The USDA's labels describe ranges of food security:
High food security (old label=Food security): no reported indications of food-access problems or limitations.
Marginal food security (old label=Food security): one or two reported indications—typically of anxiety over food sufficiency or shortage of food in the house. Little or no indication of changes in diets or food intake.
Low food security (old label=Food insecurity without hunger): reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake.
Very low food security (old label=Food insecurity with hunger): Reports of multiple indications of disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.
A food desert is a geographic area where affordable and nutritious food is alleged to be hard to obtain, particularly for those without access to an automobile.
What is Food Insecurity?
In 2016, an estimated 1 in 8 Americans were food insecure, equating to 42 million Americans including 13 million children.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines food insecurity as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life.
It is important to know that hunger and food insecurity are closely related, but distinct, concepts. Hunger refers to a personal, physical sensation of discomfort, while food insecurity refers to a lack of available financial resources for food at the level of the household.
Policy evaluation, through both quantitative and qualitative research, reveals food insecurity to be a complex problem. It does not exist in isolation, as low-income families are affected by multiple, overlapping issues like affordable housing, social isolation, health problems, medical costs, and low wages. Many do not have what they need to meet basic needs and these challenges increase a family’s risk of food insecurity. Effective responses to food insecurity will need to address these overlapping challenges.
Taken together, issues such as affordable housing, social isolation, education level, unemployment or underemployment and food insecurity are important social determinants of health [ii] defined as the “conditions in the environments in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning and quality-of-life outcomes and risks.” HungerandHealth.org explores the impact of food insecurity as a social determinant of health and its effect on individual and population health outcomes.
Poverty and food insecurity in the United States are closely related. Not all people living below the poverty line experience food insecurity, and people living above the poverty line can experience food insecurity. Wages and other critical household expenses (such as caring for an ill child) can also help predict food insecurity among people living in the United States.
Hunger and Health-Feeding America
The U.S. Department of Agriculture measures food security along a scale from “high food security” to “very low food security,” with three categories to indicate levels of food insecurity.
Moderate food security” describes households with some level of concern or challenge in accessing quality food without significant decreases in quality, variety, or quantity. u “Low food security” describes households where quality, variety, and desirability are negatively impacted, but quantity is not. u “Very low food security” indicates decreases in all areas (quality, variety, desirability, quantity) as well as disrupted eating patterns due to inability to access adequate food.
The survey assessed the food security level of the respondents using the questions provided in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Adult Food Security Survey Module.16 Based on their responses to these questions, respondents were given a score of zero through ten. Their food security status was then determined based on their score:
Score of zero – High food security u Score of 1-2 – Marginal food security .
Score of 3-5 – Low food security u Score of 6-10 – Very low food security
Students with a score of three or more were considered “food insecure.” Students with a score of six or more were considered to be “very food insecure” and likely to be suffering from hunger.
Five reasons students on college campuses are struggling to afford food
1. Rising tuition costs.
2. College meal plans are expensive.
3. Even when you have a meal plan, food isn’t always available.
4. The “traditional” college student is changing.
5. Colleges don’t know students are going hungry.
Why college students are food insecure | Feeding America
Recent research article: Food Insecurity Among College Students: Background and Policy Options June 9, 2021 R46817 (congress.gov)
Welcome to DoSomething.org, a global movement of millions of young people making positive change, online and off! The 11 facts you want are below, and the sources for the facts are at the very bottom of the page. After you learn something, Do Something! Find out how to take action here.
Interactive map of Food Deserts in the US. USDA ERS - Go to the Atlas
Closing the Food Gap by
"In Closing the Food Gap, food activist and journalist Mark Winne poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations around food: What about those people who are not financially able to make conscientious choices about where and how to get food? And in a time of rising rates of both diabetes and obesity, what can we do to make healthier foods available for everyone?" "To address these questions, Winne tells the story of how America's food gap has widened since the 1960s, when domestic poverty was "rediscovered," and how communities have responded with a slew of strategies and methods to narrow the gap, including community gardens, food banks, and farmers' markets. The story, however, is not only about hunger in the land of plenty and the organized efforts to reduce it; it is also about doing that work against a backdrop of ever-growing American food affluence and gastronomical expectations."--Jacket.
$2. 00 a Day by
A revelatory account of poverty in America so deep that we, as a country, don't think it exists. Jessica Compton's family of four would have no cash income unless she donated plasma twice a week at her local donation center in Tennessee. Modonna Harris and her teenage daughter Brianna in Chicago, often have no food but spoiled milk on weekends. After two decades of brilliant research on American poverty, Kathryn Edin noticed something she hadn't seen since the mid-1990s -- households surviving on virtually no income. Edin teamed with Luke Shaefer, an expert on calculating incomes of the poor, to discover that the number of American families living on $2.00 per person, per day, has skyrocketed to 1.5 million American households, including about 3 million children.
