Food Insecurities Hit US Families
Over sixteen million children in the United States lack food needed for their survival. With the current economy, their parents cannot provide for them the food they need. The long terms effects of inadequate nutrition cause lifelong problems. Without necessary nutrients children will have stunted growth and other health problems that will most likely cause health issues for their whole lives. Children who eat only fatty and unhealthy food will be at a much higher risk for heart disease and obesity. Often a lack of access to affordable fruits, vegetables, milk and other healthy foods within a close distance can be classified as a source of malnutrition for children. People often do not have easy access to transportation making it difficult to reach grocery stores. These areas are referred to as food deserts.
First Lady Michelle Obama is working to bring food deserts in the United States to an end. Teaming up with Wal-Mart and other major grocery stores, she hopes to expand more than 1,500 grocery stores, bringing fresh foods to in communities in need. Not only will this project provide needed fruits and vegetables, but people in the area will be able to find jobs at the new stores, helping them to be able to better provide for their families. The USA Today article about the topic reads, “Penny Gordon-Larsen, a nutrition researcher at the University of North Carolina, says, ‘It's wonderful to provide greater access to underserved areas, but providing access alone may not be enough. These efforts need to be coupled with promotion, education and incentives for purchasing healthier foods.’”
Operation Others (OO) food baskets provide temporary relief to the persistent problem of food insecurity in the United States. Many of the people OO serves live in food deserts and would not have fresh foods over the holidays if not for Operation Others. The process of delivering food starts long before the holiday season. The “Core Team” of OO is chosen at the end of each school year. About five students from each Catholic school in Omaha are chosen to plan and organize the entirety of OO’s efforts for that year. These students dedication to helping eradicate food insecurity is unmatched anywhere else. They plan fundraising events such as trick-or-treating for canned food items and dances to raise money which helps to purchase food. Students on Core Team also volunteer at other local organizations which help to provide food to the community all year around. Students work with Kids Against Hunger which packages rice mixes to be sent to underdeveloped countries and children in the US. The rice is extremely nutritious, helping children get the vitamins they need to survive. OO also volunteers at the food bank and serves meals at shelters. The leaders of OO think that allowing the students to interact with the people receiving food at Christmas gives them greater incentive to do their work and shows that their food baskets are needed and important to the families.
Food insecurity has become a growing concern for many American families in recent years. Rising food prices make providing healthy meals for families increasingly more difficult. Since 2006 the amount of people who need assistance or have visited pantries has increased forty-six percent. Without assistance parents may not be able to provide any substantial meals to their children or themselves. It is hard for a family to buy healthy, but more expensive food at the grocery store when they could easily go to a fast food chain and order off the dollar menu. The world’s population reached seven billion on October 31, 2011. As the population continues to grow, the food sources cannot keep up. Food is not being evenly distributed to the growing population. Organizations such as Operation Others help for the time being, but something needs to be done to eliminate the problem of food insecurity.
All of the fundraising and work students on Operation Others Core Team have done throughout the fall culminates in a delivery week. The week starts by students cleaning out the warehouse, preparing it for boxing of food baskets. Students then begin to prepare boxes and form assembly lines of food to be packed into the Christmas baskets. Food items are chosen based on what a family needs, what is nutritious, and what items can make a good Christmas meal. Items often include fresh fruits, milk, turkey, potatoes, bread, cereal, and canned food items. Boxes go down an assembly line and students, as well as adult volunteers, fill them with food. The amount of food given depends on the family’s size. After each box is full they are grouped by which zip code they will be delivered to.
On the morning of delivery day students and parents begin the process of distributing food baskets to the families’ homes. Once their cars are loaded completely full with boxes, drivers, with addresses and MapQuest in hand, set out to spread holiday cheer. Wanting to get a full experience of delivery week, I jump into a car going to a neighborhood of North Omaha. A sense of anticipation feels the car. The families know that they will be receiving the baskets, but how will they react? Will they be thankful? Will they be happy and excited?
As the car nears the first home everyone becomes excited and nervous. The car is put into park and immediately everyone hops out. One student runs to ring the doorbell while the rest of us go to grab boxes of food. I hear children’s excited screams from inside the home. A smile grows across my face. I lift a box full of frozen items and carry it up to the porch. There are at least a dozen small children running around. It seems as though at least two families may be living here. An adult tells us to set the boxes down just inside the door. A young girl runs up to be with a card, it reads “Thank you! Merry Christmas!” The pure joy I see in these children’s eyes makes me realize why the students spend so much time working on this project. Even if the food does not help families for a long period, it at least gives them a little Christmas cheer, and possibly their parents extra money to spend on other necessities instead of food.
