Food Insecurity and What to Do About It

In class, we read about food security in America. We learned that food insecurity means that households were uncertain or unable to acquire food for all of their family members because of a lack of money. Around 11% or 14.3 million homes in America were food insecure sometime during 2018. Although food security has risen, it is still sad to hear about children going without food. According to the article also, 6.0 million children lived in food-insecure households where both adults and children are insecure. It also disproportionally affects minorities: 21.2% of Black households were food insecure, and Hispanic households were at 16.2%. Also, 29.1% of families who made incomes under the 185 percent of the poverty were food insecure as well.

When looking at these statistics, I am not very surprised that many of the people who were food insecure were minority and poor. I related a lot of this article to the book $2.00 a Day. After reading that book and hearing the experiences of poor people, I was able to relate their experiences to these facts. I could not help but think about policies that could help these people who were food insecure. Even though there are programs like SNAP, WIC, and National School Lunch Program, I think there has to be more we can do to make sure not only children, but people in general are food insecure no more. In my opinion, I would not mind spending more on social programs that expand assistance for organizations such as food banks and soup kitchens. Also, as a citizen, I am for having higher taxes, so there is more money into SNAP and WIC.  

If we are going to fight child food insecurity, we should maybe expand the school lunch program. I know all the schools in Springfield, IL, have free lunch and breakfast, but I wonder how many schools in the United States have free lunch and breakfast? According to the School Nutrition Association, 20.2 million children receive free lunches, and 1.8 million children receive the reduced price of .40. 7.7 million pay the full price for their lunches. Also, according to the School Nutrition Association, 11.7 million children receive free breakfast, and 0.77 million pay a reduced amount of 0.30. 2.17 million children pay the full price for school breakfast. By my calculations, that is 31.9 million children total that receive both free breakfast and lunch. There are 56.6 million students in the public schools of America. The school that I work at has a pantry for students; they can take home food over school breaks. I also know of other schools that have pantries outside of their buildings that people voluntarily put food inside. It is for the community, not just for the students. I have also heard of school programs that wrap the unused food and send it home to students so they have a meal there. Maybe those programs could be universally applied across the board at all public schools. Not only would it benefit the children, but it would also help the parents. It would cut down on costs that parents have to pay to feed their children. It is a group effort to make sure that no child in the United States in Food Insecure. Schools and the Federal Government and fellow citizens can join together to provide for the children and people across the country that are food insecure. 

These reaction papers are only free-writing exercises, but the fact that you would find a fact sheet on food insecurity at the Department of Agriculture and go over the statistics it provided to muse over what we ought to do about a problem impresses me.