Food Insecurity and Malnutrition: Policy Brief Analysis and Insights

This report, titled "Food Insecurity and its impact on poverty," addresses the global challenge of malnutrition, emphasizing its connection to food insecurity. It defines key terms like malnutrition and food insecurity, highlighting their impact on health and economic development. The report examines the Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program in the United States, designed to combat food insecurity and promote self-sufficiency in low-income communities. It identifies limitations of the program, such as high costs of agricultural inputs, junk food consumption, and unbalanced budgets. The report provides recommendations, including improving access to agricultural products and dairy inputs, controlling junk food consumption, and implementing a proper budget. These recommendations aim to improve nutrition and economic growth, offering health benefits for individuals and families affected by food insecurity and malnutrition. The report uses data from NHANES and cites various sources like the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the World Health Organization.

Running Head: FOOD INSECURITY AND MALNUTRITION
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Food Insecurity and its impact on poverty

FOOD INSECURITY AND MALNUTRITION
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Executive Summary
Malnutrition is the dynamic problem in all over the world. It arises due to lack of
nutrition, such as lack of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, amino acids, calcium which is a
basic requirement in a person’s body for the growth in developmental years and if it will not
going to fulfil properly then a person have to suffer from various health issues and face a
dynamic problem known as malnutrition. It means lack of nutrition in a person’s body.
On the other hand, food insecurity means lack of unavailabity of the good quality of
food. Cheap and unhygienic food is a part of food insecurity. The unavailability of food cause
the people who could not able to earn enough money.
According to the fact, Food Insecurity is an underlying cause of malnutrition because
unavailability of nutrients and unhygienic food is a problem of poor nutrition and underlying
health conditions.
One of the program had been organized to get rid of food security is Community Food
Projects Competitive Grant Program in the United States. Its aim is to fight from the food
insecurities across the nation and to promote the self-sufficiency of low income communities
by bringing food system to assess strengths.
Recommendations has been highlighting on the task. First is agricultural products and
dairy inputs should easily available. Government should intervene the program and reduce
the prices or should pay to the farmers and factories properly so that they produce the inputs
more.
Second recommendation is “Controlling junk food from the poor children’s”. It’s
important that low income and poor people should take advantage of the group to utilizing
nutrients and proper knowledge of the healthy food rather than eating junk food especially
children’s.
Third recommendation is the program should have a proper budget. Every month a
proper budget including food materials, treatments and services should make on the starting
year and follow accordingly.

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Table of Contents
Background_________________________________________________________________3
Important definitions for the following discussion________________________________3
The Program on Food Security__________________________________________________3
Recommendations____________________________________________________________4
Bibliography________________________________________________________________5

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Background
One of the major problem across the world states that almost 47% population is
suffering from malnutrition which lashes the growth of development in economy in the
upcoming years. Food insecurity is the contributing factor and an underlying cause of
malnutrition which creates hunger across the world. In order to the detailed explanation, the
following discussion is focussing on malnutrition and the contribution factor known as food
insecurity. One of the current programs has also been detailing which designed to address a
contributing factor in order to succeed. And lastly, some of the recommendations to
overcome from such problems and to improve in nutrition and sustainable growth.
Poor nutrition and poor health conditions during developmental years cause adults
being underweight. According to 2019-20 survey by NHANES (National Health And
Nutrition Examination Survey) estimation of 1.5% US adults at age 20 and above are
underweight and an estimate of the GDP ranges from 2.7% to 3.9% (Fryan, 2020).
Important definitions for the following discussion
Malnutrition means lack of proper nourishment which caused by poverty. It also
means that one or two nutrients are not enough to consume each day because this low diet
cause many problems in future or in a person’s growth years. One of the dynamic concept
which related to malnutrition is food insecurity means lack of access to enough healthy and
appropriate food (Group, 1978).
Food insecurity also occurs when there are only small convenience stores or small
independent stores by which it does not provide good quality of product or cheap product
which is not sufficient for a person’s body every day (Ellit, 2015).
Observed information in the past years stated that food insecurity is one of the
contribution factors in malnutrition because of the unavailability of food, high prices which
poor’s cannot afford, and population that suffers from hunger and sickness during national
crisis and emergency situations (Thoms, 2014).
Underweight is defined as an insufficient utilization of energy and nutrition. Lack of
protein, vitamin, minerals, calcium, amino acids that do not meet the requirements of the
body to ensure growth and healthy development. Poor people or low income people have
difficulties in consuming good quality of food where all nutrients present and therefore they
consume only what they get. Some of them become underweight face many health related
problems (Ameriya, 2020).
The Program on Food Security
To get rid of food insecurity US government play an important role to fight with the
global hunger. National Institute of food and agriculture had been organized a Community
Food Projects Competitive Grant Program in 1996 which currently is one of the best active
program in the United States (Government, 2015).

