Chronic Child Hunger In The USA

[Zaune]

Link

Doctors at a major Boston hospital report they are seeing more hungry and dangerously thin young children in the emergency room than at any time in more than a decade of surveying families.

Many families are unable to afford enough healthy food to feed their children, say the Boston Medical Center doctors. The resulting chronic hunger threatens to leave scores of infants and toddlers with lasting learning and developmental problems.

Before the economy soured in 2007, 12 percent of youngsters age 3 and under whose families were randomly surveyed in the hospital’s emergency department were significantly underweight. In 2010, that percentage jumped to 18 percent, and the tide does not appear to be abating, said Dr. Megan Sandel, an associate professor of pediatrics and public health at BMC.

“Food is costing more, and dollars don’t stretch as far,’’ Sandel said. “It’s hard to maintain a diet that is healthy.’’

The emergency room survey found a similarly striking increase in the percentage of families with children who reported they did not have enough food each month, from 18 percent in 2007 to 28 percent in 2010.

Pediatricians at hospitals in four other cities - Baltimore; Little Rock, Ark.; Minneapolis; and Philadelphia - also reported increases in the ranks of malnourished, hungry youngsters in their emergency rooms since 2008. But Boston’s increases were more dramatic, said Sandel, a lead investigator with Children’s HealthWatch, a network of researchers who track children’s health. Researchers said higher housing and heating costs in Massachusetts probably exacerbated the state’s surge.

BMC has also seen a 58 percent increase, from 24 in 2005 to 38 in 2010, in the number of severely underweight babies under the age of 1 who were referred by family physicians to its Grow Clinic, where doctors provide intensive nutritional, medical, and other services to boost babies’ growth. Such malnourishment is similar to what is more typically seen in developing countries, Sandel said.

Among the children treated at the clinic last year was Jordan Turner-Goode, who at age 1 weighed just 19 pounds, while the average child that age is more than 24 pounds.

“We were living in a hotel in Chelmsford at the time, and it was hard to cook meals because all we had to cook in was a microwave and that wasn’t helping his weight at all,’’ said his mother, Janell Goode. “He was eating cereal, noodles, and eggs in the microwave and hot dogs and fruit snacks.’’

The 27-year-old single Lowell mother, a former telemarketer who is now unemployed, relies on food pantries and other public assistance to feed her three young sons.

Jordan is a healthier weight now, but Goode says it is still a struggle. The family managed to move out of the state-subsidized motel where they were living, but their housing situation is precarious. The owner of the Lowell apartment where they are renting is about to be foreclosed on, Goode said.

Children’s HealthWatch monitors very young children, like Jordan, because their bodies tend to be more vulnerable to changes brought on by a recession. Chronic hunger during toddler years, when young brains are still growing, can negatively affect learning and psychological, social, and a raft of other skills, said Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, professor of epidemiology and public health at the Yale School of Public Health.

While the nation’s spotlight has been trained on the other end of the spectrum, the problem of childhood obesity, Pérez-Escamilla and other researchers report evidence that early hunger may be linked to later obesity.

Some studies have found that young children who grow up with not enough to eat can become overweight or obese adolescents and adults, though the link is not firmly established.

“Babies born with low birth weight may become metabolically programmed during gestation to become very efficient at conserving calories, thus becoming obese later in life,’’ Pérez-Escamilla said.

Health advocates say another sign that families are struggling to feed their children can be found in the steep rise in the number of Massachusetts residents, like the Goodes, relying on food stamps. The numbers nearly doubled, from 452,000 in 2007 to 815,000 in May, the latest available data.

Advocates estimate that there are tens of thousands more Massachusetts residents who are eligible but have been stymied by the complex enrollment process.

“We believe a lot of them are families with kids,’’ said Pat Baker, a senior policy analyst with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, a legal services nonprofit for low-income people.

Baker said that in recent years Massachusetts has not devoted enough money to the federally funded, state-administered food stamp program, called SNAP, to hire the staff needed to help residents enroll.

