Communities, for instance ones with low income with limited access to resources needed, around the US have issues with hunger, with issues such as not being able to either get food or at least get food that has good nutrients because they either can’t really afford to get the food or they live in an area where getting to a store where they can actually get more healthy foods is truly a struggle for the family. The communities hunger issue is being in need of food but are unable to get food because there is a lack of food near the people or a lack of funds to get food.
An example of people families living in these types of areas described are families in food desert. The issue of hunger in food deserts, which is an area where it is hard for people in that area to buy good-quality or affordable fresh food is a pretty serious matter and effects a decent amount of states in the US because the food deserts have limited access to resources such as food. Another group who would be considered in the lower income community that have some of the similar issues as food desert families are college students. For instance, in a study done by Temple University and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab found that 36 percent of student on US campuses aren’t able to get enough to eat (Kennedy).
College students may not all be able to afford healthy choices of food and inside might either get small amounts of food so they don’t have to spend much money, leaving them still hungry, or get unhealthy cheap food instead. It is important to understand and recognize the issue of hunger in specific communities such as communities with low income people that have limited access to resources such as college students and food deserts because many college students do not get an adequate amount of food and food desert families do not have food to get for themselves and whatever food they can get it doesn’t have the nutrients those people need to live healthy lives.
127 our experts are availableright now
The knowledge of food issues in the communities such as food deserts is very important for the fact that not many people really recognize how serious a food desert really is. People may not understand even what food desert really is or what classifies as a food desert. The food desert is recognized as “a concentrated area short on access to fresh meat and produce, but flush with the packaged and fried yield of convenience stores and fast-food outlets,” and no a “cluster of blocks without a corner grocery doesn’t warrant the label; an entire neighborhood, or a cluster of neighborhoods, without a mainstream grocery store” gets recognized as a food desert.
For someone living in a food desert in Chicago to just travel from where they reside to a grocery store, they have to travel “on average to reach any type of grocery store–0.59 miles” and they have to “travel twice as far to reach a grocery store as a fast-food restaurant” (Wehunt 217). This may not seem terrible, but these people every time they want to get groceries have to travel this distance and walking with nothing in your hands for that distance isn’t terrible, but the people in the food deserts have to travel these distances with all their groceries, more than likely make these people very tired and unwilling to want to get groceries and rather would just choose the unhealthier choice of fast food which is closer and less weight to be carried.
A possible reason these issues aren’t seen as being very important or people may not know how serious these issues are is because the USDA has decided not to use the word hunger anymore when discussing hunger. They use a phrase that doesn’t sound as bad and may put a different picture in peoples mind instead. For instance, with the change from “hunger” to “food insecurity” the USDA states food insecurity is basically just the social condition of hunger (Allen 224), but it’s a confusing way of saying it making it so people don’t really understand what’s being said. People may think with the new terminology that people aren’t hungry anymore and they have food, but they just may not have as much as others do. Substituting “food insecurity” for “hunger” is just causing “violence to hungry people and to the efforts to end hunger in America” (Allen 225).
There’s a family, husband, wife and two young children; the family is lower income family with no car and take the bus to work. They live in a non-wealthy neighborhood far from any grocery stores. They have fast-food restaurants within reasonable walking distance, but the closest grocery store is five miles away. The family will mostly go out for fast-food for their meals and about once a month make a trip by foot to the grocery store to pick up some food to prepare at home. The constant eating out takes a toll on the family’s income, but they have no choice since the stores are too far away.
While all this is happening with this family, a similar situation occurs with a college student across the country. The student doesn’t have a lot of money and doesn’t really have any form of transportation. He has to go out and eat more often than not, but since he is a poor college student the constant eating out is also taking a toll on the money he has. The constant of the two scenario’s is the two groups of people are part of the same community, a low economy community who are struggling with hunger based on where they live and the money they have.
The importance of recognizing the issue of hunger in low income communities is serious, but it is possible to help stop some of the problem that is the issue. Some more grocery store can be opened closer to some of the food deserts and colleges to make it easier for the families and students to buy food at the stores rather than going to closer more convenient fast food. How this solution can happen is by getting local officials to figure out where the best places are to open just a couple grocery stores to gradually get the problem to go down, creating less food deserts and creating less hungry college students.