Operation Others is not just helping unemployed people. The majority of families that struggle with food insecurities are working class families. Their jobs do not pay enough to make ends meet. Feeding America is an organization that helps people in need of food and teaches the public about food insecurity. Their website includes videos of people who have benefited from services. Kim and Eric were an average American middle class family. Kim worked three jobs and Eric had two. They decided it was time to buy their own home because Kim was expecting their first child. Because of complications in the pregnancy, Kim had to stop working and Eric was laid off around the same time. Eric decided he needed a source of income so he got a real estate license. Kim learned to be a loan broker and they built a large company together. For a while the company was very profitable, but once the economy started to go down, so did their income. They were not able to afford the necessities such as groceries. Kim and Eric started to go to the food bank. Eric talks about how at first this was extremely hard because he did not see himself as a ‘typical’ poor person, but they needed to accept the help from their community in order to get by. Kim and Eric’s story in just one of millions showing that working hard does not promise financial security. Families, now more than ever, are experiencing food insecurity and something must be done to fix the growing problem.
The first step to helping eliminate food insecurity is to create awareness of the problem. Many people do not realize how large of an issue this has become. ConAgra Mills’ recent project places the facts right in front of the public’s eyes. They worked with Feeding America and General American Transportation Corp. to create six custom designed railroad cars with facts about childhood hunger. The cars read, “1 in 4 children in America struggles with hunger. Join us and donate at feedingamerica.org.” This message will be seen as the cars travel over more than 25,000 miles of rail tracks in the United States.
Feeding America does much more than just helping spread the word through rail car paintings. With the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and The Nielsen Company they started the Map the Meal Gap project. They wanted to learn more about food insecurity, especially childhood hunger and focus on helping at a local level. Feeding America defines food insecurity as, the “lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited of uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods.” Their research shows that 16.6 percent of the nation and 23.2 percent of children experience food insecurities. Those numbers equal over fifty million people suffering from lack of food, with over seventeen million being children.
Harvesters, the Kansas City food bank, also helped Feeding America with their research for Map the Meal Gap. Named the ‘Food Bank of the Year’, Harvesters serves twenty-six counties in Kansas and Missouri. Every county in the nation, including these twenty-six, were found to have food insecure children by the Map the Meal Gap project. Although a child may be food insecure they do not necessarily qualify for help. In Harvesters’ twenty-six counties, only fifty-eight percent of the food insecure population qualifies for Food Stamps. The other forty-two percent must rely on charities such as Operation Others and similar food distribution programs in order to provide their families with needed food. These families typically make more than what qualifies as the poverty line, about $41,000 a year for a family of four, but with all the other expenses a family faces; it is not enough to make ends meet.
I sat down with Jerry Kinney, the director of Operation Others to talk about his project and dedication to creating awareness of food insecurity. He spoke of the two main missions of OO, creating awareness and providing the Christmas food baskets. To him, the first is almost more important. If the community can become aware that this problem is real and it is local, not just affecting people far away in underdeveloped countries, then people will be more likely to work to fix it year around. Providing the food baskets comes in a close second of importance. Kinney said, “I think that the amount of food we supply allows families even for a moment, or for a week, or a couple of days to not have to worry about that food bill.” Kinney talks about how being a teacher at a Jesuit school means more than just teaching Spanish classes. He believes as a Jesuit teacher he must do more to help his community. OO provides a way for Kinney to serve his community and teach his students about the importance of volunteering.
Kinney talked a lot about how working class people have extreme difficulties in making ends meets. Working odd jobs when he was a student, he met many people who worked full time, sometimes having two jobs, and still could not afford everything their family needed. Often the majority of a family’s money must be spent on health expenses and it is difficult to purchase food, especially healthy food. This problem will only increase in the coming year. Food price are projected to rise about four percent. Depending on what families buy this number could be even worse. Beef and cooking oils are expected to raise 9 and 7.5 percent, respectively.
Operation Others attempts to choose food items that will allow families to make meals. If they are providing rice, they will try to find beans. If they have peanut butter, they will try to also provide jelly. Items are also chosen based on average price. When choosing between flour and cooking oils, oils will often win because they cost more so families have a greater chance of being able to purchase flour for themselves. OO receives some of their food from the Omaha Food Bank. Sadly the food banks are running low this year causing Kinney and other OO leaders to look elsewhere for food, often costing them more money. This shows how rising food prices are not only affecting families, but those who are trying to help them.
Working with food insecurity every day cannot be easy. Kinney talks about how it is difficult knowing that Operation Others will not end the problem. “My hope is that through the education that we are doing, and just by exposing more and more students to this, there will be someone out there, or a whole community of people, who are sensitive to this issue, and change will come about slowly” Kinney expressed. Food insecurity will not go away overnight. People must become aware of the issue and work towards a solution. An answer is not easy to come by, but if people continue to work together, great progress can be made to ending food insecurity.
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