A decade ago, Massachusetts ranked nearly last nationally for signing up its eligible residents, but after a concerted push by the state and health advocates, it is eighth, said Julia Kehoe, commissioner of the Department of Transitional Assistance, which runs the food stamp program.

Kehoe attributed the rise in enrollment to the state’s outreach, coupled with the recession. Without that campaign, she said, the number of hungry, malnourished children in BMC’s emergency room would have been “much worse.’’

The flood of people signing up for food stamps has eased since 2009, Kehoe said, but several thousand residents are still signing up each month and there are probably thousands more who are eligible that staff has been unable to reach.

She said her department is working to streamline the enrollment process.

Kehoe said she is concerned because the state’s federal stimulus money ran out in June, funds that were used to help defray the cost of signing up new families for food stamps.

The state recently increased its spending to cover more than half the shortfall, but it probably will not be enough, she said.

“We will have effectively fewer staff at the end of the year then we do now,’’ Kehoe said. “The state is doing what it can, but there are just so many other public safety and human service needs out there right now.’’

Found via Shadow Of The Hegemon, whose response I'm going to quote in full because it's a lot more eloquent and contains fewer swearwords than anything I can come up with. (Bolding/italics all his.)

That's right! A 58% increase in the number of severely underweight babies! BABIES!

Meanwhile, at this very moment, someone on Wall St. is buying a new iPad for his kids. Not that the kids really need it. They just don't want the kids to look bad when they go back to their private school in the fall.

Hey, gotta spend that last big bonus check on something. They've already bought Washington—so why not splurge on some Appleware?

[Vehrec]

And yet my co-workers continue to insist that people on food stamps only buy steak and other high-end foods and drive BMWs and have better cell phones than they do.

[evilsoup]

What.

How is this..? FFS, in the richest country in the world, this is just ... criminal. I can't believe I'm writing this, but fuck it, you guys should just have a revolution already. Even the best case scenario, that Boston is an exception (is it a particular poor city? I never got that impression, though my usual disclaimer of not really knowing much about the USA applies), well ... that's a city of 4.5 million, so uh ... lets say 600000 little kids*, that's around 60,000 starving. In one of America's wealthiest cities. That shows that your society is seriously failing.

Are there any (federal or large-scale state, not counting city soup kitchens etc.) government programs to deal with this issue?

Actually, a thought just occurred to me. Is childhood malnutrition tracked by some UN agency or NGO? It'd be interesting to compare this to Europe and see if this is truly out of the norm (I suspect it is, but I'm always wary of my US-bashing tendencies).

But overall, just ... well, fuck.

----
*:Hey, guess what, I'm no expert on demographics either! This figure is liable to be completely inaccurate, it just seems reasonable to me.

[Simon_Jester]

There are food stamp programs and such, but availability has been quite limited ever since the "welfare reforms" of the 1990s, such that it is entirely possible to run out of time on the program while still having children to feed.

[K. A. Pital]

You should differentiate starvation and malnourishment. I would also point to the fact that by WHO standards, America has zero malnourishment rates, while many nations do have real malnourishment. I'd like to understand on what level underweight babies correlate with personal malnourishment and would see if its possible to create alternative to WHO measures of undernourishment of adults...

This whole thing seems strange to me. Maybe someone can run a cross-comparison with other nations (e.g. what's "normal weight" for America? What's underweight?), a few First World ones and maybe one Second World one, like e.g. Poland?

[Broomstick]

There are actually a couple numbers in that article, Stas. It says a typical US one year old child weighs 24 pounds. The article mentioned one that weighed 19 pounds. Even without converting to the metric system, it should be plain to see that the child mentioned was only at 79% of the expected weight for that age. However, this is further complicated by the fact height is a significant factor in such a calculation and the child's height is not given, nor is it clear they are discussing "average weight for a child that age and height".

