Reference
- Food SecurityFood security, as defined by the World Food Summit of 1996, is “when people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life.” Usually, the concept of food security includes both physical and economic access to food that meets people's dietary needs and preferences. Cities employ various strategies to ensure that their populations are food secure, including supporting urban agriculture, food banks and other charities that feed people, and the elimination of food deserts by supporting food retailers in communities that lack sources of healthy food.
- Food JusticeOne can define social injustice of our food system as the lack of an individual's access to high-quality nutritious foods. Food systems interconnect where our food comes from, who produces it, and finally who ultimately consumes it. Along this path, there are many stakeholders, and some are driven by profitability rather than nutrient quality. There are many policies in place to support production capacity, consumer education, and food safety. However, nutritional quality of the food system has not always been of paramount importance. Parameters including the consumer's genetic and physiological makeup, economic status, and geographical location can contribute to this social injustice of denying high-nutrient, quality food to individuals. These parameters are manifest in the increasing numbers of households who do not have enough nutritious food to eat (food insecurity) and those where less nutritious foods are abundantly available that contribute to obesity and its related diseases. While it may appear at first glance that food insecurity and obesity are incompatible with hunger, they are actually highly correlated as forced consumption of cheap, high-caloric/low-nutritional-value foods drives obesity in individuals. In response to public health concerns associated with food insecurity and obesity, there has been increased awareness in grassroot communities and legislative bodies to find methods to mitigate the long-term costs in medical care and productivity that social injustices in our food system propagate.
- HungerDifferences in access to food constitute a devastating dimension of inequality. The UN World Food Programme argues that this is the number one risk to global health. Chronic hunger or under-nutrition can be defined as sustained nutritional deprivation. Although it receives less international attention than food crises that cause starvation, chronic under-nutrition affects many more people worldwide.
There are major disparities in food intake between developed and developing nations. The countries with the highest prevalence of under-nutrition are largely found in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, India contains the largest number of undernourished people.
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Perspectives
Hunger
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, recognizes the individual's right ?to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care.? More than sixty years later, despite the rapid advancement of science and technology and the proliferation of humanitarian efforts, inadequate nutrition remains a major health and social problem worldwide. Food insecurity?chronic malnutrition, persistent hunger, even starvation?still afflicts more than one in seven of the world's people. As Butterly and Shepherd show, hunger is not the result of inadequate resources and technologies; rather, its cause is a lack of political will to ensure that all people have access to the food to which they are entitled?food distributed safely, fairly, and equitably. Using a cross-disciplinary approach rooted in both medicine and social science to address this crucial issue, the authors provide in-depth coverage of the biology of human nutrition; malnutrition and associated health-related factors; political theories of inadequate nutrition and famine; historical-political behaviors that have led to famine in the past; and the current political behaviors that cause hunger and malnutrition to remain a major health problem today.
Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
Do you want to make a true difference in the world Dr. Ron Sider does. He has, since before he first published Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger in 1978. Despite a dramatic reduction in world hunger since then, 34,000 children still die daily of starvation and preventable disease, and 1.3 billion people, worldwide, remain in abject poverty. So, the professor of theology went back to re-examine the issues by twenty-first century standards. Finding that Conservatives blame morally reprehensible individual choices, and Liberals blame constrictive social and economic policy, Dr. Sider finds himself agreeing with both sides. In this new look at an age-old problem, he offers not only a detailed explanation of the causes, but also a comprehensive series of practical solutions, in the hopes that Christians like him will choose to make a difference.
SNAP Matters
In 1963, President Kennedy proposed making permanent a small pilot project called the Food Stamp Program (FSP). By 2013, the program's fiftieth year, more than one in seven Americans received benefits at a cost of nearly $80 billion. Renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2008, it currently faces sharp political pressure, but the social science research necessary to guide policy is still nascent. In SNAP Matters, Judith Bartfeld, Craig Gundersen, Timothy M. Smeeding, and James P. Ziliak bring together top scholars to begin asking and answering the questions that matter. For example, what are the antipoverty effects of SNAP? Does SNAP cause obesity? Or does it improve nutrition and health more broadly? To what extent does SNAP work in tandem with other programs, such as school breakfast and lunch? Overall, the volume concludes that SNAP is highly responsive to macroeconomic pressures and is one of the most effective antipoverty programs in the safety net, but the volume also encourages policymakers, students, and researchers to continue examining this major pillar of social assistance in America.
Un Millennium Development Library: Halving Hunger
The Millennium Development Goals, adopted at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, are the world's targets for dramatically reducing extreme poverty in its many dimensions by 2015 income poverty, hunger, disease, exclusion, lack of infrastructure and shelter while promoting gender equality, education, health and environmental sustainability. These bold goals can be met in all parts of the world if nations follow through on their commitments to work together to meet them. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals offers the prospect of a more secure, just, and prosperous world for all.The UN Millennium Project was commissioned by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to develop a practical plan of action to meet the Millennium Development Goals. As an independent advisory body directed by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, the UN Millennium Project submitted its recommendations to the UN Secretary General in January 2005.The core of the UN Millennium Project's work has been carried out by 10 thematic Task Forces comprising more than 250 experts from around the world, including scientists, development practitioners, parliamentarians, policymakers, and representatives from civil society, UN agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, and the private sector.This report lays out the recommendations of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger in seven major categories: political action; national policy reforms; increased agricultural productivity for food insecure farmers; improved nutrition for the chronically hungry; productive safety nets for the acutely hungry; improved rural incomes and markets; and restoration and conservation of natural resources essential for food security. The task force strongly endorses the Secretary General's call for a 21st Century African Green Revolution. These bold yet practical approaches will enable countries in every region of the world to halve world hunger by 2015.
World Poverty and Undernutrition
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Every night, one in eight people goes to bed hungry. Get an eye-opening look at undernourishment in the developing and post-industrialized worlds. You'll consider the two types of malnourishment, the concept of "plump poverty," the roles played by urban slums and overpopulation, and ways we can work to eradicate world hunger.
The Man Who Tried to Feed the World
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowFollow the story of Norman Borlaug, a man who not only solved India's famine problem but would go on to lead a "Green Revolution" of worldwide agriculture programs estimated to have saved one billion lives.
Hunger in America
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowHUNGER IN AMERICA is a powerful documentary tackling the hunger epidemic in America.
In the USA today, one in six people, including hard-working men and women, suburban families and children are struggling with hunger. Tonight, over 50 million Americans won't have enough food to eat by day's end. This insightful documentary will change your whole perception on what hunger and food insecurity looks like.
Prevalence of Undernourishment
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Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Leftovers: Senior Citizens Suffering With Food Insecurity
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowThis documentary takes a journey across the country to understand why senior citizens are the fastest growing group of people going hungry in America.
The experiences, people, and issues are vividly genuine. The fact that over 5 million American seniors experience food insecurity is astounding. This journey will change your thinking about aging along with how you see the present for the seniors in your life and your own future.