One in Four

One in Four

At this point, it is hard to imagine the United States without a federal nutrition safety net. Still reeling from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the country has millions of people who are out of work or working for far less money than before. Families have lost homes, depleted savings, or put dreams like purchasing a home or enrolling in college on hold. Hunger lurks in our nation’s distressed communities. Nutrition programs like SNAP, National School Lunch and Breakfast programs, and WIC (for pregnant women, babies, and young children) help keep hunger at bay.

In May 2011, the number of people receiving SNAP benefits, already at an all-time high of more than 44 million, climbed by another million. It was the largest single-month increase since September 2008, when the Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers collapsed and the country spiraled into financial crisis.

In April, tornados pulverized sections of the country, destroying homes and property in areas that were already struggling. SNAP participation in Alabama increased by 102 percent, mostly because of a powerful tornado that touched down in Birmingham, the largest city in the state, destroying homes and businesses.¹ Just one month after the increase in participation, the number of SNAP participants in Alabama fell by 37.5 percent, as people affected by the storm started to recover and no longer needed assistance.²

When drought or floods destroy crops, Americans expect the federal government to be there to help farmers recover, and the government comes through. When natural disaster wipes out communities, Americans also count on government to be there to help families and businesses recover. The nutrition programs are one of the fastest, most effective lines of disaster response.

Few people realize that one in four Americans participated in a federal nutrition program in 2011.³ Nutrition programs pay for food purchased in grocery stores and at farmer’s markets; served in schools, day care, and senior centers; provided at food banks, food pantries, and soup kitchens; prescribed to women by their doctors for pre- and postnatal care. Nutrition programs fortify America’s families, students, and workforce. They keep families together, children learning, and the economy going. Without them, millions more households would be struggling to put food on the table.

There are undoubtedly holes in the safety net. Not everyone who needs help is eligible to participate in the programs. Some families aren’t prepared to spend all their savings to meet the low asset limits that program participants are allowed. As noted earlier, federal nutrition programs could do more to help people eat healthy foods as well.

However, improvements in child nutrition programs as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 are making it possible to reach more low-income children and to raise the nutritional quality of the food served. Bread for the World members and many partner groups pushed for these and other improvements—the most significant in 16 years. In spite of this success, much more progress is possible and needed, particularly at a time when more children than ever before depend on these programs as their primary source of a healthy diet.

In recent years, health professionals in the developing world have concluded that nothing is more important to human and social development than good nutrition at critical stages of a person’s life, especially in childhood. Countries that have expanded nutrition programs, such as Bangladesh, Brazil, and Ghana, have made extraordinary progress in areas ranging from children’s health and school performance to national economic growth and political stability. The United States, too, has used national nutrition programs to fight malnutrition. The first major U.S. nutrition program, the National School Lunch Program, was authorized in 1946, following World War II, when officials realized how many would-be soldiers had been rejected for military service because of malnutrition.⁴

Clearly, conditions in the United States today are much different than in developing countries. But the United States, like other countries, must sustain the progress it has made and adapt to changing circumstances. “Obesity is now the leading medical reason why young Americans today are unable to qualify for the armed forces,” reads a statement signed by dozens of retired generals and other senior Armed Forces officials and sent to leaders of Congress in 2010, on the eve of the most recent child nutrition reauthorization.⁵ The statement urged policymakers to support robust improvements in child nutrition programs. “At least 9 million young adults, or 27 percent of all young Americans ages 17 to 24, are too overweight to enlist,” they noted.⁶

Childhood obesity and hunger both demand our attention since they carry serious consequences for individuals and for the country as a whole. The two problems are frequently interconnected. Philadelphia, for example, is one of the poorest cities in the United States, which makes it one of the hungriest as well. The obesity rate of Philadelphia’s poor children is higher than that of children who are not poor.⁷ In this, Philadelphia is not atypical but representative. According to a national survey of children’s health, “The odds of a child’s being obese or overweight were 20–60 percent higher among children in neighborhoods with the most unfavorable social conditions.” Unfavorable social conditions, in plainer language, are the many problems that add up to what it means to live in a poor neighborhood. These include high levels of food insecurity, intermittent hunger, and limited access to supermarkets or to easy transportation to higher-income neighborhoods where healthy foods are readily accessible.⁸