A quick trip through Google brought me to this article on WHO standards used for height/weight/growth charts. Here is a height/weight chart for boys from WHO. They give the median weight for a 1 year old boy as 9.6 kg. The 24 pounds quoted by the Boston hospital converts to 11 kg, slightly higher than world average. The 19 pound weight of the child in question converts to 8.6 kg, putting the Boston child in the lowest 15th percentile of boys of that age. As I'm sure is obvious to most of SD.net, being intelligent people, that means 5/6ths of one year old boys throughout the entire world weigh more than that Boston boy. His weight is the median for boys a mere 8 months old, not a year old.

Would you say those numbers support the doctor's assessment that the boy is underweight for his age, or not?

[Irbis]

This whole thing seems strange to me. Maybe someone can run a cross-comparison with other nations (e.g. what's "normal weight" for America? What's underweight?), a few First World ones and maybe one Second World one, like e.g. Poland?

...I have to sort of object to calling Poland a 'second world' country. That stopped being true a decade ago, IMHO.

[Xon]

You should differentiate starvation and malnourishment.

Yes, you can be malnourishment while being fat. In fact, lab tests have shown you can make mice die from starvation while stacking on wieght.

[mr friendly guy]

Sadly as we have more obese people eating cheap shitty "high calorie but lacking in other nutrients" food, we will have more people who are obese yet malnourished at the same time.

[Lord Zentei]

Didn't Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman do a spoof on this in Good Omens? Of course, they were supposedly joking. Good grief.

[Broomstick]

The US system, which it can produce some big winners, also produces some definite losers. There is very little in the way of a safety net, and if a family falls into poverty the children are at the mercy of adults who may not know where to go for help. The application for most forms of aid can be daunting and humiliating. The general population can work up a white-hot fury at the so-called "generational welfare family" but those people know where to go to get help. The newly poor do not. Add in the shame this society heaps on being poor, the impulse to hide what's happening, the idea that only "bad people" fall that low and it's shameful to ask for the help you need and you can get genuine hunger in this country. Not "malnourished obese" but people who genuinely do not get enough to eat.

Let's look at the family situation again:

“We were living in a hotel in Chelmsford at the time, and it was hard to cook meals because all we had to cook in was a microwave and that wasn’t helping his weight at all,’’ said his mother, Janell Goode. “He was eating cereal, noodles, and eggs in the microwave and hot dogs and fruit snacks.’’

The 27-year-old single Lowell mother, a former telemarketer who is now unemployed, relies on food pantries and other public assistance to feed her three young sons.

Jordan is a healthier weight now, but Goode says it is still a struggle. The family managed to move out of the state-subsidized motel where they were living, but their housing situation is precarious. The owner of the Lowell apartment where they are renting is about to be foreclosed on, Goode said.

Point one: They were living in a "hotel" at the time. That usually means they were homeless and some charity or aid agency got them that room.

Point two: They only had a microwave to cook in. Now, it is possible to cook actual meals in a microwave, but it's a rare skill. Too many people have the notion that the only thing you can put in a microwave is stuff in a box marked "microwavable". That, and while I have a fairly large model that is programmable, I don't know what the mother had in this case, it might have been small and very limited. She said “He was eating cereal, noodles, and eggs in the microwave and hot dogs and fruit snacks.’’ The kid was getting carbohydrates and some protein but.... "fruit snacks"? Those are basically fruit-flavored sugar. And no mention of vegetables.

Point three: She is relying on "food pantries" and "public assistance" for food. I've been to food pantries. They lean heavily towards processed foods these days, pastries instead of bread, and canned vegetables/fruits if you get them at all. Of course, if she did manage to find one that handed out, say, a sack of flour how in the world would she use it with just a microwave to cook in? Me, I have a fully equipped kitchen, but would a woman living in a "hotel" have anything of the sort? Last time I went to a food pantry I could have gone home with two cakes, four pastries, two loaves of bread, a can of beans, and for "vegetable" they were handing out 5 green beans (no joke, I counted) and 1 zucchini per family. They were passing out bags of fruit-flavored gummy bears some local store had donated, and powdered drink mixes, but no fruit. There's more than one reason poor people have a shitty diet. These places are were the poorest people go, and they're at the mercy of whatever people feel like donating. She should be getting food stamps as well, a program I am all too familiar with myself. I do pretty well with them because I buy basic ingredients instead of processed foods, I have a fully equipped kitchen, and a large vegetable garden to supplement them. This lady clearly doesn't have a garden, doesn't have a real kitchen, and is probably buying high-priced processed shit in a box for the microwave. When you do it that way the money won't last until the end of the month.

