What did you have for lunch today? Think about that meal—the salad, or soup, or hurriedly grabbed sandwich—and imagine that it's your last one for a while. That you don't know when, or what, you'll eat next. This is the reality that roughly one in seven Americans lives with daily.
It's crazy to think that in a land where food seems almost too accessible most of the time, food insecurity—the term used to describe when people don't know where their next meal will come from—exists, and the rate is the highest ever documented.
"Roughly 50 million people in this country are food insecure," says Maura Daly, chief communication and development officer for Feeding America, the country's largest domestic hunger-relief charity. "We've seen a 50 percent jump in food-bank participants in the past five years as the cost of living has gone up and the economy has slowed down. The situation is getting worse."
The Obesity Paradox
Evidence of the country's obesity epidemic is everywhere. But hunger? How can we be fat—and hungry? Part of the explanation: Across the U.S., millions of people live in what the USDA calls food deserts, areas with no immediate access to fresh produce, meat, poultry, or other healthy staples.
Researcher Mari Gallagher mainstreamed the term when she conducted a landmark study documenting the availability of fresh food—or more accurately, the lack of it—in Chicago. She found there were entire neighborhoods without a single grocery market or produce stand. What's more, says Gallagher, "In areas without access to fresh food, the rate of obesity, diabetes, and other health problems was significantly higher."
Gallagher has replicated her study in other cities around the country, each time with similar results. The greater the distance between a community and fresh, healthy foods, the higher that community's average body mass index, and the more cases there were of diabetes, heart disease, and other cardiovascular problems. In some regions, she even found a greater incidence of diet-related cancers.
"Not only do hunger and obesity coexist in the same households, but they are actually two sides of the same coin—they both stem from a lack of access to affordable healthy food," says Joel Berg, director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. Cheap, processed junk food available for a tenth of the price at the corner store wins way too often.
Farms, Farms Everywhere, and not a Healthy Bite to Eat
If urban food deserts are hard to imagine, consider not having access to fresh produce smack in the middle of one of the most fertile pieces of land on earth. The Mississippi Delta is home to several food deserts, and in some, residents have to drive more than 100 miles before they encounter a full-scale supermarket.
As is the case with many rural food deserts, the rich land has been taken over by industrial conglomerates (often referred to collectively as "Big Ag") that grow crops mainly to feed animals or to make cereals, breads, and cookies. Soybeans, for instance, dominate more than half the cropland in Mississippi, an increase of more than a million acres in the past decade. During the same time, the percentage of food-insecure families in the state has risen by almost 47 percent.
And, thanks to Farm Bill federal grants that provide money to aid farms that grow industrial crops, the situation isn't likely to change. "When farm supports go to corn, soybeans, and cotton, that's what farmers grow," says Marion Nestle, Ph.D., author of Food Politics. "They stop growing food for people."
"We need to invest in a system that rewards healthier eating," says Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog organization. Part of that means tackling food deserts head-on by educating consumers and convincing supermarkets to open in areas they perceive to be a business risk.
The cost of not investing in nutritious, accessible, affordable food is also steep: Berg puts the price at around $167 billion annually in the U.S. for lost worker productivity and health-care costs. "Not having access to healthy food isn't something that affects a few isolated people," he says. "It's an issue that financially impacts all of us eventually."
And given this, it's important that we reverse the current state of our food system ASAP. As the inspiring women featured in the following profiles demonstrate, there are many ways to fight for quality food access and do your part to end hunger in America.
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