Hunger and Obesity Together Obesity cannot be fixed without first fixing hunger and poverty. To be healthy it takes healthy foods (including fruits, vegetables, and low fat products) and burning more calories than digesting. Healthy foods can cost a lot of money and push low-income families to eat unhealthier processed foods. Obesity and hunger are connected it can each be connected to poverty. While obesity seems to be the result of too much food and hunger the lack of food, the common issue of poverty must be addressed in order to ease the obesity crisis in the United States. Low-income neighborhoods lack grocery stores and markets where they can get healthy food affecting both rates of obesity and hunger. Instead the residents are limited to local convenience stores that do not have fresh produce and low-fat products. Instead these stores will have processed food that lacks nutrients. Without good grocery stores and markets it is also affecting hunger for where and how residents are going to get their food. Having limited local convenience stores that often have over priced items pushes more residents to be with less food and to go hungry. So, the lack of good grocery stores or markets with foods with nutrients affects both rates of obesity and hunger. Less money equals unhealthy, and more money equals healthy. A processed type of food is cheap, but also affects people's health. McDonalds® is one of the cheapest fast food places in the United States of America with some food only costing a dollar and also one of the unhealthiest. Low-income families will go there because they are hungry and need a cheep place to eat, but it affects they're health too. McDonalds and many other fast food places contribute by making unhealthy ... ... middle of paper ... ... also made more food available globally. Still around the world there are shortages of food in areas where food is difficult to grow. Africa has climate that is difficult to grow enough food for the needs of the people. Transporting the food is difficult since healthy foods can spoil. Climate and rainfall can make growing good foods a problem. So location and population can contribute to hunger globally. The amount of bad foods is another factor adding to obesity, the portions of bad foods are sometimes large. Kids can sit and eat an entire bag of potato chips or a bowl of ice cream. The foods taste really good and lead kids to continue to eat more and more. So, the volume of bad food eaten adds to the amount of people becoming obese. Soda pop with lots of sugar and caffeine are examples where it provides a sugar rush and makes people want to have more.
Obesity is a huge problem that needs to be resolved because it affects all people, unlike most issues. People of every gender, every age, and every race are at risk of being obese. Obesity rates in America have nearly doubled within the last twenty years. Something must be done not only to prevent obesity rates continuous rising, but also to dramatically increase the percentage of obese people in America altogether.
President Obama once said, “As the wealthiest nation on Earth, I believe the United States has a moral obligation to lead the fight against hunger and malnutrition, and to partner with others.” Food insecurity has always been an issue of the public as well as around the world. For so long, many generations of Americans have been living in poverty or in a low income state. It would be surprise as to how many Americans are living in poverty. As a result of this living situation, there are problems that arise with it. One of the problems is food insecurity. Food insecurity can be simply explained as not having access to affordable and quality food. This problem can lead to serious
When thinking of poverty, numerous people first think of third world countries like Africa. What people may not know is the amount of people living in the United States in poverty, specifically children. There are over sixteen million children living in poverty; the poverty line is considered to be below $23,550 a year for a family of four. To put this number into perspective, the amount of children living in poverty today is twenty-two percent of all children in the United States (“Child Poverty”). With such a large number of people in the country in fiscally unstable environments, it can easily be seen that they also are susceptible to other problems compared to those who are financially established; one major concern being obesity.
"Under the Supplemental Poverty Measure, there are 48.4 million people living in poverty, nearly 2 million more than are represented by the official poverty measure (46.7 million)". That just shows how many people go hungry every day. Many people that go hungry live on less than $5.00 a day. This means that poverty is the true cause of hunger. That is because it is not that there is not enough food but that people cannot afford food.
Childhood hunger in Africa and America should not be a comparison. Yes, hunger is an issue amongst a plethora of
Since 1970, the obesity rates in America have more than doubled. Currently two-thirds of (roughly 150 million) adults in the United States are either overweight, or obese (Food Research and Action Center). According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, “overweight is defined as a body mass index (BMI) greater than 25 whereas obesity is defined as a BMI greater than 30.” There are numerous factors that contribute to obesity such as: biological, behavioral and cultural influences (Food Research and Action Center). While these factors all have a large role in obesity, there is no factor with as great of an influence as poverty.
