Many countries are searching for ways to improve conditions like hunger, social inequality, and climate change. As ways to increase sustainability are gaining momentum, so are ways to support and address the nutritional needs of a growing population. While food insecurity is still a problem, experts realize that simply giving people access to food isn’t enough.
A group of international leaders are working together to find ways to ensure that people have access to the healthy food they need to stay nutritious and food secure, especially children and teenagers from at-risk communities. The United States is joining the global coalition “School Meals: Nutrition, Health and Education for Every Child” led by the USDA to address these issues.
Emergency food security is defined as people not having access to adequate amounts of safe, nutritious food at all times Nutrition security is defined as people regularly having access to enough safe and nutritious food to support an active and healthy life. Emergency food security, on the other hand, is when people do not have access to adequate amounts of food at any given time. Many children and families in the United States don’t have regular access to healthy food or nutrition education, which are both necessary for a healthy life. According to Feeding America, a not-for-profit organization fighting hunger in the United States, 12.5% of Americans, including 1 in 6 children, may experience food insecurity in 2021. Globally, the situation is even more dire. The United Nations has stated that the pandemic has had a negative effect on world hunger. A tenth of the world’s population, or up to 811 million people, were undernourished last year, according to estimates. The full impact of the pandemic has not yet been determined.
Research indicates that there is a strong connection between not having enough food and poor health. For example, adults who don’t have enough to eat are more likely to suffer from obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. There are many factors that can affect a family’s ability to access food, and experts agree that environmental conditions can play a role in health outcomes. Nutrition is an important determinant of overall health and quality of life, so improving access to healthy food is crucial.
Everyone needs to work together to make sure that everyone has enough to eat. The most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans addressed the importance of collaboration to solve the interconnected issues of food insecurity, poor diet quality and health outcomes. There needs to be a collaborative effort between local, regional, state, and national partners in order to ensure that all Americans have access to food and nutrition assistance programs.
School Meals Nourish Children
There are many ways to achieve nutrition security, and school meals must be part of the solution. School breakfast and lunch programs provide a good source of nutrients for many children, especially those who live in underserved communities. These programs help to ensure that children have enough to eat, and that their diet is nutritious. The meals provided by the lunch program may be the only source of nutrient-dense food for children who are facing food insecurity, as well as the only opportunity to consume a variety of essential nutrients from all food groups. School meals are a good source of nutritious foods like milk and dairy, fruit and vegetables, and whole grains that are often unavailable to children and families in disadvantaged communities.
Most school meals include healthy options such as milk and dairy, fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and protein. Although some people see school cafeterias as unhealthy, most meals are actually healthy and of high quality. The researchers found that school meals were the healthiest option for children compared to other sources of food such as corner stores, grocery stores, and restaurants. The results of the study showed that school meals provide children with access to more nutrient-rich foods, regardless of race, ethnicity, or household income. This means that school meals are full of nutrients that are important for children.
This is not surprising because school meals must meet specific nutrition and food group requirements set by the USDA. School meals are required to contain a variety of nutritious foods that will help students meet their daily dietary requirements.
Filling Nutrient Gaps
New research has found that a majority of children in the United States do not consume the recommended amount of fruit, vegetables or dairy products. Studies have shown that students who participate in school meal programs have better diets than those who don’t participate. This is because they tend to miss out on essential nutrients like dairy, fruit and vegetables, and whole grains when they skip breakfast.
However, students who have access to free or reduced-price school lunch programs have lower rates of food insecurity, obesity, and poor health. School meals are typically healthier than what children would eat if they brought their own lunch, and this leads to better nutrition and academic achievement. Additionally, school meals expose children to a variety of healthy foods, which can help them develop lifelong healthy eating habits. Dairy is an important part of school meals because it provides key nutrients that help ensure everyone has enough to eat, especially children and families living in poverty. Although milk, cheese, and yogurt provide essential nutrients that are necessary for optimal growth, bone health, and overall health, children are not currently consuming enough of these food groups.
It is possible to improve the diet quality for all children by advocating for school meals that consist of whole, minimally processed foods, such as milk, cheese, yogurt, fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains and lean protein. Schools should prioritize both meals and nutrition education to improve access and knowledge to help children form healthy habits. This would involve increasing consumption of nutrient-dense foods that fill nutrient gaps and support lifelong good health.
The state of California is the first in the nation to offer a Universal School Meals Program, which provides free school meals to all students in kindergarten through 12th grade. This program will increase access to nutritious foods for all children, helping them to grow, learn and thrive.
NUTRITION, FOOD SECURITY AND FAMILY PLANNING
increasing availability and utilization of birth control has positive consequences for the health and nutrition of both mothers and infants, as well as the food security of whole communities and countries.
Macro Level
Providing reproductive health services, including voluntary family planning, to more people would have many positive effects on families and communities, such as reducing the negative effect that population growth has on natural resources.