Hand to Mouth by
"I've been waiting for this book for a long time. Well, not this book, because I never imagined that the book I was waiting for would be so devastatingly smart and funny, so consistently entertaining and unflinchingly on target. In fact, I would like to have written it myself - if, that is, I had lived Linda Tirado's life and extracted all the hard lessons she has learned. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief attempt, as a semi-undercover journalist, to survive on low-wage retail and service jobs. Tirado is the real thing." -from the foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed We in America have certain ideas of what it means to be poor. Linda Tirado, in her signature brutally honest yet personable voice, takes all of these preconceived notions and smashes them to bits. She articulates not only what it is to be working poor in America (yes, you can be poor and live in a house and have a job, even two), but what poverty is truly like-on all levels. In her thought-provoking voice, Tirado discusses how she went from lower-middle class, to sometimes middle class, to poor and everything in between, and in doing so reveals why "poor people don't always behave the way middle-class America thinks they should." --
"An examination of what it means to be poor in America today"--
Food Insecurity on Campus by
The chapters in this edited collection explore the ways in which college and community leaders are fighting student hunger on our nation's college campuses. The contributors describe the problem of food insecurity among students, explaining why addressing it is critical to student success. Other chapters outline a series of solutions from leaders in the field. The target audience is practitioners who can intervene in the problem on and off college campuses"--
Food and Poverty by
Food insecurity rates, which skyrocketed with the Great Recession, have yet to fall to pre-recession levels. Food pantries are stretched thin, and states are imposing new restrictions on programs like SNAP that are preventing people from getting crucial government assistance. At the same time, we see an increase in obesity that results from lack of access to healthy foods. The poor face a daily choice between paying bills and paying for food. -- Publisher description.
The Unending Hunger by
"Based on ethnographic fieldwork from Santa Barbara, California, this book sheds light on the ways that food insecurity prevails in women's experiences of migration from Mexico and Central America to the United States. As women grapple with the pervasive conditions of poverty that hinder efforts at getting enough to eat, they find few options for alleviating the various forms of suffering that accompany food insecurity. Examining how constraints on eating and feeding translate to the uneven distribution of life chances across borders, and how 'food security' comes to dominate national policy in the United States, this book argues for understanding women's relations to these processes as inherently biopolitical."--Publisher information.
$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by
A revelatory account of poverty in America so deep that we, as a country, don't think it exists
Jessica Compton's family of four would have no cash income unless she donated plasma twice a week at her local donation center in Tennessee. Modonna Harris and her teenage daughter Brianna in Chicago often have no food but spoiled milk on weekends. After two decades of brilliant research on American poverty, Kathryn Edin noticed something she hadn't seen since the mid-1990s -- households surviving on virtually no income. Edin teamed with Luke Shaefer, an expert on calculating incomes of the poor, to discover that the number of American families living on $2.00 per person, per day, has skyrocketed to 1.5 million American households, including about 3 million children. Where do these families live? How did they get so desperately poor? Edin has "turned sociology upside down" ( Mother Jones ) with her procurement of rich -- and truthful -- interviews. Through the book's many compelling profiles, moving and startling answers emerge. The authors illuminate a troubling trend: a low-wage labor market that increasingly fails to deliver a living wage, and a growing but hidden landscape of survival strategies among America's extreme poor. More than a powerful exposé, $2.00 a Day delivers new evidence and new ideas to our national debate on income inequality.
Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet by
Sarah Elton walks fields and farms on three continents, not only investigating the very real threats to our food, but also telling the little-known stories of the people who are working against time to create a new and hopeful future.
By 2050, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, and the challenge of feeding this population, along with climate changes, will increasingly wreak havoc on the way we produce our food. Elton walks fields and farms on three continents, not only investigating the very real threats to our food, but also telling the little-known stories of the people who are working against time to create a new and hopeful future. Food might be the problem, but as Elton shows, it is also the solution.
Eating Right in America by
Eating Right in America is a powerful critique of dietary reform in the United States from the late nineteenth-century emergence of nutritional science through the contemporary alternative food movement and campaign against obesity. Charlotte Biltekoff analyzes the discourses of dietary reform, including the writings of reformers, as well as the materials they created to bring their messages to the public. She shows that while the primary aim may be to improve health, the process of teaching people to "eat right" in the U.S. inevitably involves shaping certain kinds of subjects and citizens, and shoring up the identity and social boundaries of the ever-threatened American middle class. Without discounting the pleasures of food or the value of wellness, Biltekoff advocates a critical reappraisal of our obsession with diet as a proxy for health. Based on her understanding of the history of dietary reform, she argues that talk about "eating right" in America too often obscures structural and environmental stresses and constraints, while naturalizing the dubious redefinition of health as an individual responsibility and imperative.
Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America by
Through meticulous research, Hauter presents a shocking account of how agricultural policy has been hijacked by lobbyists, driving out independent farmers and food processors in favor of the likes of Cargill, Tyson, Kraft, and ConAgra. She demonstrates how the impacts ripple far and wide, from economic stagnation in rural communities at home, to famines in poor countries overseas. In the end, Hauter illustrates how solving this crisis will require a complete structural shift, a grassroots movement to reshape our food system from seed to table, a change that is about politics, not just personal choice.
Hunger in the Land of Plenty: A Critical Look at Food Insecurity by
In the United States today, 50 million people don¿t have enough food. How is this possible in one of the world¿s wealthiest countries? Why hasn¿t the problem been solved? Is it simply an economic issue? Challenging conventional wisdom, the authors of Hunger in the Land of Plenty explore the causes and consequences of food insecurity; assess some of the major policies and programs that have been designed to reduce it; and consider alternative paths forward.
One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? by
Hunger is a daily reality for a billion people. More than six decades after the technological discoveries that led to the Green Revolution aimed at ending world hunger, regular food shortages, malnutrition, and poverty still plague vast swaths of the world. And with increasing food prices, climate change, resource inequality, and an ever-increasing global population, the future holds further challenges.
In One Billion Hungry, Sir Gordon Conway, one of the world's foremost experts on global food needs, explains the many interrelated issues critical to our global food supply from the science of agricultural advances to the politics of food security. He expands the discussion begun in his influential The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for All in the Twenty-First Century, emphasizing the essential combination of increased food production, environmental stability, and poverty reduction necessary to end endemic hunger on our planet.
Conway addresses a series of urgent questions about global hunger:
* How we will feed a growing global population in the face of a wide range of adverse factors, including climate change?
* What contributions can the social and natural sciences make in finding solutions?
* And how can we engage both government and the private sector to apply these solutions and achieve significant impact in the lives of the poor?
Animal, Vegetable, Junk by
From hunting and gathering to GMOs and ultraprocessed foods, this expansive tour of human history rewrites the story of our species--and points the way to a better future"--
How humankind first hunted and gathered explains our emergence as a new species and our earliest technology. Our first food systems, from fire to agriculture, tell where we settled and how civilizations expanded. The quest for food for growing populations drove exploration, colonialism, slavery, even capitalism. A century ago, food was industrialized. Since then, new styles of agriculture and food production have written a new chapter of human history, one that is driving both climate change and global health crises. Bittman offers a panoramic view of the story and explains how we can rescue ourselves from the modern wrong turn.
Eating Dangerously by
This two-part guide to our food system's problems and how consumers can help protect themselves is written by two seasoned journalists who helped break the story of the 2011 listeria outbreak that killed 33 people.
Nearly 50 million Americans will get food poisoning this year. Spoiled, doctored or infected food will send more than 100,000 people to the hospital. Three thousand will die. The authors explain how the food system works-- and more importantly how it doesn't work. They provide useful, friendly advice gleaned from the cutting-edge laboratories, kitchens and courtrooms where the national food system is taking new shape.
How Food Insecurities Increase Obesity Rates
A Move for Hunger (non-profit) website article that discusses the connection between food safety and obesity rates.
USDA - Defines Food Insecurity
Information on USDA definitions pertaining to food insecurity.
Tips, tools, and guides for reducing your foodprint; a non-profit site dedicated to food prodcution education.
Map of Food Deserts and Food Access
A USDA atlas of food access statistics by geographic region.
There are a number of videos available on this subject, both on the internet and through our available databases. This page features some useful examples. For more, we recommend accessing the Films on Demand database.
20% of kids are plagued by food insecurity - they lack reliable access to nourishing food. As a nutritionist Clancy’s mistake was assuming people had access to the quality food they needed. This resulted in their inability to provide healthy meals even after she taught them how.
A look at the problem of food insecurity in the US--a condition which affected 49 million Americans in 2013. Featuring insight and perspective from a range of distinguished experts, including from the food insecure themselves, "The American Food Disparity" examines food insecurity's causes and effects and throws into sharp relief the growing urgency with which it presents us.
Initiated by the work of then-graduate student Christopher Putvinski, who was working in Philadelphia to help reduce the high rates of food insecurity in that city, "The American Food Disparity" seeks to raise awareness about the issue and to move the discussion towards one of solution rather than mitigation.
Food pantries are appearing more frequently in a surprising type of location: colleges and universities. More than 700 educational institutions belong to a national nonprofit aiming to alleviate food insecurity among college students. From PBS station WTTW in Chicago, Brandis Friedman reports on how City Colleges and the Greater Chicago Food Depository are providing nutrition along with knowledge.
Hunger in Nebraska; where it happens, who is impacted, what is being done about it. Plus a Nebraska history moment.
