Food insecurity is one of the most overlooked issues that college students debate. Although a large percentage of students experience some level of food insecurity, it is an issue that many people keep to themselves out of shame. It is also an issue that is overlooked because people who do not experience food insecurity are not aware of its existence. For example, in our section, half the class have not heard of the term food insecurity until it was in contention for a group project. Because of the low number of students who knew about this issue, we saw it as an indication that it is a problem that has been neglected. This means that there needs to be more of an effort to inform all students about this problem because that is the only way …show more content…
Just in our group, a few people have a variety of different stories about how they or some of their friends have had experienced food insecurity. In one of our stories, we discussed how an individual consumed chips and instant noodles for a week because they could not afford a healthy meal. Another student explained that their friend missed classes to go to the food bank because they were scared that the food bank was going to run out of what they needed by the time they were done with their classes. In other words, food insecurity can cause mental, academic, and physical obstacles that prevent us from being productive students and healthy people. School and life are stressful things that college students have to deal with on a daily basis, and worrying about what you are going to eat or if you are going to eat that day should not be an issue. Our group aims to suggest ideas about how some of these issues can be dealt …show more content…
So we had to ask ourselves, how could we change this? We believe that one way we can make an impact is by getting Gaucho FYI to talk about food insecurity. Currently, Gaucho FYI is a mandatory event that makes students see two online presentations about the party and drug scene on campus and they must also come in for one in person presentation. Our group would like to collaborate with the people who are in charge of Gaucho FYI and include food insecurity in their in-person presentation. Ideally, we would want presenters to dedicate twenty minutes of that presentation to talking about food insecurity. The presentation would start by informing everybody what food insecurity is, but most importantly, they would talk about the available options found on campus. For example, some of the resources we want them to talk about is Calfresh, Health and Wellbeing Through Food, Nutrition and Basic Skills Program and AS Food Bank. Our group decided that the essential aid that we need to stress is people signing up for Calfresh; this is because we believe that Calfresh is better financed than other programs. First and foremost, Calfresh gives students debit cards that they can use to purchase food, which is the most critical thing to fix. In Gaucho FYI the presenters would explain that Calfresh is a federal program that aims to increase student’s food budgets. Calfresh does this by giving students a
As human beings we long for a connection with other human beings and hope that the connection is positive and helps us overcome our fears and struggles. A very first step to connect with one another is to overcome the anxiety about our self-shame and start daring greatly.
There are several programs in the Muncie area that assist those who are dealing with food insecurity. Some of these programs are: Indiana school breakfast and lunch program, Second Harvest Food bank and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program. These three programs help those who suffer from food insecurity but do so in different ways.
At the end, many people may not recognize this problem and maybe the hunger problem that the United States faces may not be as dramatic as in comparison to other countries, but this is only another reason to find and create solutions to stop hunger worldwide; It’s time to educate ourselves about the causes of hunger in America.
British Columbia (BC) is a wealthy province that provides a variety of publicly funded services to its residents, however, from 2011 to 2012 almost 1.1 million British Columbians and 4.9 percent of Canadian children were affected by food insecurity (Rideout & Kotasky, 2014, Statistics Canada, 2015). Food insecurity goes beyond not having enough to eat but also has an impact on health equity and social justice. “Children experiencing food insecurity have poorer school performance, and having not learned healthy eating habits in childhood; they face additional challenges of healthy living as adults” (Rideout & Kotasky, 2014).
Hunger is a very important issue in the United States. The film “Place at the table” addresses to this problem through the stories of American people and families who have to face the struggle with hunger on the daily basis. It is hard to believe that such a prosperous country like United States has such an issue, but the statistics provided by U.S. Department of Agriculture tells us the horrifying truth that one in every six Americans does not have enough food to eat. That is approximately fifty million people. The government and majority of US people are in denial of this problem, because they are simply ashamed to acknowledge it. Hunger can be next door in your neighborhood, but nobody knows about it, because people afraid to talk about it.
The United States Department of Agriculture defines food unsecurity as the availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food, or the ability to acquire such food, is limited or uncertain for a household. Food insecurity also does not always mean that the household has nothing to eat. More simply stated it is the struggle to provide nutritional food for ones family and/or self. The people that suffer from food insecurity are not all living below the poverty line. In 2012 49.0 million people were considered food insecure in the United States of those 46.5 million were in poverty (Hunger & Poverty Statistics, 2012). For some individual’s food insecurity is only a temporary situation for others it maybe for extended period. Food insecurity due temporary situation such as unemployment, divorce, major medical or illness can be become more long term. The vast majority of these are families with children.