Yes, I can how this results in a infant/toddler not just eating poorly, but simply not getting enough to eat. Add in two older brothers (remember, she has three sons) who are also hungry but more vocal and more able to reach across the table and grab and this becomes a bad situation.

As for having children when she is so poor - well, in the US, getting birth control can be problematic. If she has no health insurance she would have to pay out of pocket, but she can't even buy sufficient food for her kids so do you think she'll buy birth control or food with what money does managed to acquire? Even if she gets on Medicaid, medical coverage for the poor, hormonal birth control will require a yearly doctor's visit that may or may not require a co-pay (this will vary from state to state, as each state runs their Medicaid differently) and will (until this week) almost certainly not be subsidized in any way. If she gets pregnant getting an abortion is entirely her problem, and starts around $400 and goes up steeply from there. Does anyone here think this woman has that amount of cash on hand? Meanwhile, on Medicaid her pregnancy, labor, and delivery would be covered - and the religious nutjobs who brought this set of circumstances about wonder why poor women keep having babies.

Her future prospects are pretty dismal - she's a former telemarketer? Those jobs have gone overseas. The few remaining in the US are in rural areas, not in a big city like Boston. US employers more and more are eliminating from consideration anyone unemployed more than six months, which category I suspect this lady falls into. Nor is a resume with telemarketing going to help you get a job these days. What welfare there is these days runs out after five years, maximum. She and her kids are screwed. When the foreclosure is done on the building she currently lives in she and her kids will be homeless again, because practice in this country is that when the bank acquires the property they throw all the tenants out and the place stands empty until someone buys it off the bank.

[Agent Sorchus]

I actually volunteer at a local food bank. Homeless families get less because we understand that they can do less with what we give. A good estimate of what we give out monthly to a more average family is:

2-3 cans of tuna
1 pound each of rice and beans, dried
1 peanut butter and jelly
1 box of cereal
12 cans of vegetables/ beans/ fruit
a pound or two of meat
4 cans of concentrated soup
2 pounds of noodles
2 boxes of Mac & Cheese
a few packages of Raman
Some spaghetti sauce

And weekly a couple of loaves of bread, and a cold pizza.

This is one of the largest and most well connected food banks in the area and we can afford to be pretty generous, yet this is not nearly enough to feed a family for more than a week.

[Serafina]

*snip*

This is why German unemployment benefits (and insurance companies, too) try to include proper education on how to have healthy meals and balanced nutrition. Now they don't necessarily succeed, but doing so is quite necessary.

[salm]

*snip*

This is why German unemployment benefits (and insurance companies, too) try to include proper education on how to have healthy meals and balanced nutrition. Now they don't necessarily succeed, but doing so is quite necessary.

They do? Where? Serious question. I´ve never heard of that.

[Serafina]

There are several brochures for Hartz-IV-recipients, as well as cooking courses and such. At least here in Munich, i do not know about other cities.
It's nothing spectacular, but at least someone is aware of the problem and trying to do something.

[evilsoup]

I think the thing you're all missing is that this article isn't talking about malnourished fat people. I'm sure that is also a serious issue, but it's actually telling us that nearly one-in-five little kids in America are dangerously underweight. Not because their parents are giving them shitty food, but because they can't afford enough!

In America, for fuck's sake.

