Food poverty essay
A) How poverty affects our choice of diet?
Poverty affects our diet in multiple ways. The four main reasons behind food poverty are awareness or lack of, accessibility, affordability and availability. ‘One in ten people in Ireland are living in food poverty, which is defined as the inability to have an adequate and nutritious diet due to issues of affordability and access to food with related impacts on health, culture and social participation.’(Healthy food forall.2014, p.1)
Without accessibility to food the like hood of a diet being poor is greater. Lack of accessibility can be caused by many factors. Some may not have the means to travel to the local shop without a car carrying grocery bags more than a mile is almost impossible. It could also be an issue of disability, where the person would have no way of getting to a shop. Higher income houses would usual have this accessibility or education to be able to continue a healthy diet.
Availability of food is a large factor in food choice for low earning households. The availability of food depends entirely on which types of shops are located in local areas. If they’re large super markets with a
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One in five Irish children is considered to be obese with levels of obesity reaching epidemic proportions in recent years. More than 300,000 Irish children are now considered obese and this figure is estimated to increase by 10,000 annually’ (inmo, 2014, p.1). All children run the risk of obesity during childhood; even though this is considered genetic are some cases. The main cause of obesity in Ireland is unhealthy eating, lack of exercise and socio-economic background. Obesity an epidemic in Irish young people and is steadily getting worse. ‘Obesity in childhood causes a wide range of serious complications, and increases the risk of premature ill and death later in life raising public concerns’ (The lancet,2002,p.
In many cases, the local food pantry may be a far drive and residents do not have proper transportation to get there.2 Even if residents are able to go to food pantries, typically there is not a lot of fresh food due to the expenses of keeping fresh food refrigerated. Vandhana Ramadurai and colleagues focus-group study expresses incidences of these food disparities. Participants stated, “From the Food banks, you don’t get any fruits and vegetables. You can get beans and rice.
This source comes from the magazine “Slate” which is known for arguing against Commonly held views about a subject’s one of them being food. The article “Food Deserts Aren’t the Problem” explains that giving the poor access to healthy food will not make the poor healthy. Heather Gilligan shows an insight to the things that cause poor people have a shorter lifespan than those with a higher income. The diet of the poor does not really change when they have access to healthier food manly because the healthier food is still to expensive.
In the journal “Cost of Being Poor” by Debabrata Talukdar, the discussion focuses on the price difference between inner city and suburban neighborhoods and how the price affects among the social class and statuses. Talukdar used objective measures when conducting the social class measurements. Objective measures of the social class consist of factual questions and in-depth information about a selected demographic while subjective measures only allow participants to envision their own stand in the social class. In the research, data was thoroughly conducted; Talukdar uses income as one of the measures. It falls under the single-variable indexes.
Obesity has been a huge problem for most children in America. Every generation, it becomes more of a problem than what it was the generation prior to it. Many children suffer with this problem today because of the lifestyles that they live. Children tend to lack adequate amounts of exercise that they need because of the many distractions that they face every day. Most of the day, kids are sitting around the house watching television, playing video games or on some type of a new device that has just been released.
Lazarou & Kouta (2010) define obesity as “a chronic metabolic disease, considered to be one of the main risk factors for cardiovascular disease”, and state that hypertension, atherosclerosis and type two diabetes have also been shown to be more likely in people with obesity (p. 641). These adult health problems have now become commonplace amongst children and youth today (Tuckwood, 2012). With obesity being diagnosed at earlier ages, prevention becomes increasingly difficult; personal habits are harder to break, health risks are more serious, and the likelihood of living with obesity in adulthood is significantly higher. Fifty percent of children who are obese will become obese adults (Lazarou & Kouta, 2010).
Children are the future and children with obesity can end up with serious health problems in the
Households below the poverty line was 6.7 % more likely to suffer from food insecurity as compared to those whose income is above the poverty line (Lombe et al,
In today’s society “one out of three children is considered overweight or obese” (Little 2011). Childhood obesity is linked to several severe health problems. Children who are overweight or obese are at risk of having cardiovascular disease and problems relating to that such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and type-two diabetes during childhood. Physical problems aren’t the only problem relating to obesity; “Research confirms obese children are at a higher risk for social and psychological problems” because overweight kids tend to get bullied due to their weight (Little 2011). Children who have weight issues early on are also more likely to have weight issues as adults.
According to the Economic research service of the U.S department of Agriculture that the family had at times, “limited or uncertain access to adequate food, caused by either economic or social conditions.” In other words the family didn’t always have enough food to feed everyone. Among households with children, one in five 7.8 million households were food insecure. (Hunger Pg.1) How can so many Americans be hungry in a country whe4re obesity is an
The problem of childhood obesity in the United States has grown considerably in recent years. Approximately one out of every five children in the U.S is overweight or obese, and the number is continuing to rise. As of 2012, more than one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese. Next, percentage of children age 6-11 years in the United States who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2012. Being overweight or obese is defined as having excess body weight for a particular height from fat, muscle, bone, water or a combination of these factors.
I was born and raised in Ethiopia, a country in the east of Africa. Currently, I live in the United States of America. Growing up in a developing country, I witnessed health, environmental, and social problems endured by communities, and specifically that people were unevenly affected based on their literacy level and livelihood. For instance, many citizens lost their lives due to limited access to and expensive costs of medical care. Subsequently, I have noticed similar issues in the United States.
1. Introduction The rate of childhood obesity has increased over few years. There are 41 million children in the world are overweight or at risk of obesity. Childhood obesity is a serious health problem.
Obesity in children is a significant public health concern. In addition, there is evidence that the incidence of children who are overweight is increasing despite efforts to the contrary. The consequences of child obesity are far reaching, implicating not only children on a physical scale but also socially and mentally. However,
This means that healthy food it’s not really that expensive it’s just people making wrong decisions in wrong choices of their eating habits. That means that poor eating habits are just excuses because in some cases it’s not a economic reason. The income gap affects food choices is it in the sense that people are not driven to pick up a healthy organic lettuce or a healthy organic carrots, people that are struggling with money may have stress eating disorder so they look for food stable saturate them and often end up buying some mac & cheese or some frozen dinner plates.” If you’re living from paycheck to paycheck and on a limited budget, you’re probably more likely to skip the organic vegetables and reach for the boxed mac and cheese instead”-Mike Collins.
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background Hunger is still a major concern in health issues. Hunger causes malnutrition, malnutrition and others. Famine kills more people than TB, HIV / AIDS and Malaria. A quarter of children born in developing countries are underweight.