America is viewed around the world as a land of plenty. Our standard of living is among the highest in the world. But even here, poverty persists and many go without basic needs. That includes the need for food. According to a 2010 Arizona Health Survey, more than one third of Arizona’s residents – 37 percent – qualify as “low income.” Of that number, some 40 percent were found to be food insecure.
Food insecurity refers to a lack of access to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members – as measured against guidelines established by the USDA. It also refers to having limited or uncertain access to nutritionally adequate foods. A food insecure household is one that may need to make trade-offs between important basic needs, such as housing, heating or cooling, medical bills and nutritionally adequate food.
There are many factors that contribute to Arizona’s food insecurity statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor information for that same year found Arizona’s unemployment rate to be 10 percent, higher than the national average. Unemployment was found to be a contributing factor to food insecurity in the majority of cases surveyed.
The consequences of food insecurity can be serious because nutrition and diet affect how you feel, look, think and act. A bad diet results in lower core strength, slower problem solving ability, slower muscle response time and less alertness.
Every day, our bodies need a wide range of nutrients to help them function – not just vitamins and minerals, but also calories, carbohydrates, protein and fat. When a person does not eat enough or does not eat in the proper balance, certain nutritional jobs simply don’t get done, and the side effects are serious.
Lower income people may not get enough to eat, which starves the body’s systems so that they become run down or stop working properly. Or, they may eat plenty but in a nutritionally unbalanced way, which can lead to other kinds of nutritional deficiencies – as well as problems such as obesity and hypertension.
According to a National Center of Health Statistics 2003 survey, about 65 percent of American adults are overweight or obese as a result of poor nutrition. Being overweight puts people at risk for developing a host of disorders and conditions, some of them life-threatening.
The National Institutes of Health reports that hypertension is one of the possible outcomes of poor nutrition. Eating too much junk food, fried food, salt, sugar, dairy products, caffeine and refined food can cause hypertension.
The health problems created by food insecurity often hit the youngest children in affected households the hardest. The first three years of life are a sensitive period of extraordinary brain and body growth. Young children in this phase are highly vulnerable to any nutritional deficiencies.
This can be especially true of children who are very young. Because babies and toddlers are not yet in formal educational settings outside the home, they can be largely invisible to society’s major support systems. For young children from poor and near-poor families, this societal invisibility can mean that the detrimental effects of a poor diet can often go unnoticed and untreated, diminishing a child’s educational and economic future. That’s a concern that can have a far-reaching impact on our state and our nation. QCBN
By Bob Ryan, YRMC.
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