[Rogue 9]

This whole thing seems strange to me. Maybe someone can run a cross-comparison with other nations (e.g. what's "normal weight" for America? What's underweight?), a few First World ones and maybe one Second World one, like e.g. Poland?

...I have to sort of object to calling Poland a 'second world' country. That stopped being true a decade ago, IMHO.

Two decades. The Second World refers exclusively to the Soviet sphere, and no longer exists.

[Broomstick]

This is why German unemployment benefits (and insurance companies, too) try to include proper education on how to have healthy meals and balanced nutrition. Now they don't necessarily succeed, but doing so is quite necessary.

What do you do about people who don't have a proper kitchen, though?

[K. A. Pital]

Two decades. The Second World refers exclusively to the Soviet sphere, and no longer exists.

It is useful to describe shortly the economic position of nations below First World and above Third World. Regardless of whether the Soviet sphere exists now or not.

[Knife]

There are actually a couple numbers in that article, Stas. It says a typical US one year old child weighs 24 pounds. The article mentioned one that weighed 19 pounds. Even without converting to the metric system, it should be plain to see that the child mentioned was only at 79% of the expected weight for that age. However, this is further complicated by the fact height is a significant factor in such a calculation and the child's height is not given, nor is it clear they are discussing "average weight for a child that age and height".

A quick trip through Google brought me to this article on WHO standards used for height/weight/growth charts. Here is a height/weight chart for boys from WHO. They give the median weight for a 1 year old boy as 9.6 kg. The 24 pounds quoted by the Boston hospital converts to 11 kg, slightly higher than world average. The 19 pound weight of the child in question converts to 8.6 kg, putting the Boston child in the lowest 15th percentile of boys of that age. As I'm sure is obvious to most of SD.net, being intelligent people, that means 5/6ths of one year old boys throughout the entire world weigh more than that Boston boy. His weight is the median for boys a mere 8 months old, not a year old.

Would you say those numbers support the doctor's assessment that the boy is underweight for his age, or not?

The down and dirty rule for the weight of a baby at one year of age, is triple the birth weight. That more or less stacks up with what you found. If the kid was 8lbs at birth, at one year they should be 24 lbs. This is a chart you'd see in the doctors office or hospital about it, still has a median and percentiles above and below. You have same wiggle room in your growth milestones. So, for 12 month old boy, being between 8.6 and 12.4 kg on that chart or 19-27-ish lbs. as being with in normal limits. Granted, it's the low side, but still normal. To add to that, most pediatricians are not going to get all butt hurt unless the kid is missing milestones consistently, or multiple milestones every visit.

Who knows, maybe the kid isn't eating right. I don't know. I don't have enough information to posit a guess. But just the weight alone is not enough to say anything.

Edit:

Also, who the hell feeds a one year old noodles, eggs, and fruit snacks? The kid should still be eating really squishy cereal and squished up fruit and veggies? Was he bottle fed or breast fed? If breast fed, what was mom eating? Some of this stuff just doesn't make sense.

[Broomstick]

I've been thinking about this thread a bit, particuarly as it somewhat relates to my own situation. So I'm going to address a few points in more detail that I have before.

First, as of this week, 1 in 6 Americans is receiving food stamps. ONE IN SIX! 50 million people in the alledgely richest nation in the world are now receiving government assistance to buy food. This is an all time high. Obviously, there is something seriously awry in the United States.

And yet my co-workers continue to insist that people on food stamps only buy steak and other high-end foods and drive BMWs and have better cell phones than they do.

Yes, an all-too common belief.

I get $357 a month to feed two people from the government, worth about $250 euros at today's exchange rate. That is the maximum a two person household can receive. That averages out to $5.95 per person, per day. Or 4.16 euros. Total, per day.

Now, you certainly CAN buy steak with foodstamps. If it's food, you can buy it – steak, lobster, truffles.... but please do the math. While a person on food stamps might buy a steak or a lobster for a special occasion meal (or, in my case, subdivide a steak and use it in stir fry dinners) that will severely diminish how much is left for the rest of the month. Generally, a person only needs to fuck the budget up once to learn some frugality.

