The last five weeks of the year are joyful days of family feasting that also happen to underscore a lot of America’s problems with food. We sail from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Eve on a succession of huge and usually not-so-healthy meals. But others of us go hungry.
The holidays are a time to reflect on the troubling reality that in our wealthy nation more than 13 million families are food insecure, meaning they regularly have to skip or limit the balanced meals they can’t afford.
And while millions in America worry about having enough money to pay for groceries, millions also suffer from diet-related chronic diseases. It seems like a paradox, but it’s not. Today we are swimming in cheap, tasty, often heavily processed food — and plagued by accompanying conditions like obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and certain types of cancer. A lot has changed since the 1960s when programs like food stamps and school lunches took on the urgent task of food security — of getting enough calories into children’s empty bellies. The country has gotten a lot more efficient since then at producing calories.
It is as important as ever to tackle food security — to make sure no child goes hungry. But public health advocates say the focus needs to be on “nutrition security” as well — on eating nutrient-dense foods, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables, upon which good health depends.