The best of both: Combating food insecurity by incorporating WIC standards into Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
INTRODUCTION
Food insecurity and food deserts are problems that plague a significant amount of our lower income populations. Around seventeen million American households are food insecure, which is one out of seven households in America (1). Food insecurity is loosely defined as with limited or no access to nutritionally adequate foods by lack of money or other resources. In some instances households can be very low food security in which a member of the household must reduce food intake at times in the year (2). Food insecurity manifests itself in children and adults in a wide range of variation. Rates of obesity, hypertension, hyperlipidemia and diabetes affect the food insecure at higher rates than the general population (2). Research suggests that people experiencing food insecurity are selecting foods with high energy to stretch their calories per dollar as much as possible (2). Two programs that are currently combating …show more content…
WIC has allowed food packages that specifies the healthy foods that can be purchased and the items in the food groups that can be selected by the participants, because of this consumption of these foods are almost a guarantee for their participants. Currently SNAP does not have any specific requirements for varying the foods that can be purchased by their participants. This can potentially lead to more lower nutritionally dense foods being purchased with the SNAP benefits potentially lowering the quality of the participant’s diets rather than improving them. When WIC changed their food packages in 2009 there was a significant rise in whole grain consumption and decrease in whole milk consumption (6), this concept could prove useful in improving the diets of SNAP
INTRODUCTION
Food insecurity and food deserts are problems that plague a significant amount of our lower income populations. Around seventeen million American households are food insecure, which is one out of seven households in America (1). Food insecurity is loosely defined as with limited or no access to nutritionally adequate foods by lack of money or other resources. In some instances households can be very low food security in which a member of the household must reduce food intake at times in the year (2). Food insecurity manifests itself in children and adults in a wide range of variation. Rates of obesity, hypertension, hyperlipidemia and diabetes affect the food insecure at higher rates than the general population (2). Research suggests that people experiencing food insecurity are selecting foods with high energy to stretch their calories per dollar as much as possible (2). Two programs that are currently combating …show more content…
WIC has allowed food packages that specifies the healthy foods that can be purchased and the items in the food groups that can be selected by the participants, because of this consumption of these foods are almost a guarantee for their participants. Currently SNAP does not have any specific requirements for varying the foods that can be purchased by their participants. This can potentially lead to more lower nutritionally dense foods being purchased with the SNAP benefits potentially lowering the quality of the participant’s diets rather than improving them. When WIC changed their food packages in 2009 there was a significant rise in whole grain consumption and decrease in whole milk consumption (6), this concept could prove useful in improving the diets of SNAP