Drive a BMW? I sometimes think there is resentment the poor have a car at all – never mind it's a near-essential for most parts of the US. This ties into the idea that the only poor are those who have been poor all their lives. In fact, most of the poor used to be better off – I know from experience they don't make you sell every worldly possession prior to receiving public aid, however much some people believe that should be the case. In actual fact, the food stamp rules limit you to only a set value on your vehicles. If you own a new BMW you'll have to sell it before you qualify. If your BMW is so old and battered that its value is less than the cut-off then yes, you can keep it. Is that really unfair? I guess to some people it is. Do some people on food stamps drive Cadillacs? As a matter of fact I know a one who does – but his Cadillac is 25 years old, it retains little actual value, and it's all about the value of the car, not the brand.

The cellphone issue is a new one, and let me explain for those not in the know – the US government is now providing cellphones to people who qualify for certain public programs, such as food stamps. These are not some fancy iPhone. The choice is limited. The actual worth of the phones I've seen from this program is around $20-40. The government grants 100 minutes a month to the recipient. Also worth about $20. There are no “free evenings and weekends”. Any time you call you use your minutes, unlike most of the plans enjoyed by the better off bitching about this program. That's under two hours a month. Why is the government doing this? Because a lot of people don't have land lines anymore. Because so many jobs these days require you to have a phone on your person. So poor people can call for help in an emergency. Because public phones, which used to be ubiquitous, are now almost non-existent. So poor people can stay in touch with their family and friends – you know, their “support network”. So their kids' school can contact them in an emergency. As they are cellphones, the homeless can also make use of these to call for help, to stay in contact with people trying to help them, and possibly even look for work – because having a phone number where you can be reached can disguise the fact you have no fixed address.

Now, there are two ways a poor person can wind up with a “better” cellphone. The first is through donation. For many years, donated cellphones have been given to people in bad circumstances because in the US, once activated, ALL cellphones can call 911 free of charge even if they are not attached to a service provider. They can't call anything else, they can't receive calls, but they can be used to call for help. If someone donates an iPhone to charity yes, it could wind up in the hands of some homeless guy or a poor mother with three kids living in a shelter – but it can only call 911. It can't do anything else. Except, now it can be used for the governments 100 minutes a month cellphone plan for the poor – but it won't have any other functionality added. It will just be a 100 minute a month cellphone, like the cheapest TracPhone. If better off people don't want the poor using phones of the same quality they have then they shouldn't donate their old phones to charity.

The second way one of the poor could have a high-end cellphone on this program? Well, if you used to be better off and already owned such a phone, but lost your service due to being poor, you could use the high-end phone you already own for the program - but, again, it would be just a 100 minute a month cellphone with no other frills.

(I will note that a person on the program CAN purchase additional minutes if they have the resources. Or someone could, out of the kindness of their heart, give them additional minutes).

All that is just to clarify the program – the merits and drawbacks of said program are a different topic.

How is this..? FFS, in the richest country in the world, this is just ... criminal. I can't believe I'm writing this, but fuck it, you guys should just have a revolution already.

Sometimes I think the strategy is to keep the poor fed just enough, and busy just enough (via reporting requirements and the like) that they aren't inclined to riot and revolt.

The US is only the richest country in the world if you average everyone's income or net worth - the actual truth is there have always been pockets of poverty in this country. Our system generates extremes - extreme wealth and also extreme lack.

Even the best case scenario, that Boston is an exception (is it a particular poor city? I never got that impression, though my usual disclaimer of not really knowing much about the USA applies),

Boston is probably one of the better off cities. If you think it's bad in Boston try Detroit or Gary, Indiana. Baltimore is having issues, too, last I heard.

Are there any (federal or large-scale state, not counting city soup kitchens etc.) government programs to deal with this issue?

