Improving Healthy Food For Low Income Families

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Disparities in Access to Affordable Healthy Food for Low Income Families
With healthy food becoming increasingly expensive it has become harder and harder for low-income families to make healthy choices (Ward et al., 2013). Low-income families face a financial struggle when it comes to making better food choices. Things such as housing, utilities, and health care are every day expenses that have fixed costs (Ward et al., 2013). When it comes to food, food pricing is flexible as it presents an opportunity to cut costs (Ward et al., 2013). Families stretch limited dollars by purchasing the cheapest and easiest foods that can be found, even if it means not picking the healthiest options (Vergin, 2012). The key to giving low socioeconomic families access to affordable healthy food is not just to lower down prices, but creating healthy food and eating environments (Story, Kaphingst, Robinson-O 'Brien, & Glanz 2008). Low socioeconomic communities need to be designed to help make healthier choices with having more stores and restaurants selling healthier options to items families already purchase and offering more local fresh foods (Vergin, 2012).
Furthermore, studies show determinants for food choice have been limited to characteristics such as socioeconomic position, with the lower the socioeconomic position the less healthy the diets (Ball et al, 2006). The high cost of healthy-nutritious food leaves low-income communities vulnerable to health complications that are diet related (Ward et al., 2013). Nutrition is one of the major modifiable determinants of chronic disease in low-income communities (Vergin, 2012), thus it is imperative that programs such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP) to be of assistance...

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...professional working in healthcare organizations is the United States Department of Agriculture, Choosemyplate.gov website (www.choosemyplate.gov). This website provides practical information for health professionals, food industry, nutritionist and individuals to help consumers build healthier diets, and provide nutrition education with user-friendly nutrition information. Furthermore, an application that can be used to educate, and help patients with reading food labels is Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Chemical Cuisine app. This application features a list of chemical additives, their descriptions, and their safety ratings to help consumers make healthy decisions. This is an application can be used by anyone now matter their education level as it does a very well job at describing what is in the additive and also gives a very clear safety rating.

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