Health Options
Help the hungry
for the holidays
and all yearIt is such a blessing that many Americans can worry about eating too much during the holiday season. Certainly, preventing excess weight gain is a major health issue, but it pales in significance to the problem of food insecurity that exists for a substantial portion of the U.S. population.
A report released in November by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicated that 10.7 percent of U.S. households were food-insecure during 2001. Also, people were hungry in 3.3 percent of U.S. households.
Question: What is food insecurity?
Answer: Food-secure households are defined as those whose members all had access to enough food throughout the year for an active healthy life.
Food-insecure households had limited or uncertain access to food or were unable to acquire adequate food in socially acceptable ways. For some, getting sufficient food requires taking advantage of emergency food supplies, scavenging or stealing.
Because of extreme anxiety about running out of food, food-insecure households generally reduce the quality of their food choices to prevent hunger.
Q: How does the USDA define hunger?
A: Of course, everyone feels hungry now and then, but the USDA defines hunger as "involuntary hunger that results from not being able to afford enough food." Cutting calories to lose weight is not "hungry."
Q: Are food-insecure people in the United States usually underweight?
A: No. It may seem paradoxical, but various studies confirm that food insecurity is associated with greater overweight, not underweight. The exact reason is not known, but it may be related to reliance on low-cost, high-fat and high-sugar convenience foods and to physiological adaptation to periodic food shortages.
Q: Are food insecurity and hunger as common in Hawaii as they are in the rest of the country?
A: Yes. Between 1999 and 2001, 221,000 Hawaii residents were estimated to live in food-insecure households. The Office of State Planning's Food Security Task Force expects to submit a report to the 2003 State Legislature with recommendations for actions to improve local food security.
Q: Doesn't the state already have a food-security policy?
A: No, and consequently no state department is empowered to take leadership to solve this complex social and economic problem, according to task force staffer Scott Derrickson.
As a result, Derrickson notes. "We are missing out on federal food-assistance dollars that could make the difference between band-aid approaches and dealing with the food-security problem at its roots. To top it off, these federal funds would result in more food purchased locally and help to fuel the state's economy."
During this holiday season, please give generously to organizations providing food to the needy. In the year ahead, encourage the 2003 Legislature to develop a food-security policy for Hawaii.
Health Events
Alan Titchenal, Ph.D., C.N.S., is a sports nutritionist in the
Department of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Science,
University of Hawaii-Manoa.Joannie Dobbs, Ph.D., C.N.S., is a food and nutrition consultant
and owner of Exploring New Concepts, a nutritional consulting firm.
She is also responsible for the nutritional analyses
indicated by an asterisk in this section.