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, increase in housing costs, unemployment, and inflation of the cost of food. These factors have caused food banks to see a change in the groups of people needing assistance. Doug O’Brien, director of public policy and research at Chicago-based Second Harvest says “’we’ve seen a real shift in who we serve. A decade ago, it was almost always homeless, single men and chronic substance abusers. Now we have children and working families at soup kitchens’” (Koch). These families that are feeling the effects of food insecurity will not be only ones affected by it, but all of America. Studies have shown that there is a link between food security, performance in the classroom, and obesity. If this issue is not faced head on, America will have a generation of children not fully prepared for the workforce and high health insurance rates due to obesity health issues.
Food insecurity can be “broadly defined as having limited access to adequate food” (Nguyen, Shuval, Bertmann, & Yaroch, 2015). While one might think that low income individuals who do not know where their next meal is coming from would be thin or underweight, many of those facing food insecurity instead struggle with obesity. This paradox may be a result of the very programs implemented to combat food insecurity in low income families. SNAP stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a federal assistance program that gives money to households for food based on income and need. According to a study done by the USDA, “SNAP participants were more likely than income-eligible and higher income nonparticipants to be obese,” with SNAP participants being 40 percent more likely to be obese (2015). The problem is that even though SNAP provides resources to food insecure individuals, the food being provided is not nutritious and is thus contributing to the high rates of obesity in SNAP participants. Healthcare costs and mortality increase as more individuals become obese. Preventing these problems from happening by implementing nutrition education will increase SNAP participants’ health overall and bring down their healthcare costs.
Although we, as college students, cannot put a stop to this detrimental issue ourselves, we can assist in ceasing the starvation in our local communities. We could conduct fundraisers for struggling families, and place food drives on campus and outside our local grocery stores. As well as fundraisers, we can make sure that more people are aware of how serious this matter is. Hunger is not a selective factor; it is bound to happen to anyone of us. Therefore, we, as a whole, should make an effort to help others as they go through this obstacle because we would want someone to do the same for us or our loved
Poverty is regarded as the major cause of food insecurity. A household food security depends on access to food. America has access to good healthy food. However, a family too poor to buy them do not enjoy food security. Rosenbaum and Neuberger (2005) report that each year the number of people using government food assistance programs grows. “Food stamps are targeted to those with the greatest need for help in purchasing food… [and] helps to lessen the extent and severity of poverty (Rosenbaum and Neuberger 2005)”.
Hunger is a big complication for economically impoverished people because without money no food can be bought. “Estacado High School principal Sam Ayers recalls getting regular visits an average of two days a week from a hungry student” (Gulick 1). Being hungry can cause the loss of concentration at school and make your grades drop. Gulick explains how concentration is lost by the hungry kids “Regardless of age, if you are hungry, it is hard to concentrate on the teaching and learning going on in the classroom” (1). Less concentration causes lower grades for the economically handicapped students says Gulicks report from school districts ”It follows that districts and campuses with higher percentages of economically deprived students are more likely to have lower test scores” (5). The student’s grades are low because buying books and going to the library is an extra expense. Because the books are an extra expense...
In the year 2015, around 40 million U.S. citizens were food insecure (Randall para. 3). Food insecurity can be defined in paragraph 3 by “[having] difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources. This 12.7% of American citizens also contains another group - children. Aged 10-17, 6.8 million adolescents struggle with a food insecurity. There have been several years of cuts to the social programs designed to help these people, along with the Great Recession continuing to leave an impact on the U.S. economy (para. 6). Under the Obama administration, $8.6 billion was cut from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps. From 1993-2001 under the Clinton administration, former President Bill Clinton’s administration “gutted the welfare system” (para. 15). Because of these budget cuts, the families who rely on food assistance from the government have been allotted less throughout the years. From a sociological perspective, the concepts of sociological imagination, class stratification, and social location are in effect when it comes to child hunger in the United States. Being hungry is an issue larger than any one individual can control.
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.
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.
There are those that believe our planet has reached its maximum capacity to sustain humanity and we need to reduce our population to rectify it. It is also said that our planet is well capable of providing both the nutrition and caloric needs for humanity, both now and into the future as well. Regardless of where one’s opinion of the facts fall between these two arguments, global food security is not where it should be. Uneven development could be argued to be a cause of this. But it is not the only issue affecting the planet.