Last year almost 21 million kids nationwide are on free or reduced lunches. These kids eat their main meals at school and don’t get much while at home. During the summer this can be a disaster. While children in poverty are on long breaks, their families can’t afford to keep feeding them. This results in very non nutritional meals or no meals at all.
Did you know that 1 in 5 U.S. kids don’t get the food they need every day? This negatively impacts kids’ health and development, but this can also negatively impact them academically as well as emotionally and socially. No Kid Hungry is an organization that is making a difference regarding this problem. No Kid Hungry was founded by Billy Shore and his sister Debbie Shore in 1984. Since then, No Kid Hungry has raised and invested more than $528 million in the fight against hunger, and has won the support of national leaders in business, government, health and education, sports, and entertainment.
More than 16 million children are currently poor in the United States, and the poverty rate among American children is now 22%, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty fact sheet (NCCP 2105). Seven states have statistically significant higher household food insecurity rates than the U.S. national average of 14.7%. The top five states with the highest rate of food-insecure children under 18 are New Mexico (30.6%), the District of Columbia (30.0%), Arizona, Oregon, and Georgia. In addition, 20% or more of the child population in 37 states live in food-insecure households without consistent access to food (Raphel, s. (2014). There are one in five children living in poverty, and it is up to the states to feed these children.
In the year 2010, President Barack Obama and the First Lady Michelle Obama created the “Hunger-Free Kids Act” of 2010, which has created problems among students. In the year 2012, Michelle Obama also created the “Let’s Move Campaign” in order to reduce childhood obesity, and to give students access to healthy food in their school lunches. The “Hunger-Free Kids Act” means that no student should go hungry, and the “Let’s Move Campaign” makes the lunches healthier. Unfortunately, due to the quality and quantity of the meals that the students now receive, more kids are refusing to eat school lunches, and remain hungry during school hours. Not only does this outrage students, it also infuriates parents, teachers and staff as well.
Child Hunger in America Anna Quindlen, author of “School’s Out For Summer”, noticed there was a problem of child hunger in America. “If there was, we would know about it. We would read about it in the paper, we would see it on the news. And of course we would stop it. In America.”
In a country that wastes billions of pounds of food each year, it's almost shocking that anyone in America goes hungry. Yet every day, there are millions of children and adults who do not get the meals they need to thrive. We work to get nourishing food – from farmers, manufacturers, and retailers – to people in need. At the same time, we also seek to help the people we serve build a path to a brighter, food-secure future.
Feed the Children Imagine not knowing where your next meal is going to come from, or when you’re going to get it. That’s 1 in 5 children every day here in America (“Feed the Children,” Feed). That’s why Feed the Children deserves all the donations it can get. Many think this charity only provides food and fights child hunger but, Feed the Children has four main pillars.
“Approximately 900 million people in the world (1 in 9) do not have enough to eat in order to lead a healthy active life. The vast majority of the world’s hungry live in developing countries, Asia has the highest # of hungry people; Africa has the highest % of hungry people, Poor nutrition causes nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under 5 (7 million / year)” (The Data website- WFP.org) (Bio 399 PowerPoint Notes). In the United States, hunger looks different than it does in third world countries. In third world countries lack of food is a major contributor to malnutrition and is directly related to half the deaths of children under five years old.
Also the websites states the need for plenty of healthy food choices for children instead of cheaper, more calorie-packed alternatives (“Looking for Info?”). This is where federal food programs come into play and can make a difference in children’s lives. Children are dying day after day due to hunger and these food programs can stop that. These federal food programs can keep kids healthy and can make a difference in the future and life they will continue to
Introduction Even as one of the richest countries in the world, childhood hunger affects millions of kids across the United States. We all know that we need food to survive, but it is crucial that a child has more than enough food to just survive. Children between 4-10 are learning the most basics and most important ideas in school and social life, and without proper nutrition, these children can fall behind. Due to poor federally funded programs, local cities and communities must come together to make sure no child goes hungry. Proper nutrition is important for growing children for a healthy mental, social, and physical life; however, some children do not have access to a proper nutrition.
When I ventured out for my weekly clothes shopping spree [it’s hard to stay fashionable these days] in the Brisbane CBD just the other day, I was simply appalled by the number of gapless thighs and slightly convex bellies that graced the inside of my favourite Gucci store. The distasteful, healthy body size of these people shocked me to the core. It was a disastrous sight; majority of these people were shopping for a dress size 10! Size 6 is already above and beyond plus-size according to one of the Victoria’s Secret Angels – how much fatter are we going to allow ourselves to be?
Today life is on the fast track. People are always on the go and don’t have time to properly take care of themselves or their families. For most Americans, fast food and junk food are ready to grab for a snack or a quick dinner. They don’t slow down to think about how the foods they are eating effect their long term health. Fewer and fewer families take the time to prepare a nutritious meal and are passing down bad habits to their children.
If you’ve ever tried to follow nutrition news, then you know that recommendations change all the time. Foods that were once labeled as good for you can, for example, can suddenly be red flagged, and the food you were taught to avoid can all of a sudden be good for you. With all these mixed reviews going around, sticking to a healthy diet plan can be really challenging, which make sense right? It will also make you question the advice you’re receiving from experts, who, like the weather, appear to be changing their views regularly.
From a 2013 report done by UNICEF, it has shown that poverty rates rose from 30.1% in 2008 to 32.2% in 2010 and these figures are still rising. As of 2012, there are around 16.1 million children living in poverty and around 32% of us Americans living in food insecure homes are children. And in the report, we are ranked second in having one of the
“More than 20 percent of the children live in households without consistent access to food” (“15 Percent of All Children in Illinois”). This is a massive number and shows how much poverty there is in the U.S. When they suffer like this then the results don’t turn out as well. These children don’t know when their next meal would come and