Food stamps, TANF (which is limited to 5 years in a LIFETIME per person), reduced price school meals (originally just lunches, but expanded in some areas to breakfast or even after-school eating), and WIC, just off the top of my head. Further explanation of any of those on request.

Soup kitchens, by the way, are not county or even city level. Those are, so far as I know, either church-run or run by non-profit organizations or co-allitions. State, county, and city governments do not get involved in those (well, there are rules on safe food handling and the like, but that applies to everyone serving food to the public).

*snip*

This is why German unemployment benefits (and insurance companies, too) try to include proper education on how to have healthy meals and balanced nutrition. Now they don't necessarily succeed, but doing so is quite necessary.

I think your statement is containing some assumptions that, while reasonable in your society, do not hold true in the US.

I already asked “what if the person in question doesn't have a proper kitchen?” Do these classes cover how to have healthy, nutritious meals if your only cooking equipment is a small microwave oven, and you have no more than a half-size refrigerator? That is not an unusual proposition for the poor in the US, particuarly those most destitute. In fact, I am aware of a “residence hotel” or, if you like, a SRO (single resident occupancy – basically a room for rent) where the only “kitchen” is a coffee maker, a hot plate, and the tap in the bathroom for water. Nevermind the rooms (because that's what we're talking about, a single room for rent) are only supposed to have one person, I've seen up to five living in such places. How much does nutrition education help in such a situation?

Also, there is the problem of “food deserts”. Detroit, for example has no grocery stores. NONE. There is not one general food retailer in the entire city. The west side of Chicago is another such “food dessert” (of approximately equal geographic size to the city of Detroit – Chicago has about 5 times the land area of Detroit). There are “corner stores” and liquor stores that sell snacks and a few highly over priced items but no fresh fruit, no fresh vegetables, no unprocessed meats. How much good does nutrition education do in such circumstances.

I don't know what Germany is like, Serafina – do the poor in Germany normally have real kitchens? Do they have access to unprocessed foods at prices comparable to what is seen in upscale places? Because that's certainly not the case in the US.

So, right now, we have the problem that 1 in 6 Americans is needing assistance just to buy food. But it's an invisible problem. The card the poor use to make their purchases looks like a debit/credit card, so it's not so obvious that one in six people in the check out line are using them. However, I have noticed in the past two years that virtually every place that sells any sort of food is now proclaiming “WE ACCEPT EBT” (EBT being the official name of “food stamps” these days). Sure, grocery stores always did, but now all the convenience stores at gas stations do, too – and they didn't use to. Why is that? Well, it's because the merchants can't afford to lose 1/6 of the customer base any time, and certainly not in these times. And it's in all neighborhoods, even the wealthier ones. Everyone knows someone who is usuing the program if they aren't using it themselves.

See, back in the Great Depression there was so much widespread hunger the Federal government started distributing food – my mother and uncles and aunts used to tell me about when the program started, going down to pick up the food. Well, now we've eliminated the middle man, which is probably more efficient, but we've also made the problem hidden. People don't realize how big this problem is. They don't see it, so they don't think about it.

I will also add that this problem has ballooned since 2007. Prior to that, a much, much smaller fraction of the US population was on food stamps, and those that were one them tended to be on them less than a year. That has changed in the past 4 years. That's another reason why people aren't aware of the problem and don't think about - the scale of it is new.

[Surlethe]

That's right! A 58% increase in the number of severely underweight babies! BABIES!

Yeah, from 24 to 38. Wow, who's surprised that in a major city of 600,000 people, there might be several dozen severely underweight babies? And only "severely underweight" by American standards, no less. Food insecurity is one thing, food stamps are another, but manufactured outrage over such a huge relative increase without looking at the absolute level is just silly. (In fact, that kind of high fluctuation is a good sign: it indicates that the absolute levels are very low. If there's one [abused, malnourished, starving] child one year, and the next year there are three, headlines can read CHILD MALNOURISHMENT JUMPS 200%.)

