The topic that I have chosen to analyze is food insecurity within the United States.
Having food security means that a person has both the economic and physical access to safe and nutritious food. Currently, there are about 49 million people in the United States who are considered to live in food insecure households. In those millions of people, about 47 million of them are on the US’s Food Stamps program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Roughly 16 million of those considered to be food insecure are children.
I care about this issue because I’ve heard all my life from a variety of sources that people on Food Stamps are lazy people who don't want to work and are just abusing the government. While I have never consciously known somebody on the program, I have had friends whose families could not afford to buy groceries because one parent lost their job. I remember that there were a few weeks where these friends got their lunches from a friend who packed one from them or paid for them to go out to eat. Before this happened, it never really sat well with me to make those assumptions about people in need, but I never …show more content…
I would ask them about their experiences and why they think that it may have happened to them. For those people who are no longer food insecure, I would ask if any programs or individuals helped them move out of insecurity. It would be interesting to see if they were in any of the government assistance programs and how much those programs actually did for them. Many websites also provide information on food security and how food is distributed within the United States, like this United States Department of Agriculture’s site, Feeding America, Sustainable Table, and more. Some of these organizations would also provide information about how to create local programs that have been previously successful that I can help implement within this
Having food security means that a person has both the economic and physical access to safe and nutritious food. Currently, there are about 49 million people in the United States who are considered to live in food insecure households. In those millions of people, about 47 million of them are on the US’s Food Stamps program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Roughly 16 million of those considered to be food insecure are children.
I care about this issue because I’ve heard all my life from a variety of sources that people on Food Stamps are lazy people who don't want to work and are just abusing the government. While I have never consciously known somebody on the program, I have had friends whose families could not afford to buy groceries because one parent lost their job. I remember that there were a few weeks where these friends got their lunches from a friend who packed one from them or paid for them to go out to eat. Before this happened, it never really sat well with me to make those assumptions about people in need, but I never …show more content…
I would ask them about their experiences and why they think that it may have happened to them. For those people who are no longer food insecure, I would ask if any programs or individuals helped them move out of insecurity. It would be interesting to see if they were in any of the government assistance programs and how much those programs actually did for them. Many websites also provide information on food security and how food is distributed within the United States, like this United States Department of Agriculture’s site, Feeding America, Sustainable Table, and more. Some of these organizations would also provide information about how to create local programs that have been previously successful that I can help implement within this