Food Insecurity and Hunger Essay ⋆ Essays on Controversial Topics ⋆ EssayEmpire

Food security is access by all people in a population at all times to a reliable supply of food from socially acceptable sources sufficient for an active and healthy life. In contrast, food insecurity is the involuntary shortage of food due to economic constraints. When this food shortage progresses to the point that physical symptoms are felt, hunger occurs. Since the 1990s, these terms have largely come to replace a focus on malnutrition, a physiological condition that can arise from both shortages of food and disease processes. Worldwide, population levels of food insecurity tend to be associated with gross domestic product; within the United States, ethnic minorities and families with children have higher levels of food insecurity.

Hunger and food insecurity were rediscovered in the United States during the 1960s as physicians supported by the Field Foundation visited poor populations and reported widespread nutritional problems previously assumed to exist only in developing countries. These problems became the targets of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Federal resources were directed to programs to assist low-income families with job training, nutrition, and health care needs. These programs highlighted social inequality, particularly that linked to racial discrimination. Due to the activities of such programs as the Food Stamp Program, Head Start, and the Women, Infants, and Children feeding program, the prevalence of frank malnutrition was reduced, but it was replaced with food insufficiency that is chronic or cyclic in many poor households.

In the 1980s in developing countries, the discussion of food insufficiency was redefined. Experts noted that “famine” and “malnutrition” were not the same as food insufficiency, but rather, a complex range of factors kept households from having access to sufficient food. The change in focus to factors regulating access has been instrumental in producing national and international efforts to increase access.

In 1996, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations convened the World Food Summit. This summit affirmed poverty as the major source of food insecurity and its eradication as a critical step in reducing food insecurity. Participants set a goal of reducing food insecurity by one half by 2015 and acknowledged three core concepts—food availability, food access, and food utilization—each a necessary but not sufficient condition for the next. Cross-cutting these concepts is a set of risks (e.g., conflict, climatic fluctuations, job loss, and epidemic disease) that can disrupt any of the three cores. A second summit in 2002, called to assess the reasons for poor progress toward the 2015 goal, cited a lack of will by the signing countries. However, critics cited the need for “food sovereignty,” the rights of poor countries to grow food for their own countries’ consumption, rather than for export through multinational corporations. These proceedings highlight the web of factors that regulate availability, access, and utilization of foods: land ownership and control, access to credit for agricultural inputs, and national policies regarding food exports.

At the same time as efforts focused on economic development as a means of ensuring food access, private efforts in the United States focused on food banking, soup kitchens, and other means of providing emergency food to the poor. The number of such programs has increased dramatically since demand spiked with the recession of the 1980s. Food banks were established to receive surplus food supplies, gleaned produce, and food donated through local and national food drives. The food banks supply a wide network of public and private food pantries and soup kitchens, staffed by volunteer organizations that distribute food directly to those in need. Analysts point out that such programs have allowed contributors to believe they are helping to solve the problem of hunger, while not directly addressing the complex circumstances (e.g., low-wage employment, mental illness and drug addiction, social stratification, declining government support for social programs) that lead to household food insufficiency.

Measurement of Food Insecurity

Food insecurity has several core experiential domains common across cultures. They include uncertainty and worry, inadequate quality, insufficient quantity, and social unacceptability. The cross-cultural comparability of these domains makes it possible to construct questionnaires to measure food insecurity that make sense cross-culturally. Reflecting these domains, the U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM) contains 18 questions that measure levels of food insecurity in the United States. Since 1995, the annual Current Population Survey and other government-sponsored surveys have included it.

The HFSSM module is based on ethnographic research that indicates that food insecurity is a process managed by households. “Belt-tightening” measures such as changing to low-cost foods and reducing food variety occur before more extreme measures occur, such as decreasing meal size or skipping meals. The steps in this management process serve as the basis for the behaviors and experiences assessed by items in the HFSSM module. These include worrying that food will run out, cutting the size of meals, and feeding children before feeding adults. Research shows that these behaviors and experiences occur in a predictable order as households manage their declining food availability.

Changes in the interpretation and labeling of the HFSSM results were introduced in 2006. They included eliminating the terms food insecurity and hunger. Instead, households are labeled as being food secure, having low food security, and having very low food security. The intent of these changes is to reduce the confusion of food security as an economic concept with hunger, a physiological phenomenon.

Consequences of Food Insecurity

The experience of chronic food insecurity and hunger appears to have long-term consequences for physical health. Data from a variety of studies suggest that children and women in food-insecure households are more likely to be obese than those in food-secure households. Because most data on food insecurity and obesity are collected at the same time, it is difficult to establish causation. However, several suggested potential mechanisms may explain this association of food insecurity and obesity. Eating patterns of food-insecure families appear to be more binge-like, with food deprivation leading to greater overeating when food supplies are adequate. Analyses of food costs suggest that energy-dense foods of refined grains, fats, and added sugars cost less than less-dense foods such as fruits and vegetables. Thus, consumption of energy-dense food in poor households as a cost-saving measure may lead to overconsumption of calories and obesity.

Other effects of food insecurity on physical health are more difficult to measure. Elderly persons in the United States report making choices between purchasing food and medications. Seasonal variation in food insecurity, particularly for the elderly, has also been linked to costs of heating and, to a lesser extent, cooling, suggesting that households must pay for heating and cooling utilities rather than food.

Mental and social health has also been linked to food insecurity. Children from food-insecure households have problems in school, including greater anxiety and irritability, more absences, difficulty in learning, and lower grades and test scores. They are also more likely to be hospitalized.

Bibliography:

Coates, Jennifer, Edward A. Frongillo, Beatrice Lorge Rogers, Patrick Webb, Parke E. Wilde, and Robert Houser. 2006. “Commonalities in the Experience of Household Food Insecurity across Cultures: What Measures Are Missing?” Journal of Nutrition 136:1438S-48S.
Drewnowski, Adam and Nicole Darmon. 2005. “Food Choices and Diet Costs: An Economic Analysis.” Journal of Nutrition 135:900-904.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2006. “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006.” Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Nord, Mark, Margaret Andrews, and Steven Carlson. 2006. Household Food Insecurity in the United States, 2005. Economic Research Report No. 29. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. Retrieved March 29, 2017 (https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/err29/29206_err29_002.pdf).
Panel to Review the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Measurement of Food Insecurity and Hunger. 2006. Food Insecurity and Hunger in the United States: An Assessment of the Measure, edited by G. S. Wunderlich and J. L. Norwood. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Poppendieck, Jane. 1998. Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement. New York: Penguin.
Sen, Amartya K. 1981. Poverty and Families: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford, England: Clarendon.

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