Food security and Insecurity in USA

Introduction
Hunger and the issue of food security vs. food insecurity represent two distinct issues in America. Hunger is the physical outcome of not having access to food. Food security refers to both the financial and social conditions that limit or restrict access to food for individuals or for a population overall (USDA, 2018). Food insecurity refers to the reduced quality or quantity of food available for all—i.e., quality food scarcity or disrupted diet patterns would qualify as food insecurity (USDA, 2018). The latter are typically due to economic situations, such as personal poverty. As Coleman-Jensen, Rabbit, Gregory and Singh (2018) show, approximately 1 in 8 Americans are food insecure, or roughly 40 million Americans, about a quarter of whom are children. The primary outcome of food insecurity is hunger at the individual level, which weakens one’s physiological condition. Thus, food insecurity is viewed as “a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food” (USDA, 2018). When households lack the money to acquire food for the whole household in a consistent manner, that household is said to be suffering from food insecurity. When a population suffers from food insecurity, that population is said to have a food security issue. In the U.S., there are many different geographical regions where populations are negatively impacted by food insecurity. This paper will discuss the issue of food security and insecurity in the U.S., by geography, show who is affected, and what can be done about it.
What Causes Food Insecurity?
While hunger is often a result of food insecurity, it is not the same thing: hunger refers to the physical discomfort that comes from not eating; food insecurity refers to the lack of financial or economic resources for acquiring food for oneself or one’s family consistently over time. One never knows if there will be food for all to eat, or when the next time the family can eat will be. The situation is precarious and thus insecure for the household.
Poverty is directly related to food insecurity, as it is believed that there is a direct correlation between poverty and food insecurity in the U.S. (Bhattacharya, Currie & Haider, 2004; Renwick, 2011). According to Renwick (2011), “official poverty rates are more highly correlated with the rate of food insecurity” (p. 12). This means that by mapping poverty rates across states in the U.S., one can obtain a sense of where food insecurity is most likely to occur.
Coleman-Jensen, Rabbit, Gregory and Singh (2016) note that “access to adequate food is limited by a lack of money and other resources” (p. 7). Even though there are food assistance programs offered by the USDA, which aim to increase food security, these programs are not always utilized, which is more than 12% of Americans annually suffer from food insecurity. This does not mean that they are going hungry, however. As Coleman-Jensen et al. (2016) show, the amount of food that is being consumed may not be diminished in these households. What is diminished, though, is the amount of quality food and access to quality food. Low-income and poverty level houses will use food stamps to buy cheap, pre-packaged food or junk food—food that is neither healthy nor wholesome and use these to fill out one’s diet. The result is poor diet and the risk of obesity. Thus, it is not uncommon to see people suffering from food insecurity also suffering from obesity. In fact Adams, Grummer-Strawn and Chavez (2003) have found just that among California women, where food insecurity has been associated with increased risk of obesity. As Voigt (2014) also shows by using records from the U.S. Census and State of Obesity: “the 10 poorest states by median income correlate strongly with the 10 states with the highest rates of obesity.” So while poverty may be causing food insecurity, it is not necessarily causing hunger. On the contrary, it is more likely to lead to obesity—and the geographical context of the U.S. shows this is true: the poorest states in America are also the fattest.
Food Insecurity by Region in the U.S.
A food desert is a part of the country that has poor access to nutritious, healthy and affordable food. These deserts often exist in some of the poorest parts of the country. To supplement diets, people in food deserts turn to junk food, which in turn increases their risk of becoming obese. The 10 poorest and most obese states in the U.S. are Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Alabama and South Carolina. However, income is not the only factor in determining health. Access to public recreation is also a factor—and in poor communities there is not going to be a great deal of access to public recreation, primarily because those parts of the country lack the funds from tax revenues to support public recreation maintenance or installation (Perdue, 2008).
Singh, Kogan and van Dyck (2008) found that in geographical terms, “the prevalence of childhood obesity varied substantially across geographic areas, with the Southcentral regions of the US having the highest prevalence (?18%) and the Mountain region the lowest prevalence (11.4%)” (p. 90). Geography is an important variable in predicting food insecurity because it not only will tell something about socioeconomic status but also about culture. Culture plays a large role in shaping how one spends resources on food and what food one spends resources on. It is possible to still have a healthy diet if one is using food stamps, however, culture influences choices and the choices that people in poverty make tend to be informed by cultures that do not consider the consequences of eating a poor diet. Culture and geography are as intertwined as socioeconomic status and geography.
