Food Insecurity And Health

Consistent evidence demonstrates a higher risk of obesity among food-insecure women. There are a number of reasons why food-insecure people are vulnerable to obesity and poor nutrition, including:

1. limited resources to obtain adequate or healthy food; 
2. lack of access to healthy, affordable foods; 
3. cycles of food deprivation and overeating; and 
4. high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression.

In addition, food insecurity is also linked to many diet-related diseases, like diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Some evidence shows that food insecure adults with diabetes are more likely to have poor glucose control, which could be because they don’t have enough money to use their medication as directed, so they skip doses, take less medicine, or delay filling or refilling of prescriptions. For the same reason they may postpone preventive or needed medical care or forgo the foods they need for diabetic diets.

Source: Food Research & Action Council, 4/6/17, Food Insecurity & Health

Low-Income Babies Are Slimming Down

The percentage of overweight babies in poor families in the US may be declining, a new study suggests. Researchers found that fewer babies enrolled in the WIC program had a high "weight-for-length" in 2014, when compared with 2010. The percentage went from 14.5% to just over 12% in that period. High weight, even in infancy, has been linked to an increased risk of obesity later on, the study’s author said.

Changes to the WIC program are one likely reason the picture improved. During the study period, the program's food allocation package was revamped to fall in line with federal dietary guidelines, as well as infant feeding recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics. These changes resulted in increased consumption of whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

Source: Healthy Day, 12/13/16, Slimming Babies

Long-Term Benefits of SNAP

While SNAP benefits average just $1.35 per person per meal for households with children, they have surprisingly important effects on children’s health, education, and long-term outcomes. SNAP enables families to spend more on food and frees up resources they can use to meet their health and other needs. Studies show that children receiving SNAP are less likely than other low-income children not receiving SNAP to be in fair or poor health or underweight, and their families are less likely to make tradeoffs between paying for health care and paying for other basic needs, like food and housing.

New findings on food insecurity and children

Much recent research links food insecurity with negative outcomes for children’s health, education, and other areas. Other research shows that programs like SNAP can have large and long-lasting benefits, especially when the benefits are received by mothers during pregnancy and by children at a young age.

A recent study that examines the impact of the rollout of the original Food Stamp Program in the late 1960s shows that receiving Food Stamps during pregnancy reduced the incidence of low birth weight by between five and 12%. The same researchers also found that among adults who grew up in disadvantaged households, access to Food Stamps in utero and early childhood led to: a 16 percentage-point decline in the likelihood of being obese as an adult and significant reductions in metabolic syndrome (a cluster of conditions associated with heart disease and diabetes); an 18 percentage-point increase in the likelihood of completing high school; and significant improvements in overall health and economic self-sufficiency among women.

Source: Food Research & Action Council, 8/3/16, Food Insecurity Research

Beating Diabetes: Food, Fitness & Focus

Connecticut Health Investigative Team, in collaboration with ConnectiCare and Hispanic Health Council, is holding a community forum on April 7 at the Chrysalis Center in Hartford to empower diabetics and consumers at-risk of contracting diabetes to adopt a healthier lifestyle and to learn the latest information on risks and treatments from a panel of experts.

Growing up hungry may lead to obesity

How much you eat when you're not really hungry may depend on how well off your family was when you were a child, according to new research. Previous research has established childhood poverty as a risk factor for obesity, but the mechanisms driving this relationship are not completely clear. New research shows that growing up poor promotes eating in the absence of hunger in adulthood, regardless of one’s wealth in adulthood. This biological blueprint would help children survive in impoverished environments, leading them to seek out food whenever it is available, and would continue to drive their behavior as they aged, regardless of whether their access to food had improved.

Source: Science Daily, 2/4/16, Obesity/Poverty Connection

The Cost of Hunger

Did you know?

Hunger and food insecurity cost Americans over $160 billion in 2014, according to a new report from the Bread for the World Institute. According to the researchers, most of that price tag was attributable to health conditions related to living in a food-insecure household, such as depression, anemia, or diabetes. Treatment of depression and anxiety cost over $50 billion, while additional neonatal and adult hospital stays cost about $17 billion.

Source: Bread for the World Institute, 1/16, Hunger Costs

Every Child Needs Sound Nutrition

Today’s children and their families are experiencing the triple threat of obesity, food insecurity and malnutrition, says the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Nearly 1 in 3 school-age children and adolescents is overweight or obese, and only half of all children ages 2 to 17 eat diets that meet federal diet quality standards. The highest rates of obesity are found in people with the lowest incomes, and more than 14 million American children live in poverty.

The challenge for low-income families today may not be obtaining enough food, but rather having dependable access to high-quality food. Hungry children who live in food insecure households—which accounts for 1 in 5 U.S. children—have difficulty learning and are more likely to experience educational, health and behavioral problems as a result. Children with obesity are at increased risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, asthma, joint problems, and social and psychological problems, among other ailments. Read more...

Americans Are Eating Better, but to What Cost?

Amid reports of some improvements in the overall American diet, the diet quality gap between America's wealthiest and poorest has doubled. According to a study done in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine, changes in policy have helped steer people away from products like sugary drinks, but the the higher cost of healthier meals makes them inaccessible to poor families.

Read the full story from National Geographic here.

