Food insecurity is term that gets thrown around a lot when discussing underprivileged areas and impoverished people, but what does it mean?
LA County Health defines food insecurity as:
"a serious public health problem as food insecure individuals face barriers
to consuming healthy food, and, due to excess intake of calories, saturated fats, salt, and
added sugars, are at increased risk for many diet-related chronic conditions, including high
blood pressure, obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and many forms of cancer."
Food insecurity is a huge issue in the United States and the world as a whole. It is not only the limited access to food in general, food insecurity is the limited access to any fresh foods. That is an issue because the lack of nutrients in a solely fast-food and processed food diet causes so many underlying issues that then, in turn, cost the food insecure individual money in medical expenses or cause them to live with an unmedicated chronic illness. Healthy food is an investment that almost half of the population cannot make.
The difference between healthy and non-healthy food in America and Los Angeles in particular is quite astounding. In 2021 alone, the global health food industry made $95.56 billion keeping in mind that around 40% of the world population cannot afford health foods, and about a third of those people will probably regularly opt out of healthy foods, and about a third of that will actually regularly eat healthy foods making the market only around 1 billion people worldwide. Eating an extremely healthy diet costs about $14,000 a year for a family of four while eating fast food costs about $3,862 a year for a family of four as well. While those are two extremes, it shows how expensive it is to eat nourishing foods.
Why is this important? Food is very important for fueling and nourishing all bodies, but especially young bodies. Children who grow up with food insecurity are at increased risk for delayed development, diabetes, obesity, inability to concentrate and therefore poor performance in school, and so many other things. The gut is center of our bodies both literally and figuratively--gut health is tied to so many different bodily functions and being malnourished is detrimental especially to young, growing children (check this article). The cheapest food in Los Angeles is foods that are full of excessive calories, saturated fats, sugars, and so many chemicals--that is not the food that maintains a state of health yet it is all some people can afford. People in marginalized communities who cannot afford food are at a disadvantage not only from an economic perspective, but also from an equilibrium standpoint.
What can be done? This is a hard question because there are so many uncontrollable factors that make healthy food so expensive, but there is also an unnecessary premium that comes with a "healthy" label. One thing that LA County is proposing that is done to secure access to healthier foods for food insecure individuals is to change the focus from "food security" to "nutrition security" improving the quality of food made available to low income communities. They also plan to increase nutrition incentive programs to garner more funding for future projects to teach about proper nutrition.
Comments