As Voigt shows, nonetheless, socioeconomic status will ultimately determine the type of culture that a community cultivates, which in turn impacts food insecurity rates and health outcomes. “Socioeconomic status largely determines obesity: not having places to be more physically active, not having access to safe parks, living in places where fruits and vegetables are more expensive”—it all contributes to the level of food insecurity that a person or household may experience (Voigt, 2014). The less emphasis a community places on food security and health, the less likely it is to offer community members appropriate access to either.
The South is the most at risk for poverty and food insecurity: it is the poorest region in the U.S. and the most obese. The culture in the South does not embrace the concept of foods security and it does not have a great deal of funds to pay for high quality foods, such as all-organic food items, locally grown and produced foods, and so on. The poverty in the South is one of both socioeconomic background and of culture. The lack of health education, health literacy and income all plays a part in keeping food insecurity rates high in the South.
As Dinour, Bergen and Yeh (2007) show, those who suffer from food insecurity rely upon food stamps to fill the gaps in their food inconsistency. Those stamps are not being used, typically, to purchase wholesome and healthy foods, however. Instead, they are being used to buy whatever is cheap, affordable and pre-packaged. That in turn leads to poor diet. Coupled with a lack of exercise, as most people living in poverty are not going to be doing much recreation outside because of fears about crime and safety in their neighborhoods, the individuals suffering from food insecurity are likely to experience obesity as well. Thus, there is a direct correlation between poor neighborhoods in the U.S. and obesity. This has even been found among the older population, where they do not have access to walkable neighborhoods (Chung et al., 2012).
Food Insecurity and Race
The problem of race is also an issue in food insecurity especially in the U.S. and primarily in poorer regions such as the South and parts of the West. As Evans (2019) shows, race is a big factor in predicting food insecurity for African Americans: “Being mistreated at school, on the job, in health care and beyond, translates to lower wages and exclusion from society. When employers discriminate, people of color make lower wages than white people. When health-care providers discriminate, people cannot get the health care they need…which damages their prospects for economic security.” Racism has been embedded in the U.S. since the era of slavery and even after the Emancipation Proclamation and the passing of the 13th and 14th Amendments, racism has continued to be a problem—particularly in the South. Jim Crow laws were prominent into the 20th century and it was only with the Civil Rights Movement that oppression began to be eased, and yet that oppression continues in many new ways, primarily thanks to the criminal justice system, which has criminalized the use of marijuana and keeps it as a schedule 1 narcotic. Police thus have an excuse to arrest African Americans and put them in the prison industrial system—and once they are in that it is nearly impossible to ever get out of it, get a good job and a support a family.
Thus, there is a direct link too between racism and the rise of food insecurity in the South in the U.S. A high percentage of African Americans lives in the South. Atlanta, Georgia, for instance is one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the U.S. and it is predominantly a black city: the majority of the residents there are African-American and whites are in the minority (Anderson, 2018). Yet whites live in the best parts of the city and are in the most affluent class. African Americans tend to live mainly in the poorer parts of the city and thus have less food security than the white population in the city. This is the case throughout the South.
Ways to Address the Issue
The way to address the issue of food insecurity in the U.S. is to address the factors that contribute to it: 1) racism, 2) a lack of health literacy in the schools, community groups and workplaces, 3) a lack of access to healthy, organic meals, and 4) socioeconomic disparity. Providing solutions to these areas can help to reduce the risk of food insecurity in parts of the U.S. where poverty, racism and obesity are all high. The most prevalent region of the U.S. is the South, but there are pockets of food insecurity in high density areas, too, such as in California cities and suburbs, central cities and suburbs and some east coast cities and suburbs, like Baltimore.
To begin with, the problem of race and racism has to be addressed. Evans (2019) shows that “the necessity of facing racism and discrimination as key factors in food insecurity in the U.S. Issues of food justice, economic and racial equity, and food sovereignty cannot be solved by our emergency food system. Racism and systemic oppression permeate all of our systems, including those that hold up pretenses of service.” Food provisions and stamps are short-term remedies that do not actually address the underlying issues of discrimination that prevent people of color from actually being able to be upwardly mobile so that they can reach a level of food security that the white population enjoys.
Were the country actually more egalitarian in its approach to education, every community would be provided the same caliber of teachers, resources, and training as all the others. There would be no difference between wealthy communities and poor communities because there would be neither—everything would be controlled by the central government and every community would be perfectly equal and food security would be there for all.