Family planning can most directly affect food security by reducing population growth, which would consequentially decrease the demand for food and services. The world’s population is projected to increase from 7.3 billion in 2015 to 9.7 billion in 2050, which will significantly increase the demand for food worldwide (UN 2015). The population of the 48 least-developed countries is projected to double by 2050, posing a significant challenge to food security in these regions. In 2100, the populations of 10 African countries are projected to be at least 5 times what they are now: Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, and Zambia. This will put a severe strain on natural resources, including land and water, health and social services, and increase the gap between food availability and food demand. In Ethiopia and Rwanda, the population is growing quickly, which means more people are farming on land that doesn’t produce very much. They’re also dividing up their small land holdings among many family members, which makes the problem worse.
Forty-one percent of the world’s pregnancies are unintended. Allowing people to control how many kids they have, as well as how often they have them, will help reduce the potential mismatch between the amount of food needed and the amount of food produced. Singh (2012) argues that increasing access to family planning would have a major impact on reducing population growth, hunger, and malnutrition.
Household Level
Families living in poverty often don’t have access to contraception, resulting in larger families than they want. They also don’t have enough resources to provide their family with nutritious food. Poverty both creates limitations on access to family planning and is caused by it. Households that are less wealthy are less likely to have access to methods of family planning. They spend a greater proportion of their income on food, but less money per person.
Individual Level
There is clear evidence that preventing high-risk and unintended pregnancies can have a direct impact on maternal, child, and adolescent nutrition. Childbearing that is too early, too often, or too late has a direct impact on birth outcomes and the nutritional and health status of both the mother and child.
- When intervals between births are too short, mothers may be at risk of undernutrition, resulting in negative changes in maternal weight and body mass index and increased risk of anemia and other micronutrient deficiencies. Poor maternal nutrition leads to poor birth outcomes.
- Short pregnancy intervals are associated with increased risk of infants being born preterm, small-for-gestational age, and with low birth weight, all of which are associated with key indicators of childhood undernutrition, including wasting, stunting, underweight, and anemia.
- Spacing births too closely can also affect nutrition outcomes of all children in the family when the mother’s ability to adequately care for and feed her children is compromised due to too many young children to breastfeed at one time and lack of time and resources to provide adequate nutritious food and care for all children.
- Adolescent pregnancy can result in adverse nutritional outcomes for both the mother and the fetus, with increased risk of adverse perinatal outcomes such as preterm birth, low birth weight, and small-for-gestational age. DHS data analysis from 55 low- and middle-income countries indicate the relative risk of poor child health and nutrition outcomes to be highest for teen mothers, with increased risk of stunting, underweight, and moderate anemia (MacQuarrie 2014).
Pregnancy, breastfeeding, and childcare all affect women’s opportunities negatively for educational attainment, participation in the labor force, and subsequent social mobility. The ability for women to choose how many children they have and how often they space them can lead to improvements in their status and empowerment. This is because they would have more time to participate in the labor force, stay in school longer, get more education, and participate in community and political activities. These actions also help a woman to earn more money, buy healthy food and basic necessities for her family, and take better care of herself and her children’s health.
Steps to Improve Synergies: Nutrition, Food Security, and Family Planning Programs
There has been little discussion between different areas of policy, strategy, funding or implementation of programs concerning nutrition, food security and family planning. The following are recommendations for improving health and nutrition outcomes in countries, based on current promising practices.
Analyses, Strategies, and Policy Dialogue
Robust analyses are needed to understand the impact of population growth and family planning on nutrition and food security and to design effective multi-sectoral programs. Advocacy and communications strategies can help to raise awareness and secure funding for these initiatives. The United Nations projects population growth for each country every year; however, not many people know about or understand the connection between these projections and nutrition and food security. USAID is taking the lead in a number of countries, such as Rwanda and Tanzania, to fund assessments and tools, such as the RAPID Model. The RAPID Model is a computer-based tool that demonstrates the effects of rapid population growth on different sectors, including agriculture and economic growth. The PROFILES advocacy tool is a set of computer-based models that show what would happen if malnutrition does not improve, and also the benefits of improving nutrition. The benefits include lives saved, disabilities averted, human capital gains, and economic productivity gains.
bilateral Country Development Cooperation Strategies (CDCS). It is very important that the development of U.S. bilateral Country Development Cooperation Strategies (CDCS) include the linkages between voluntary family planning, nutrition, and food security. Government development strategies that support country development strategies in the various sectors, particularly for the agriculture, food security, and health sectors. In the Tanzania CDCS, family planning is placed in the economic growth intermediate result because it is strongly connected to both agriculture and economic development. The CDCS identifies the linkages between family planning and maternal and child health outcomes throughout the document.
USAID can encourage host governments and other donors to invest more in voluntary family planning as part of a country’s food security strategy. This is based on good analyses of demographic impacts on food production, availability, and consumption.
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