Food insecurity refers to the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of adequate, nutritious food. A direct correlation has been distinguished between food, income and overall health (Noreen et al. 2001). Food insecurity has been strongly influenced by financial constraints, resulting in individuals choosing to manage their food expenditures and dietary choices based off of what they can afford (McIntyre et al. 2016). Additionally, food insecurity leads to the altering of eating patterns for adults and ultimately hunger in children; due to depletion of resources and food supplies. Households experiencing food insecurity are commonly lacking sufficient funds for food and acquire several health problems as a consequence. Food insecurity was significantly associated with poor health, multiple chronic conditions, obesity, anxiety, distress and depression (Noreen et al. 2001). Therefore, this is an issue of importance to public
Hunger is a big issue in the United States and the world. It's a big problem for many families, children and adults. We should fix hunger in the U.S by offering more alternatives or helping out in different ways than are already in place because there are not enough. We can do this by paying other bills like water and electricity or giving money just for food or have meals sent to people who are in need of them. This is true ( Reason number one) because there are already moderately good systems in place but they aren't working well enough because many people are still going hungry. “According to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 49 million people in the United States live in households struggling to find enough food to eat. Nearly
526 million people that are suffering from hunger lives in Asia, and about 214 million people who suffer from hunger lives in Africa. World hunger is the worst around these areas, because they hardly have any employment opinions so people in these areas aren’t getting any income. So therefore they can not afford food. Which is the reasoning for most of world hunger anywhere.
Adults who are food-insecure have greater chances of malnutrition, mental health problems, long-term physical health problems, depression, diabetes, chronic disease, and lower scores on physical and mental health exams (Gundersen, Kreider, and Pepper). Seniors who are food-insecure have greater chances of malnutrition, poor health, and limitations in activities (Gundersen, Kreider, and Pepper). Food insecurity is closely connected with obesity since obesity is the most common health problem resulting from food insecurity All Americans have the risk of having obesity, however, people who live in food-insecure households have greater risk of having obesity. There are many reasons why people in food-insecure households have greater risk for obesity, including inability to afford healthy food, less opportunities for physical activity, and greater chances of exposure to fast food restaurants and food-related marketing (O’Connor). In addition, people who are food-insecure tend to overeat when food becomes available, which results in unbalanced diets that cause weight gain (O’Connor).
Therefore, people tend to go to McDonalds to have a Big Mac rather than getting healthier food. According to Fryar and Ervin (2013), “in the youngest age group, 20–39, the percentage of calories consumed from fast food significantly decreased with increasing income level.” In this case, people that have lower income tend to have more unhealthy food because they cannot afford healthy food.
Food insecurity and poor nutrition is an alarmingly large problem for low income families, especially in developing countries. Many strategies exist to fight this problem, although not many of these address all the factors contributing to it along with all the possible solutions to solve it. In many cases, multiple strategies must correlate and work together so that all the determinants of this issue are addressed and can fight food insecurity from different angles. This essay will discuss the significance of the problem, a range of possible strategies to solve the problem, and go into detail on a select few that will correlate and work together to solve different factors of food insecurity and poor nutrition.
Through various observations and assumptions, there have been conversations on whether or not overconsumption of food is an addiction. However, many have come to the conclusion that food is an addiction if it is overconsume excessively than it is necessary for an individual’s diet. Nevertheless, food addiction can create health issues that can affect an individual’s body. Even though, many individual may have such knowledge of overconsumption of food; however, many may choose to ignore the consequences that comes with food addiction. Becoming a food addict is harmful and dangerous to an individual’s health.
According to the National Institute of Health, the most familiar causes of obesity can be categorized into four causes; lifestyle, environmental, hereditary and medical causes2. However, the main cause of obesity worldwide is still unhealthy diets.
Modern poverty is so closely related with obesity for many reasons. First of all, poor people are ignorant and uneducated about their health and nutrition. Obviously, because of that they don’t really know what they are doing or even how they are taking the risk of eating some kinds of food. Poor people go for good tasting food without paying attention to the food’s freshness and safety. Moreover, children grow up without a proper understanding of good nutrition, so it is time to reintroduce nutrition to families and even in schools to kids. Second of all, poor people cannot afford buying healthy food. A person who is poor and hungry is going to buy the cheapest calories that he or she could find. In fact in today’s world, the cheapest calories come from junk food. It is cheaper and ...