TITLE: Families Are Experiencing Food Insecurity as Americans Grapple With Higher Grocery Costs
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/families-are-experiencing-food-insecurity-as-americans-grapple-with-higher-grocery-costs/
EXCERPT: A household is considered food insecure when there is sometimes or often not enough food to eat in a given week. In the typical American metro area, roughly 1 in 10 households report that they didn’t have enough food to eat in their house, according to Census survey data from early March this year. A lack of access to adequate food is often a result of living in food deserts, either because the house doesn’t have transportation or there are no shops nearby. However, since food prices have been rising faster in the last few years than in any other decade in modern history, it can simply be the result of unaffordability. In just four years, the USDA has tracked a 25% increase in the cost of foods at grocery retailers and restaurants.
Residents in Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York all reported above-average food scarcity levels this spring. In Houston, that figure is 15.7%, higher than any other metro area.
Prolonged food insecurity can result in anxiety, unhealthy food choices, fewer meals, and weight loss, according to the USDA. In some areas, food insecurity has remained stubbornly high since pandemic disruptions started in 2020. The Washington D.C. region for instance—among the most expensive places to live in the country—saw food insecurity levels drop for five years prior to 2020. However, it’s remained elevated since then, with around 1 in 3 residents struggling to keep food on hand.
This trend tracks with the rest of the nation, on average, which saw food insecurity rates drop as the economy recovered from the Great Recession in the latter half of the 2010s. Now, as economic instability rears its head once again, food insecurity is affecting some Americans more than others.
Nearly 1 in 5 households with Black heads of household struggled to keep food on the table in 2021, a figure that only grew in 2022 as inflation reached its peak. Black families are nearly twice as likely to experience food insecurity when compared to all households, according to the USDA’s analysis of Census data.
Households headed by a Hispanic-identifying family member saw the largest increase in food insecurity amid peak inflation. Other households, which make up those who may identify as mixed race or another unlisted category, experienced below-average food insecurity, while white households saw the lowest rates.
Federal data on Native American and Alaska Native populations is limited. However, a report released by the USDA’s Economic Research Service in April 2024 found that Native American and Alaska Native households were more likely than households headed by people of other races to feel food insecure, at 23% of households. In Utah, new food pantries are being opened to serve Native American residents of the Navajo Nation to accommodate the growing need.
Because food availability is strongly linked to economic outcomes, it also has an outsized impact across different family structures.
In families where there is only one provider, whether the mother or father, households tend to experience more food insecurity than all others; single-mother-led families rose the most. Married couples experienced the lowest relative rates, although they, too, have experienced increasing unavailability of food around the home as inflation peaked in 2022.
TITLE: UN report says 27% of children under 5 live in severe food poverty, many in Africa
https://www.foxnews.com/world/un-report-says-27-children-under-5-live-severe-food-poverty-many-africa
EXCERPT: "Not much milk comes out," said their 38-year-old mother, Dorcas Simon, who struggles to breastfeed and has three other children. She laughed, as if to conceal the pain. "What will I give them when I don’t have food myself?"
Here in northern Nigeria, where conflict and climate change have long contributed to the problem, her twins are among 181 million children under 5 — or 27% of the world's youngest children — who live in severe food poverty, according to a new report Thursday by the U.N.’s children agency.
The report, which focused on nearly 100 low- and middle-income countries, defines severe food poverty as consuming nothing in a day or, at best, two out of eight food groups the agency recognizes.
Africa’s population of more than 1.3 billion people is one of the most affected mainly due to conflict, climate crises and rising food prices. The continent accounts for one-third of the global burden and 13 of the 20 most affected countries.
But it has also recorded some progress, the report said.
The percentage of children living in severe food poverty in West and Central Africa fell from 42% to 32% over the last decade, it said, noting advances including diversified crops and performance-based incentives for health workers.
In the absence of vital nutrients, children living with "extremely poor" diets are more likely to experience wasting, a life-threatening form of malnutrition, the agency known as UNICEF said.
"When wasting becomes very severe, they are 12 times more likely to die," Harriet Torlesse, one of the report's authors, told The Associated Press.
TITLE: A week in the life of a big-time food waster
https://thefern.org/2024/06/a-week-in-the-life-of-a-big-time-food-waster/
EXCERPT: Americans throw away more food than any other people on earth, about 60 million tons annually. (The world population is estimated to waste roughly 2.5 billion tons). The typical household in the U.S. drops into the garbage some 325 pounds of food per year, almost a pound a day. Approximately 40 percent of all food in the U.S. is either lost or wasted, equivalent to an annual loss of $165 billion.
My refrigerator is not the main culprit, either. Of the total waste, food service operations – commercial and non-commercial – are estimated to account for about $86 billion of the losses. A 2021 report in the International Journal of Hospitality Management concluded that “a significant proportion of food waste occurs at the customer level.” In other words, when we eat out, we throw out more.
Most of the tossed food ends up in landfills, making up 24 percent of municipal solid waste. This is just wonderful for greenhouse gas emissions. According to the EPA, 58 percent of methane in landfills comes from rotting food – and methane, measured over decadal time spans, has more than 80 times the warming effect as CO2.
About 2.4 billion people – 30 percent of the global population – live in conditions of food insecurity, which is defined as not having access to “enough safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development and an active and healthy life.” According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an estimated 740 million people are going hungry as I write this. To those in food precarity, the waste in my household must seem deranged or even obscene.
SEE ALSO:
Should You Always Throw Out Expired Food? We Asked an Expert to Weigh In
https://www.cnet.com/home/kitchen-and-household/should-you-always-throw-out-expired-food-we-asked-an-expert-to-weigh-in/