Food Insecurity

Words: 1650
Pages: 7

Introduction Nationwide, 48.1 million people lived in food insecure homes in 2014 (Meisenheimer, 2016). This means that the people didn’t have access to nutritious food due to multiple factors encountered by the household. To further understand food insecurity, it is important to define meanings of food insecurity. The phrase of “food insecurity” is used by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to measure a household’s social and economic ability to access adequate foods (Meisenheimer,2016). This is just an example of how food insecurity is defined and within states the factors to the probable cause of food insecurity. Food pantries is a resource that supplements foods for the community and yet, federal nutrition programs alleviate …show more content…
Poor diets result in food insecurity and has been associated with health issues, higher rates of diabetes, stress or depression (Bruening et al. 2012). Food insecurity is related to poor mental health in families (Meisenheimer, 2016). It was reported that children of color will more likely experience food insecurity rather than white children, in other words the children will experience “negative effects due to poor nutrition on physical, mental and social-emotional development in early childhood” (Meisenheimer, 2016 …show more content…
5). The previous definition, can be considered a goal for community agencies that support those in need. To meet the goal objectives, need to be established. Acknowledging that the work cannot be done alone on either side is the beginning of change, “…burden of poverty, both service users and providers are essential participants in helping to develop solution…” (Jacobson et al., 2009). Coming together as a community and voicing the needs and finding common ground is meaningful (Jones,