On America’s Biggest Insecurity:
Not Weight, Not Age, Not Looks, but Food Not one, not two, not three…but an estimated 50 million Americans suffer from some form of food insecurity as stated within the documentary, A Place at the Table (2012), which entails the harsh realities faced by America’s poor and lower class citizens. This translates to 1 in 6 Americans being impacted by food insecurity with children facing a higher proportion with 1 in 4 of America’s children suffering from the devastating impacts of food insecurity. The documentary aforementioned mainly follows the lives of three individuals: Barbie – a single-mother in Philadelphia who grew up in poverty and is striving to provide a better life for her two children, Tremonica – …show more content…
For children in poor families as was observed in the documentary with Barbie’s son he has been affected by poverty due to malnutrition since the prenatal stages of development because people living in poverty rarely have access to the healthiest foods which may be viewed in a sense as a luxury. One of the most damaging effects of poverty are the almost always present health effects that were unfortunately observed with Tremonica due to being fed the only diet her hard-working mother is able to afford which augment her health problems that much more. During the documentary, it was observed that education is largely impacted by the effects of poverty as many of those in poverty deal with not only having access to lower education, but those impacted by poverty tend to have lower literacy rates, or the parents may not have a way to get their children to those better schools, or the inability to afford school supplies/clothing which all may impact the child from a very early age as was the case for Rosie. In addition, to the psychological factors such as Rosie’s possible ADHD, they can also have societal impacts as well as this can greatly impact the classroom setting as the child may be …show more content…
Symbolically speaking, they also account for the socially constructed meanings attached to those that are below or at the poverty and many individuals within American society tend to stigmatize and degrade these people because most of the American public is in denial of the hunger these families face. A prominent example I think of is Barbie as she is very well aware of the issues that her children must face and the labels attached to not only herself as a single-mother but her children as well, because of her being from her a single-mother. Additionally, the cost of being poor, both monetarily and emotionally, has gone up astronomically as they are not able to purchase those healthy foods thus in contrast the price of processed foods has gone up which has great far reaching impacts on those affected by poverty such as poor health as was seen with, then 7-year-old Tremonica and Barbie’s children. Within the research paper, The Effect of SNAP on Poverty (2013), it attempts to give rise to the awareness to just how ineffective SNAP is today, despite its previous successes and how we can attempt to “fix” it, what needs to be fixed is not the program but the amount of aid from the assistance program given in addition to easing off on the
Not Weight, Not Age, Not Looks, but Food Not one, not two, not three…but an estimated 50 million Americans suffer from some form of food insecurity as stated within the documentary, A Place at the Table (2012), which entails the harsh realities faced by America’s poor and lower class citizens. This translates to 1 in 6 Americans being impacted by food insecurity with children facing a higher proportion with 1 in 4 of America’s children suffering from the devastating impacts of food insecurity. The documentary aforementioned mainly follows the lives of three individuals: Barbie – a single-mother in Philadelphia who grew up in poverty and is striving to provide a better life for her two children, Tremonica – …show more content…
For children in poor families as was observed in the documentary with Barbie’s son he has been affected by poverty due to malnutrition since the prenatal stages of development because people living in poverty rarely have access to the healthiest foods which may be viewed in a sense as a luxury. One of the most damaging effects of poverty are the almost always present health effects that were unfortunately observed with Tremonica due to being fed the only diet her hard-working mother is able to afford which augment her health problems that much more. During the documentary, it was observed that education is largely impacted by the effects of poverty as many of those in poverty deal with not only having access to lower education, but those impacted by poverty tend to have lower literacy rates, or the parents may not have a way to get their children to those better schools, or the inability to afford school supplies/clothing which all may impact the child from a very early age as was the case for Rosie. In addition, to the psychological factors such as Rosie’s possible ADHD, they can also have societal impacts as well as this can greatly impact the classroom setting as the child may be …show more content…
Symbolically speaking, they also account for the socially constructed meanings attached to those that are below or at the poverty and many individuals within American society tend to stigmatize and degrade these people because most of the American public is in denial of the hunger these families face. A prominent example I think of is Barbie as she is very well aware of the issues that her children must face and the labels attached to not only herself as a single-mother but her children as well, because of her being from her a single-mother. Additionally, the cost of being poor, both monetarily and emotionally, has gone up astronomically as they are not able to purchase those healthy foods thus in contrast the price of processed foods has gone up which has great far reaching impacts on those affected by poverty such as poor health as was seen with, then 7-year-old Tremonica and Barbie’s children. Within the research paper, The Effect of SNAP on Poverty (2013), it attempts to give rise to the awareness to just how ineffective SNAP is today, despite its previous successes and how we can attempt to “fix” it, what needs to be fixed is not the program but the amount of aid from the assistance program given in addition to easing off on the