans every day, and the biggest group affected by this is working families with children. Food insecurity is so big that the United States government has now recognized it and provided a definition for it. The United States government has defined food insecurity as “a household level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food” (USDA.gov). Food banks and anti-hunger advocates agree that some of the causes of food insecurity are stagnant wages, increases in housing costs, unemployment, and inflation in the cost of food. These factors have caused food banks to see a change in the groups of people needing assistance.
Imagine coming home as a single parent to your two small children. Their eyes are dull, their ribs are highly noticeable under their old shirts and they ask, “Did you bring us home anything to eat?” You can almost feel your heart being ripped apart as their little faces shine with hope, thinking maybe you finally brought some food home. Unfortunately, you have nothing to give them. Across the globe, people are living in situations much like I mentioned. They have leaky roofs, old clothes and little to no food. Children come home and search their cupboards only to find them bare. Then there are the kids who come home to find their cupboards chock full of unhealthy foods such as chips, sweets and processed goods. Some of these impoverished places are known as food deserts. Together, we can feed the hungry and give them the nourishment they need.
Child hunger is a complex and multidimensional problem. Therefore, it is often difficult for policymakers to develop plans on how to eradicate this issue. It is important to keep in mind that despite challenges, one solution will not be effective, but instead, a variety of resources will be needed in order to ameliorate child hunger.
Imagine would it be like waking up each morning, unaware of where the next meal will come from. One in six kids face hunger every day in the United States. According to the US Department of Agriculture, over 13 million kids under eighteen years of age live in homes with families who do not regularly have enough food to eat (¨Kids in America¨). There is an overwhelmingly high number of hungry children living in all communities around the country, including Anderson, and something has to be done to fix this problem.
In the United States of America, the richest nation in the world, one in six Americans do not have enough food to eat. Have you ever wondered why there are so many food banks and food pantries throughout the country? They are not simply, as you might think, able to offer emergency food assistance. Indeed, they are the main sources of food for millions of food-insecure Americans. Food insecurity, the state of not having sufficient quantity of affordable and nutritious food, is very widespread and common in America.
We have hit an all time high in people not knowing where their next meal is coming from or if they are even getting a next meal. And those of us who are lucky enough to know we have food to eat sometimes do not know what the risks are of the meal. We all should learn what those risks are, how they are affecting us as individuals and as a country and should be aware of what we can do together to reduce those risks.
The social conditions in which homeless youth find themselves, may result in absence of or poor access to nutritious food. This can be defined as food insecurity, where an individual has the inability to consume an adequate diet (Health Canada, 2012). For the youth living on streets, education becomes an obstacle, which may lead to unstable work, and therefore inconsistent income. They have to settle with low value jobs to earn just enough to feed themselves on a daily basis – the hand-to-mouth concept. Therefore, there are very limited options that the homeless youth are left with when it comes to food. When buying food, they tend to choose the cheaper alternative foods which are usually unhealthy and have little to no nutritional value to the body. Examples of these kinds of food include pizza, burgers, or perishable food items that are ready-to-eat (Dachner & Tarasuk, 2002). From our everyday experience, one can say that too much unhealthy foods can cause long-term health issues, ranging from diabetes to heart disease. Eventually, the immune system weakens, and serious complications may occur for the individual. It may be difficult for the homeless youth to access any health care services; so many times the symptoms for these diseases can go undiagnosed. At times, the homeless youth tend to go extending periods of time without food, resulting in intense hunger. Hunger is the consequence of food insecurity. It is the resulting feeling of discomfort, weakness, illness and pain – all of which play a great role on the health of youth (Jovanovic, Lecture 9). Though free food is available through charitable food programs such as food banks, they may not be accessible and travelling may not be an option, especially if they suffer fro...
Food insecurity and poor nutrition is an alarmingly large problem for low income families, especially in developing countries. Many strategies exist to fight this problem, although not many of these address all the factors contributing to it along with all the possible solutions to solve it. In many cases, multiple strategies must correlate and work together so that all the determinants of this issue are addressed and can fight food insecurity from different angles. This essay will discuss the significance of the problem, a range of possible strategies to solve the problem, and go into detail on a select few that will correlate and work together to solve different factors of food insecurity and poor nutrition.
It goes without saying that, around the United States, and also around the World, there are hunger problems. One crucial area is with school age children. Nutritious foods in the right amounts are essential for everyone, but particularly for children. In early childhood, adequate nutrition can ensure healthy growth, proper organ formation and function, a strong immune system, and neurological and cognitive development. Nutrition also has increasingly been recognized as a basic pillar for social and economic development. Well-nourished children can learn new skills, think critically and contribute to society.