How We Get Started Solving Hunger

Hunger has long been a part of the human experience. Throughout history, our ancestors endured starvation enough that our physiology adapted to withstand periods of abundance and of scarcity, which is why we struggle so in our current calorie-rich environment. Despite the abundance of food in our world today, hunger remains so normalized that eliminating it tends to be added to lists of aspirational-but-unobtainable goals like world peace and time travel.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) framework for food security identifies four essential conditions necessary for an individual, community, and nation to be food secure- access, availability, knowledge, and stability. An evaluation of these conditions can help inform us on why hunger persists, and provide a starting point for action.

Is hunger really inevitable?

To eliminate hunger completely in the US, we need to ensure that every resident has each of these conditions fulfilled:

• Availability: We (as a nation and as a world) have all the food we need to keep our population fed. Our policies and systems certainly skew production towards less healthy options, but it’s widely accepted that American hunger does not originate from a shortage of food.

• Access: This is our biggest hurdle. Inflation and high costs of living severely cut into food budgets. Even living in close proximity to grocery stores, too many people cannot afford to nourish themselves. In isolated or rural regions, the higher costs associated with accessing it make food even harder to maintain food security. People experiencing discrimination have further reduced access because of lower wages, poorer housing, or a lack of physical safety in their community.

High food costs force many people to work longer hours or multiple jobs, which further cuts into time and energy available for cooking. Inadequate and unaffordable housing necessitates survival with substandard kitchen and restricted cooking capabilities, which further impacts the ability to safely store and prepare food.

• Knowledge: People living in poverty are regularly condemned for lacking budget-friendly cooking skills, as if knowing how to cook dry beans can somehow extricate them from poverty. Knowing how to cook is a powerful way for improving quality of life and adding fun to the process of nourishment, but the idea that a lack of cooking skills is a cause of hunger comes from the assumption that hunger is personal failure rather than systemic problem. Further, programs that uphold this idea often teach cooking a precise way, or use specific ingredients, which ignores cultural traditions and identity. By dictating that there is a “right” and “wrong” way to eat, it implies that those who don’t use these specific practices perpetuate their own poverty. A lack of knowledge is not a contributor to food insecurity in the US.

• Stability: Although the US has experienced greater instability recently with disruptors such as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, overall, we have a strong and reliable food supply. As a nation, we largely have the means and wealth to maintain that stability.

Improving food access is the primary solution for solving hunger in America.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is our primary tool for addressing food insecurity (although there are many others). SNAP provides families with an allotted amount of money every month that can be spent on food at participating retailers. The amount of money received assumes that household costs for food are much lower than they actually are. As a result, even those receiving food assistance still experience food insecurity.

At the onset of the pandemic, when millions of people lost their jobs or had their hours reduced, hunger loomed. In response, the government both expanded the amount of benefits as well as the flexibility of anti-hunger programs, and it worked.

Effective policy action has shown us that hunger is not inevitable. We have the resources, the knowledge, and the policy mechanisms to end hunger. We simply lack the political will.

As the Covid-era programs implemented to fight hunger expire, we see the need once again rising. Fears of welfare fraud and belief in individual responsibility have overridden our commitment to ending hunger as supports are reduced or eliminated.

Next Steps

We must change the way we think about hunger. The cultural assumptions we carry and the policy tools we use perpetuate the attitude that hunger is a personal failure rather than a systemic problem.

 To facilitate the evolution of our policy solutions, our discussion on this issue must evolve too. By adjusting how we frame and talk about hunger, we can significantly impact the anti-hunger environment around us to transform this nebulous issue into a tangible problem with a practical solution.

The opinions expressed here are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.

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