Annual 'Hunger Report' shows poor families cannot afford nutritious food

Stat house
December 2005

Annual 'Hunger Report' shows poor families cannot afford nutritious food
With hunger in America on the rise for the fifth straight year and Congress poised to throw nearly 300,000 poor people off food stamps, Bread for the World Institute’s 16th annual “Hunger Report,” Frontline Issues in Nutrition Assistance, shows that poor families using food stamps cannot afford to buy Thanksgiving dinner, let alone nutritious food.

“The faces of our nation’s 24 million poor people receiving food stamps could hardly be included in Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving portrait,” said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “They cannot afford a nutritious diet, let alone a Thanksgiving dinner. Congress should be increasing food stamp benefits, not throwing people off the program.”

The Cost of Thanksgiving

A common food stamp household consists of a single, female adult with two or three school-aged children, all of whom are born U.S. citizens. The household is located in a metropolitan area and has a gross income below the federal poverty line – and often less than half of the poverty level.

In 2004, such a household received an average of $273 per month in food stamp benefits.

In Washington, D.C., nearly 65% of all food stamp recipient households have gross income below 50% of the poverty line. In Washington-area supermarkets, a minimal Thanksgiving meal would cost approximately:

Turkey (12 lbs) $8.24

Stuffing $1.79

Cornbread $1.29

Green Beans (2 lbs) $3.98

Carrots (2 lbs) $1.89

Potatoes (5 lbs) $3.69

Sweet Potatoes (4 lbs) $5.16

Cranberry Sauce $0.89

Pumpkin Pie $3.99

Butter (1 lb) $3.59

subtotal $34.51

For a recipient household consisting of a single, female adult with children, the cost of this minimal Thanksgiving meal consumes more than 1/8 of its entire monthly food stamp budget.

“A recent Boston Medical Center study shows that low income families even getting the maximum food stamp benefits cannot afford a diet consistent with our national nutrition guidelines,” Beckmann said. “All that food stamp families can afford is cheap, high fat, high sodium, high starch food that fills you up.”

Hunger 2006 argues that in the developing world, national efforts to address hunger should integrate nutrition interventions within the framework of broader development initiatives. Incorporating nutrition concerns into agricultural production and processing, for example, are two ways to improve the nutritional content of foods. Combining nutrition education with health services helps increase people’s knowledge and awareness of nutrition and the link to improved health and well-being.

Simple vitamin and mineral supplementation, either by dispensing tablets or fortifying foods in factories, represent affordable ways to make rapid progress against malnutrition. “Probably no other technology available today offers as large an opportunity to improve lives and accelerate development at such low cost and in such a short time,” notes the World Bank.

The Micronutrient Initiative, a global partnership specializing in fighting vitamin and mineral disorders, estimates the cost of providing effective protection to 380 million African women and children to be less than $1 per person per year. After five years the cost would drop by more than half of that.

Solving the problem of nutritional deficiencies is likely to require a combination of many interventions, including the establishment of nutrition safety nets. Safety net programming can ensure that good health and nutrition are within reach of everyone. Just as safety nets literally catch people if they fall, nutrition safety nets are intended to lessen the impact of poverty on human health.

In the United States, the Food Stamp Program, the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs, and the Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants and Children (also known as WIC) are all examples of nutrition safety nets. These and other federal programs make up a large part of the focus of Hunger 2006 dedicated to U.S. nutrition assistance.

The United States is fortunate to have millions of volunteers in churches and community centers in every state helping to end domestic hunger. But the problem is a big one—too big for charities to handle alone. The emergency food network, a $2 billion per year operation, contributes only a fraction of what the federal government spends on the four biggest nutrition programs: food stamps, school lunch and breakfast, and WIC. In the first half of 2005, the federal government spent close to $25 billion on just these four programs.

The fact that hunger reached historic lows in the United States during the 1970s, and now has gone back up to where it was before then, suggests the cause of hunger in the United States is primarily political. Indeed, the resources exist to feed all Americans. The only reason children and families continue to go hungry in this country is that our government allows it to happen.

Hunger 2006 regards the following as essential to making rapid progress against malnutrition and hunger:

• Food Stamp benefits should guarantee low-income families the means to purchase healthy foods. Good nutrition provides a vital boost to families so that they may escape poverty.

• Every low-income child in the United States should receive free school meals and have guaranteed access to summer food services in their communities. These nutrition programs ensure that children grow up to be healthy and prepared to succeed at school.

• A one-time push to get countries to fortify widely consumed foods would dramatically improve health. Vitamin and mineral deficiencies rob people, especially children and pregnant women, of their potential, their livelihoods and, often, their lives. Food fortification is a cheap, effective intervention that can quickly reduce the number of people at risk of chronic malnutrition.

• Nutrition assistance should function as an essential part of international development programming. Nutrition interventions combined with other development activities can lead to rapid progress against hunger.

• To address acute food shortages, food aid donors must ensure that adequate response mechanisms exist including an international famine relief fund. This can prevent potential food crises from escalating into actual emergencies, as they so often do for lack of readily available resources.

Get the full report!

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