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Its aim is to fight from the food insecurities across the nation and to promote the self-
sufficiency of low income communities by bringing the food system to assess strengths. This
program will help in reducing poverty and to increase growth in economy. This program is
designed to increase the needs of low-income people by supplies healthy food in a longer
period of time, to them, long term solutions, free of cost, and to create marketing activities
which benefitted for the agricultural producers and low income consumers. They provide
education, treatments for the children who are suffering from malnourishment, and job
opportunities for the poor workers to reduce poverty. But they restricted the program to those
who are alcoholic and drug addicted (Dydlin, 2020).
Since the project was created to improve food quality in low-income communities, the
program has certain limitations. First limitation is expensive agricultural products and dairy
inputs price is very high which means that the prices of agricultural inputs are very high so
they face a difficulty in supplying the best quality of products to the poor people at free of
cost. Fresh food becomes more expensive (NIDA, 2019).
Second limitation is consumption of junk food among poor children which means that
the poor children’s mainly takes breads or junk food as their parents does not have certain
knowledge about nutrition. Hence the program also does not have well education system on
nutrition to teach to the poor people (NIDA, 2019).
Third limitation is unbalanced budget which states that the program has not fixed
budget which creates a difficulty in increasing the production and consume various goods
every month properly to the poor people (NIDA, 2019).
Recommendations
Agricultural products and dairy inputs should easily available. Poor people suffer
from lack of good quality of food. They need proper nutrition, calcium, vitamins, and
minerals to fulfil the basic requirements of the body every month and for this agricultural
products and dairy inputs should not have high price due to the fact that this program has
been initiated for low income group and for the poor people. Government should intervene
the program and reduce the prices or should pay to the farmers and factories properly so that
they produce the inputs more.
Second recommendation is “Controlling junk food from the poor children’s”. It means
that due to the lack of knowledge in the families of poor children they eat breads or junk food
in high quantity. Therefore this program should initiate in to provide the best knowledge and
education on nutrition to every human who are registering themselves in the program. It’s
important that low income and poor people should take advantage of the group to utilizing
nutrients and proper knowledge of the healthy food rather than eating junk food especially
children’s (Ferenzhy, 2016).
Third recommendation is the program should have a proper budget. It means that the
program should not be unbalanced in budget. Every month a proper budget including food
materials, treatments and services should make on the starting year and follow accordingly
because it draws a proper data and benefit the workers as well as low income people
(Ferenzhy, 2016).

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These recommendations not only help those who take benefits from the program but
also to their families because the program is to get rid of malnourishment and increasing
growth in the economy. These recommendations also useful in providing health benefits by
utilizing proper nutrition at right times (Fryan, 2020).
Bibliography
Ameriya, R. (2020, January 15). What are the risks of being underweight? Retrieved from
Newsletter: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321612
Dydlin. (2020, March 16). Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program
(CFPCGP). Retrieved from National Institute of Food and Agriculture:
https://nifa.usda.gov/program/community-food-projects-competitive-grant-program-
cfpcgp
Ellit, J. (2015, June 10). Food Insecurity. Retrieved from ODPHP:
https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/social-determinants-
health/interventions-resources/food-insecurity
Ferenzhy, B. (2016, December). Strengths and Limitations of Nutritional Policies in Public
Schools in the United States. Retrieved from Food Insecurities:
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1640&context=honors
Fryan, C. D. (2020, March 12). Prevalence ofUnderweight Among Adults Aged 20 and Over:
United States ,1960-62 through 2019-20. Retrieved from Health E-Stats:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/underweight_adult_15_16/underweight_adult.p
df
Government. (2015). Community Food Project. 25: Fiscal Policy Report.
Group, W. W. (1978). Word Hunger and Malnutrition: Improving the U.S. Response. United
States: The White House.

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NIDA. (2019, June 3). Community Food Projects Competitive. Retrieved from pdf:
https://nifa.usda.gov/sites/default/files/rfa/fy-19-community-food-projects-
competitive-grant-program-rfa.pdf
Thoms, C. P. (2014). Voices of Hunger:Food Insecurities in the United States. United States:
Common Ground Publishing.