Children's Healthy Pantry

If all of the American citizens were to picture a person without access to food, the majority of them would call up the image of the bony barefoot child in a third world country wearing nothing but rags and a sad expression that they saw featured in a Red Cross commercial. Unfortunately, the gruesome reality is that about 49.1 million citizens will have a completely different vision; one of themselves (Scharnberg). Take Roxann, (her last name is withheld for privacy purposes) a married mother of three living in Michigan. Her husband has a full time job with health care and because of that they just outside the income brackets required to qualify for financial assistance. And yet after paying bills and taxes each month they are left with a

Food insecurity in the U.S. is a significant issue in today’s society. Many people are trying to help by creating various programs and initiatives, but they do not all live up to their purpose. Some do though, like the Children’s Healthy Pantry, a non-profit organization run by its founder, Susan Morin, which has taken a stand in the battle against hunger by providing healthy snacks for hundreds of children.

What the problem is The Webster dictionary definition of food insecurity is “the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable nutritious food” (Webster dictionary). This means that a person or family is stuck living in the uncertain periods of time between when they got their last meal and when the next one will come. As they trudge through the unpredictability of their lives they also move in and out of the four stages of food insecurity. Those stages start with the household becoming anxious about its food supply, after that, they start to buy food with less quality and less of a variety. When even buying lower quality food is still too much, the adults

The most prominent program with a goal of feeding the hungry is SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps. SNAP has over 2860 households enrolled, and the idea behind this program is logical and should work, theoretically, however it is definitely lacking (Tranquillo). SNAP uses the Thrifty Food Plan as a basis for how much food each family will get. The Thrifty Food Plan states how much food a family needs per week to survive, but that is where issues begin to occur. According to the Thrifty Food Plan, a family of four is allowed two ounces of “all cheese” and slightly more than a half an ounce of frozen “entrees,” a week. Those numbers may not mean much alone, but if they were to be put into comparable terms, that’s about two slices of cheese and two thirds of a fish stick a week (Scharnberg). There’s no question about whether or not that is enough, but for the people who have no other way to provide themselves with food, that’s all they get. There are also many initiative programs being created, and even if they may not do what they are supposed to perfectly, there are definitely some benefits. The most dominant benefit of initiatives is that they create jobs, it’s as simple as that (lade). Although not all programs and initiatives work as effectively as they ideally