What are the costs of allowing hunger and poor nutrition to exist in America?

Two of the problems directly connected to poverty are hunger and poor nutrition. What are the costs of allowing hunger and poor nutrition to exist in America? Today’s situation reminds me of a Fram oil filter TV commercial from many years ago with the catch phrase, “You can pay me now, or pay me later.” It was a variation on the proverbial saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Their point was very simple and straightforward. It is usually cheaper and more effective to spend a little now than to wait and end up spending a lot more later. It is much cheaper in the end to change your oil regularly than to not change it and have to replace your engine. This concept is very applicable to nutrition. By providing good nutrition to children during their growth and development, society can avoid the larger physical and mental health costs down the road. In this case, there is a potential for a double return on the investment. In addition to avoiding the aforementioned health costs, adults who grew up with good nutrition are more likely to be wage earners and taxpayers instead of unemployed or unemployable citizens relying on a range of costly social safety net programs.

WebMD sums up the health issues as follows.

“Healthy Eating in Children: Problems Caused by Poor Nutrition — Topic Overview,[1] Children who eat poorly are more likely to develop certain long-term health problems and complications, including:

· Osteoporosis in later life.

· Cardiovascular diseases. Growing up eating foods high in fat, sugar, and salt can increase the risk for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and atherosclerosis as an adult.[2]

· Type 2 diabetes, which in children is linked to being overweight, being physically inactive, and having a family history of type 2 diabetes.

· Certain breathing problems, such as asthma in children who are overweight.”

Each of the conditions listed is physically and economically debilitating; leading to long-term financial costs and physical discomfort. Malnutrition or undernutrition during early childhood weakens the child’s resistance to disease and slows intellectual and physical development — conditions that cannot be corrected later in life. As children grow, their adolescent bodies require calcium to develop strong bones. Bones begin to greatly reduce their calcium intake by the time they reach early adulthood, which is why it is critical to get enough calcium as a teen. Teens who do not meet calcium requirements have higher risks for brittle bones, bone breakage, stunted bone growth and osteoporosis later in life.

In addition to the health and nutrition costs, there are there are social costs. Many children go to school to nourish their stomachs as much as their minds. For many, the food they receive at school is their primary source of nutrition. That is the good news. Unfortunately, there is some accompanying bad news. Many school districts require students living in poverty to pay for some portion of the cost of the meals; and if they do not, then they are subject to questionable tactics to collect that money. The result is a practice called “Lunch Shaming”. For example, some school districts reportedly stamp children’s hands or make them wear stickers that say, “I need lunch money” — ostensibly to remind a parent or guardian to put funds in a student’s lunch account — without regard for the social embarrassment it may cause.

Young children are very sensitive to the way their peers view them. For others, it is an internal perception issue. The child subconsciously thinks, “They have food and I don’t, therefore, they matter and I don’t.” Either way, the stigma of not being able to afford to purchase a meal creates a psychological scar and a social barrier to the child’s emotional and intellectual development. This lack of development frequently leads to poorer academic performance, inability to get or hold a job, and a lifelong dependency on social safety net programs. ‘Pay me now or pay me later’ clearly applies! Cutting back on child nutrition programs is an ill-advised solution. It becomes another link in the poverty chain that hangs around their necks and weighs them down.

Hunger and poor nutrition are further examples of the devastating effect of poverty. In 2017, 48.8 million Americans — including 13 million children — lived in households that lacked the means to get enough nutritious food on a regular basis. In most cases, these problems were directly related to the individual’s poverty level. In other countries around the world, hunger and famine are the result of a lack of food. Not so in the US.

We have nearly fifty million hungry citizens in a country that is throwing away $162M worth of food every year. We have to do better.

Every year, Americans throw out forty percent of the available food, or about $162 billion worth. This uneaten food could feed 25 million Americans. The problem is in getting the available food to the people who need it in a cost-effective manner. The lack of access to nutritious food is a poverty, liability, and logistics issue, not a supply issue.

Producing, delivering, consuming, and disposing of food involves many steps, and in aggregate, is very expensive. In researching the issue, I found a reasonably narrow range of estimates for the total costs. For the purpose of discussion, I have chosen one in the center of the range. We could use numbers half their size and the problem would still be compelling.

“Waste Land: Does the Large Amount of Food Discarded in the U.S. Take a Toll on the Environment?

According to the Agriculture Department, each year Americans toss more than 25 percent, of all domestically produced food. A 2009 study showed that a quarter of U.S. water and 4 percent of U.S. oil consumption annually go into producing and distributing food that ultimately ends up in landfills.”[3]

Just considering fruits and vegetables, (no meats) the broad range estimate of the annual cost to produce them is $412 million dollars. There is even better agreement on the percentage of the food that is wasted. The number is about 40% or $162M. We have nearly fifty million hungry citizens in a country that is throwing away $162M worth of food every year. We have to do better. Think about the situation across the economy. Companies in the food industry manage to be profitable while the system throws away forty percent of their product. We need to find a way to increase profitability by reducing waste and at the same time finding a way to feed our hungry citizens. California recently passed a law encouraging food donation by protecting the donors from Liability (44 percent of manufacturers, 41 percent of restaurants and 25 percent of retailers identified fear of liability as their primary barrier to food donation.[4]) In California, food represents the largest portion of waste sent to landfills. If you want a bit more information about the food waste situation in America, I recommend the following articles.

· “What Do Restaurants Do With Leftover Food? [5]

· “Wasted: How America Is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill[6]

I mentioned earlier that poverty is a choice made by those in power. So are hunger and poor nutrition. Just six days after Trump appointed Sonny Perdue as Department of Agriculture Secretary, Purdue rolled back the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act introduced in 2010 by President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama[7]. The rollback would reduce whole-grain requirements, allow higher levels of sodium entrees, and restore higher-fat and sweetened milk to school meal programs. Much like the partisan political Repeal and Replace mania associated with the Affordable Care Act, this rollback is a step backwards, not forwards. The current program may be flawed, but if so, it needs to be improved, not gutted. The current administration seems committed to undoing anything the Obama administration did — without any regard to the consequences. The goal of our representatives should be to make things better, not score petty partisan political points. We all need to get politically involved and work to elect statesmen, not politicians. If we can get them to focus on solving problems like poverty, we can reduce hunger and poor nutrition at the same time.

[1] https://www.webmd.com/parenting/tc/healthy-eating-in-children-problems-caused-by-poor-nutrition-topic-overview

[2] https://www.webmd.com/parenting/tc/healthy-eating-in-children-problems-caused-by-poor-nutrition-references

[3] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talk-waste-land/

[4] http://www.wastetodaymagazine.com/article/california-passes-food-donation-law/

[5] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-daily-meal/what-do-restaurants-do-wi_b_5469841.html

[6] https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf

[7] https://www.csmonitor.com/EqualEd/2017/0502/USDA-secretary-announces-halt-on-school-nutrition-standards

This is an excerpt from my book on Poverty — part 8 (Written but not published. If you want a MS Word free copy, let me know.)