Solutions To Food Insecurity

When talking about hunger many people imagine a third world country with underweight, malnourished children, but hunger isn't always malnourishment or being severely underweight. In fact a hunger is here in the United States and

The documentary A Place at the Table defines someone who is food insecure as someone who does not know where their next meal is coming from, they have no idea how to manage, find, or afford food. Food insecurity can also mean someone has a lack of nutritious food. There are two types of food insecurity, food insecurity with hunger and food insecurity without hunger. Food insecurity with hunger is when someone goes a period of time without any food, while food insecurity without hunger is when someone has food to eat

The final proposed solution to food insecurity is to solve the problem of inequality. Janet Poppendieck, author of Want Amid Plenty: From Hunger to Inequality, brings attentions to the amount of food waste in America to make the point "there is no shortage of food here, and everybody knows it. In fact, for much of this country, national agricultural policy has been preoccupied with surplus." (Poppendieck 572) Poppendieck later quotes Dan Glickman, Agricultural secretary at the 1997 National summit on Food Recovery and Gleaning, who states "There is simply no excuse for hunger in the most agriculturally abundant country in the world." (Poppendieck 573) Hunger cannot be solved by simply giving the hungry free food, that only continues the cycle of hunger. Poppendieck believes that by solving the issue of inequality the issue of hunger will be solved as well. It is clear that the distribution of resources if uneven, but what does that mean for those with less? In the article Economic Inequality, Food Insecurity, and Erosion of Equality of Capabilities in the United States it states that "Because of increasing economic inequality in the united states, growing segments the U.S. economy have become more food insecure and obese, eating unhealthy food for survival." (Elmes 2) There's no doubt that healthy food is more expensive than processed foods so often times there are no fresh healthy foods in areas of high poverty. Elmes later states "a growing number of low-income people and their families in the united states face unequal access to healthy, affordable food." (Elmes 4) Elmes later says "access to nutritious food in the united states is treated not as a right but a privilege for those with sufficient purchasing power to buy good food." (Elmes 7) Personally, I agree with Poppendieck and Elmes that in order to solve food insecurity the issue of