HOW SCHOOL LUNCH BECAME POLITICAL BATTLEGROUND

When Michelle Obama started Let’s Move!, her campaign against child obesity, in 2010, the members of the School Nutrition Association were her natural allies. The average weight of the American child had been climbing at an alarming rate since the 1980s, and now one in three American kids was obese or overweight. In a war to fight against childhood obesity, school cafeterias would be a perfect place to wage it. But to pass a bill, the White House needed to enlist not only Democrats and Republicans in Congress but also the manufacturers who supplied food to schools, the nutrition experts who wanted it to be more healthful, and the cafeteria workers who would have to get children to eat it.  Few people understood how to accomplish those trade-offs better than Marshall Matz, lobbyist for the School Nutrition Association, who advised his “lunch ladies” to support the legislation. But, when the government began turning the broad guidelines into specific rules with specific consequences for specific players, life became more difficult. What began as a war on obesity turned into war among onetime allies. 

Source: New York Times, 10/7/14, School Lunch Battles

CONGRESS HESITATES IN THE BATTLE AGAINST OBESITY

Child obesity has more than doubled in the past 30 years and poses a serious health threat. Recently, though, some progress has been made.  The rise in child obesity rates has halted thanks to a multi-pronged response by the federal government and health professionals. But these reforms are in jeopardy.  In three areas where the USDA has implemented science-based policies to improve children’s diets—school meals, school snacks, and foods offered by the WIC program—affected industries are seeking to reverse those policies in the upcoming Agriculture Appropriations bill. 

 

At Congress’ direction, USDA strengthened nutrition standards for school meals, like including more whole grains and vegetables and less sugar and salt. But some in Congress want to allow waivers from those standards for any school district that shows a net loss in its food service program for a six-month period, regardless of whether the loss is caused by implementing the new standards. (USDA this week gave schools a 2-year reprieve on a requirement that all grain products in schools be more than half whole grain, if they can demonstrate that they have had "significant challenges" in preparing those products.) The School Nutrition Association, which represents school food administrators and is supported by food service manufacturers, wants the waiver. The SNA estimates that about 1 million fewer students participated in the school lunch program last year—in part due to the new federal requirements.

 

USDA also established new rules for foods sold in schools that are not part of the school lunch or breakfast program, like the soda and candy sold in vending machines.  Congress is also considering a waiver to these rules. 

Source: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, 5/20/14, Anti-Obesity Rules; WNPR, 5/20/14,School Lunch Rules

Governor Malloy announces campaign to fight childhood obesity

Governor Dannel P. Malloy recently announced that fitness icon, Jake Steinfeld, Chair of the National Foundation for Governors’ Fitness Councils, is bringing the Foundation’s multi-million dollar physical fitness campaign to Connecticut help combat childhood obesity. The campaign encourages and rewards innovation in the field of youth fitness by awarding fitness centers to elementary and middle schools that use new and unique methods to promote student physical activity and wellness.

 

The nomination process runs through the end of May at www.natgovfit.org. Three schools, selected by the National Foundation, will be deemed National Champion Schools and will each be awarded $100,000 state-of-the-art Live PositivelyTM Fitness Centers for their efforts.

 

Read more here

SUPERMARKETS IN FOOD DESERTS DON’T CURE OBESITY

The logic seems simple: the consumption of healthy foods is low and obesity is high in neighborhoods where supermarkets are absent; so, opening supermarkets in those neighborhoods should boost consumption of healthier foods and drive down obesity. But the first American study testing the success of this logic showed limited gains. Six months after the opening of a new supermarket in Philadelphia, the study found, residents of the surrounding low-income neighborhood were not eating more fresh fruits and vegetables, nor were they less likely to be obese than low-income Philadelphians across town whose neighborhood continued to be a food desert. But compared with those living in food deserts, the residents of the newly served neighborhood felt they had greater access to fruits and vegetables and believed the cost of that produce had declined. And the people who said they were shopping at the new store said they were buying more fruits and vegetables.

 

Source: LA Times, 2/3/14, Food Deserts

CAN SNAP FIGHT OBESITY?

A recent study by Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity looked at purchases by WIC participants in Massachusetts and Connecticut before and after WIC rules changed in 2009 to discourage the purchase of whole-milk products, processed bread, and white rice. Researchers found participants bought significantly more whole-grain bread, brown rice, and reduced-fat milk and far less white bread, whole milk, cheese, and juice.

While half of all infants and a quarter of all children under 5 in the U.S will be on WIC at some point, it is dwarfed by SNAP, which reaches more than 47 million people. Several small projects have shown that SNAP could be used to fight obesity, but they are expensive. Changing SNAP rules to copy WIC food restrictions would be the broadest, cheapest approach, but the politics are complicated, says New York Times editorial writer Tina Rosenberg. It’s not just that SNAP participants are an enormous market for soda and junk food. Big Soda has unusual allies. “There are people in the anti-hunger community who support a soda tax in general because it affects everyone, but they oppose banning soda from SNAP because it affects only poor people,” said Marlene B. Schwartz, director of the Yale Rudd Center. “Their philosophical argument is, if it’s the right thing to do for everyone, then make it for everyone.”

Source: New York Times, 11/16/13, SNAP & Obesity I

On the other hand, “a growing body of research suggests a protective effect of SNAP participation on obesity risk," according to the Food Research and Action Center. One study, for example, found that poor people in Massachusetts receiving benefits for six months had lower body mass indexes than people receiving benefits for shorter periods of time. A study in New York City found food insecurity increased body mass only in women not receiving food assistance. And a national study found that food-insecure adults over age 54 receiving benefits were less likely to be overweight than non-beneficiaries.

Source: Huffington Post, 11/13/13, SNAP & Obesity II