Moreover, there would not be a set of laws that would allow black people to be inordinately oppressed, arrested and incarcerated more than white people. The percentages of blacks who are incarcerated is much higher than it is for whites and that is part of the problem of the system: it is inherently racist against African Americans, which is why it is so difficult for them, too, to obtain any level of food security in parts of the country (Evans, 2019).
The best way to address the situation, therefore, is to overhaul the system of governance so that more equitability can be introduced into the different regions. There should be limits on how much wealth can be concentrated in specific areas, and people should not be able to live where they want just because they do not want to associate with persons of color. There should be the same amount of blacks and whites and Latinos and Asian Americans in all the schools throughout the U.S. This would ensure that no one school is better off than another or worse off. Teachers would not have a preference about where they teach and so there would not be a concentration of more qualified teachers in upper class white schools than in poor black schools. With every student having the same access to the same resources, there would be no more disadvantages for black communities and they would not find themselves stuck in the same never ending spiral downward in terms of social mobility, class and income. Equality would finally allow everyone to get the same education, have the same opportunities to grow and develop, and they would all have the same chances of getting good jobs and securing a good income for their families (Evans, 2019).
Another solution is to stop the spread of all the unhealthy fast food restaurants and pre-packaged convenience food marts that proliferate in urban areas. The quality of food that is made available to the new equitable communities has to improve otherwise everyone will still be flocking to cheap fast food and thus food insecurity will continue to proliferate.
The problem of dealing with the lack of good quality food is one that has gotten much worse since the 1950s when the first fast food chains began to appear and the pre-packaged, convenience food industry began to grow. WW2 had introduced the concept of pre-manufactured food for soldiers and with the war over the same producers wanted to keep selling their goods. While they might have been enough for soldiers to get by on over the course of a few months, they are no substitute for wholesome, healthy foods—yet they are marketed as such.
Unfortunately, they are unhealthy and the spread of these foods has to be addressed just as much as the spread of opioids in the opioid epidemic has to be addressed. The problem of obesity and food insecurity is greatly the result of the cheap, fast food epidemic and the fact that states do not crack down on these companies and require them to provide more organic meals, healthier foods, and so on. People who live in poverty are using their food stamps at places like Burger King, Del Taco, Domino’s Pizza, Carl’s Jr., Jack in the Box, KFC, Taco Bell, and Dairy Queen (Nicole, 2017). The fact that people who have low income and rely on food stamps to get access to food are allowed to use those stamps to purchase fast food shows that there is a cultural problem at the heart of the food insecurity problem in America.
People who are in the government should know better than to allow food stamps to be used in this way. They should be making it illegal for fast food chains to take EBT cards and they should be banning fast food chains for the most part because they are inherently unhealthy for everyone. Instead the government should be focusing on instituting higher quality food stores in every region of the country so that people who have EBT cards can shop at places like Whole Foodss and get good deals on organic foods. Or they could go to shops like Panera Bread and have better meals made for them from organic food items.
The government should not be allowing food stamps to be used on fast food but they do because they mistakenly believe that alleviating hunger is the same thing as solving the problem of food insecurity. It is not. Food insecurity is not just about hunger—it is about having access to quality food—i.e., food that is healthy for one. Fast food is not healthy for anyone and poor people are mistakenly given the impression that it is okay for them to consume it. They would be better served by being given access to stores and restaurants that serve quality meals.
Of course, that means that the health literacy for both government officials and for people of low socioeconomic backgrounds has to improve. This is where schools and health care providers have to come in to boost the health literacy for all populations. By raising awareness about how cheap fast food is bad for one’s health, both legislators and people in the community could be made more mindful about the dangers of patronizing fast food restaurants like the ones stated above that take food stamps. They could be made aware of the problems of pre-packaged foods. Community members could stop buying both and legislators could create laws that deny both the right from being produced. If drugs are going to be criminalized because they are bad for people, fast food and cheap pre-packaged food should be criminalized as well since it is just as bad for people and prevents them from having food security: they go to those places thinking it will fix their hunger—but it only worsens the problem of food insecurity.
Conclusion
Food insecurity in the U.S.A. is not the same as the problem of hunger but people wrongly think it is. Hunger refers to the problem of the physical symptom of not eating. Food insecurity refers to the problem of not having access to quality, healthy food. Fast food and pre-packaged food is given to people of low socioeconomic backgrounds as though this solves the problem of food security. In effect, it worsens it. Whites tends to have more food security than blacks because the system is inherently racist, which is why it should be totally overhauled and centralized and no more disparities allowed or permitted by government. This would solve the issue of food security.

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