Today, more Americans than evera staggering 50 million peopleare experiencing hunger.
EatingWell examines the barriers to getting foodhealthy foodand what is being done to help.
Sometimes, even if you do everything right, it’s still not enough.
That’s how Tache Figueroa feels whenever she goes to the grocery store.
Making it harder is that Figueroa doesn’t want to buy just any food.
She wants healthy food.
High blood pressure and diabetes run in her family, though so far she has avoided them.
And she also worries that one of her daughtersthe one with a vicious sweet toothis becoming overweight.
The family has long been on a tight budget.
“I think, ‘How am I ever going to make it work?'”
It’s a heartbreaking story, and all the more so because Figueroa’s situation is anything but unusual.
And that was before COVID-19 upended the economy.
And again, that dramatic spike did not hit everyone equally.
This stark divide fuels disturbing health disparities.
As a result, the families that can least afford them face significant additional health care costs.
Conditions like obesity and diabetes have proved especially dangerous during the pandemic.
“We thought that a virus doesn’t discriminate.
The Barriers to a Healthy Diet
That socioeconomic status is intricately linked to health seems intuitive.
Less money, less education and limited access to medical care translates to less stability and worse outcomes.
“If you might drive to McDonald’s you might drive to Safeway.”
Yet, the fact is that healthy foodisempirically more expensive.
Figueroa and her family experience this every day.
Fruits and vegetablesthe foods you are “supposed” to fill your plate withare flat-out too expensive.
“My kids love grapes,” she says.
“But at $2.99 a pound, a bag costs $10.
It’s like, ‘Oh my god, not this week, guys.’
Fruit is a luxury thing.”
She has tried myriad strategies to stretch her budget.
But that limited her ability to buy fresh produce, which wouldn’t last four weeks in the fridge.
Then she started shopping weekly.
“The junk food is what is cheap in those stores,” she says.
“You will find a $1 box of crackers, but it’s filled with sodium.
You will find your kid a meal, but it’s full of sodium.
Meanwhile, the only vegetables are these individually portioned frozen ones that cost $5.”
1 coping mechanism, at 79%, is purchasing inexpensive or unhealthy foods.
Beyond the high sticker price of nutritious foods, there are other, hidden costs.
(And yes, it’s still women who do most of the cooking.)
Another obstacle is the fear of waste.
She often visits food pantries to kill the gap.
(Though when he does, he removes the breading from the chicken and eats them separately.)
But it’s also politically fraught.
“If you build it, they will come” was the rallying cry.
In other words, affordability was the primary barrier to nutritious foods, not availability.
“Fundamentally, food insecurity is an income problem, not a food problem,” she says.
“People go hungry because they cannot afford to purchase adequate food.
And even when they can buy sufficient calories, many cannot afford the foods that promote health.”
The first study tracked the consumption of salad versus sodaproxies for a healthy or unhealthy diet.
“People are very uncomfortable with that,” Drewnowski admits.
“It all comes back to socioeconomic status.”
ARE underlying health conditions.
Inequality is a comorbidity.”
She had never been to one before.
She had never needed one, until the pandemic.
But she felt compelled to leave.
“I used to judge others who got free food,” she says.
“Now I’m one of them.
This isn’t a place where I ever thought I would be.”
In December, Congress temporarily raised SNAP benefits by 15% as part of the latest relief package.
It angers me that not only my family is going through this, but others.
So much waste is out there and we can’t have a simple meal.
Columbia University researchers estimated that the plan would have lowered overall child poverty by 49%.
(It did not pass.)
Still, there’s increasing evidence that such measures work.
Basic income pilots are underway in Stockton, California; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Jackson, Mississippi.
Programs focused on health care are also making nutritional assistance a more central part of their efforts.
In 2016, Rita Perkins, now 55, was one of the first to sign up.
She was overweight, hovering near 200 pounds at just 5-foot-3, and had long struggled with diabetes.
On average, program participants see their A1C levels fall by two points.
It’s an obvious win-win.
There must be systemic change too.
Such a transformation will not come easily.
After all, familiarity breeds compassion.
It could, over time, help build a movement for change.
“Prior to COVID, it was ‘they’ and ‘we.’
‘Theyneed it.Wedon’t,'” says Swarupa Watlington, executive director of Albuquerque’s Storehouse food shelf.
There’s more empathy that you could be in that situation.
And you think: ‘Why not have access to the healthiest food possible?'"
Jane Blackis a Washington, D.C.-based writer who covers food politics and sustainability.
