Food and Nutrition Insecurity
There are bills with Bipartisan support in each house of Congress (Senate and House) to start an investigation into “Food and Nutrition Insecurity.” Food insecurity is people being hungry, at least some of the time. Nutrition security, defined by Dariush Mozaffarian and colleagues, was defined as having affordable and available food that “promotes well-being – and, if needed, treating – disease.” The last time this happened it was under President Nixon in 1969. While I think a conference is a good idea, we can hope that what comes out of it will be better than what resulted from that conference 50 years ago.
Current suggested solutions for food insecurity at the federal government level were outlined in the Department of Health and Human Services’ 2010 report called Healthy People 2020. The areas to address from 2010 to 2020 were:
“Economic stability, Education, Health and Health Care, Neighborhood and Built Environment and Social and Community Context.”
In the next report, Healthy People 2030, the areas to address were:
“Economic Stability, Education, Health and Health Care, Neighborhood and Built Environment and Social and Community Context.”
So they stuck with the same areas. But were they the right ones?
Some progress has been made in reducing food insecurity. From 2008 the percentage of the population being food insecure was 14.6 percent which was reduced in 2018 to 11.1 percent - a reduction of 3.5 percent. Was it the focus on the five areas in the Healthy People plans that did it?
Maybe not. In 2008, the median income (in 2020 dollars) was $57, 412. In 2018, it was $64,324.
In other words, there was a 12 percent increase in median income and a 3.5 percent decrease in food insecurity. It doesn’t establish causation, but it does make you wonder about, for example, Social and Community Context.
Then there is nutrition insecurity. Healthy people 2030 notes that “poor dietary practices are widespread in the United States.” They don’t report, as the Dietary Guidelines for Americans notes on their webpage right up front that, “The Federal government has provided dietary advice for the public for more than 100 years through bulletins, posters, brochures, books, and—more recently—websites and social media. This includes 40 years of the Dietary Guidelines, 30 years of food labeling and 30 years of the Food Guide Pyramid (now MyPlate).
In 1980, the first year of the Dietary Guidelines, 4.8 percent of men and 7.9 percent of women were obese. Today the obesity rate stands at 42.4 percent and at least one study predicts we will go to 50 percent by the end of the decade.
Looking through some of the articles on nutrition insecurity some of the suggested solutions have been around for a long time. One overall suggestion is to eliminate “food deserts,” neighborhoods where you have to go farther to buy healthy food. One writer, however, suggests that this isn’t really a problem as “Farmers markets, farm stands, CSAs, little convenience stores—there are many more retail locations where people find fresh produce.” When you take these into account, “You will see not much of a food desert anymore.”
Others want to get food benefit programs to focus more on healthy foods, or taxing unhealthy foods. One issue with the first idea is that it is difficult to define what healthy foods are. In 1991, California imposed an 8.25% tax on snack foods. Voters rejected it one year later calling confusing, regressive and discriminatory.
We will probably have this national conversation and there are endorsements from hundreds of groups who want to participate. But for it to work, we need to move past some of the older solutions. For food security, we need to have policies that keep national income growing at all levels. For nutrition insecurity, we need to, among other things, look to technology—as I discussed in Fixing Food.