Effect of Poverty and Food Insecurity on Children’s Health
Chapter One
Research Objectives
The main objective of the study is to assess the effect of food insecurity on children’s mental health, and the specific objectives are:
- To determine the prevalence of food insecurity among children
- To investigate the relationship between food insecurity and children’s health outcomes
- To explore the strategies that can be employed to reduce food insecurity and improve children’s health outcomes
- To examine the role of social determinants, such as poverty, race, and ethnicity, in shaping food insecurity
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Conceptual review
Concept of Food Insecurity
Food insecurity is the lack of consistent access to adequate food due to financial or other resource constraints. It means that individuals, households, or entire communities do not have reliable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences. Food insecurity can result in hunger, malnutrition, and other negative health outcomes (Gundersen, 2017). It can be caused by a range of factors, including poverty, unemployment, low income, lack of access to education and healthcare, and environmental factors such as drought or climate change.
Food insecurity is a complex issue that affects individuals and communities at different levels and requires a multifaceted approach to address. It is a significant problem globally, with millions of people facing food insecurity every day (Gundersen, 2017). The concept of food insecurity emphasizes the importance of access to adequate food, not just its availability, and highlights the need for policies and programs that support equitable access to healthy and nutritious food for all (Husain, 2018).
The essential items in the world for a human being are food, with clothing and shelter. It is also known as basic needs. Since the beginning of human civilization, food security is a vital tool for people. It holds great importance for nations those who have enormous population base and weak agricultural infrastructure (Husain, 2018).. The concept of food security originated around 50 years ago at the time of global food crises in the early 1970s. Approximately four decades ago, there were about 200 definitions of food security published in different writings (Maxwell and Smith, 2017). Food security is going through an evolutionary change during the past many years with space and time.
From time to time, the concept of food security and their approaches have been developed and modified according to the common understanding of the nature of the food problem and the evolution of the global food system. The term and the concept of „food security‟ were started nearly four and a half-decade ago during the World Food Conference organised in 1974 by Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The world community for the first time in this conference tried to find out ways and means to provide food security to the hungry people by producing enough food, promise for the supply of food and giving safety form with the fluctuations in food prices (Anderson and Cook, 2019) and first time the concept of food insecurity came into existence as a means to distinguish the relationship between hunger, poverty and unemployment. Food insecurity is a very complex phenomenon due to a range of factors that vary in importance among social groups, across regions and countries, as well as overtime (Anderson, 2016). These factors can be grouped in four clusters representing the following four areas of possible vulnerability those are the socio-economic and political environment, the performance of the food economy, care practices, health and sanitation (FAO. 2017). The 2008 global food crisis create riots in many countries, which seek the attention of the public in food security. In July 2009 G8 heads of state agreed to “to act with the scale and urgency needed to achieve sustainable global food security” (Barrett, 2019).
Food insecurity is described as “limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways”. (American Dietetic Association 2018). Those individuals whose food intake decreases below their minimum calorie requirements are coming under the food insecure category, as well as the person who is physically not fit, or have some disease due to the lack of food and hunger or unbalance diet. (FAO. 2020)”.
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