[Broomstick]

And.... one more post on this subject, then I have to get ready for work (because I'm one of the "working poor" these days). From my one of my loca papers

Study: Healthy eating is privilege of the rich
BY DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP Associated Press | Posted: Thursday, August 4, 2011 5:50 am | (3) Comments

SEATTLE | A healthy diet is expensive and could make it difficult for Americans to meet new U.S. nutritional guidelines, according to a study published Thursday that says the government should do more to help consumers eat healthier.

An update of what used to be known as a food pyramid in 2010 had called on Americans to eat more foods containing potassium, dietary fiber, vitamin D and calcium. But if they did that, the journal Health Affairs said, they would add hundreds more dollars to their annual grocery bill.

Inexpensive ways to add these nutrients to a person's diet include potatoes and beans for potassium and dietary fiber. But the study found introducing more potassium in a diet is likely to add $380 per year to the average consumer's food costs, said lead researcher Pablo Monsivais, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and the School of Public Health at the University of Washington.

Emphasis added. Why is that? Because potatoes and beans keep a fairly long time, but the fresh fruits and vegetables with the potassium don't keep so well long term. And they're more expensive than potatoes and beans.

"We know more than ever about the science of nutrition, and yet we have not yet been able to move the needle on healthful eating," he said. The government should provide help for meeting the nutritional guidelines in an affordable way.

He criticized some of the marketing for a healthy diet — for example, the image of a plate of salmon, leafy greens and maybe some rice pilaf — and said a meal like that is not affordable for many Americans.

Indeed. Salmon, fish of any sort, really, costs as much or more than beef or pork. Actually, it usually costs more. Leafy greens are approaching $2/pound, or about 1.40 euros a half kilo for the lowest price ones. Outside of iceberg lettuce, I've seen fresh lettuce as high as $5/pound at times (3.50 euros/half kilo). At those prices, they are not on the menu if you're living on food stamps. Unless, like me, you have a garden. We're eating about 4 pounds of greens a week, and about 2 pounds of lettuce (I have 8 varieties growing in my garden). Purchasing that would cost me about $14.56 a week to purchase (10.21 euros). Keep in mind, my food budget is about $82 a week total, and those greens and lettuce only make up part of the menu - in addition there are other vegetables, bread/grains, protein, fruit....

Being able to grow all the greens I use in a year (which I've managed to do 3 out of the past 4 years) is a weekly savings of... call it $12 a week on average (because in the winter I have to buy lettuce) or around $624 dollars a year. If I did not have my garden I'd either have to find the money to purchase all those greens, or do without. Now, add in the onions, turnips, beets, carrots, beans, peas and squash in my garden to the equation. This is why I bust my ass to work on the garden - because it's so enormously cost effective. Because of it, I have money to buy fresh fruit, and quality protein, and whole grains. If I did not have my garden we'd be living on white rice, beans, and the occasional vegetable or fruit.

Here's the kicker - if you're in subsidized/public housing you can't have a garden. A lot of neighborhoods (where the formerly middle class are suddenly becoming acquainted with what safety net we have) don't allow vegetable gardens. People in big cities don't have room for a garden, or if they do, only for a few tomato plants or similar.

I am enormously fortunate in that I can have a substantial garden.

Food-assistance programs are helping people make healthier choices by providing coupons to buy fruits and vegetables, Monsivais said, but some also put stumbling blocks in front of the poor.

^ This is important. Even on food assistance, it takes additional help for people to be able to afford fresh fruits and vegetables.

He mentioned, as an example, a Washington state policy making it difficult to buy potatoes with food assistance coupons for women with children, even though potatoes are one of the least expensive ways to add potassium to a diet.

This is the first I've heard of THAT insanity... maybe I'll do some research on it. Sure, french fries aren't good, but fresh potatoes are a different matter.

The study was based on a random telephone survey of about 2,000 adults in King County, Wash., followed by a printed questionnaire that was returned by about 1,300 people. They note what food they ate, which was analyzed for nutrient content and estimated cost.

People who spend the most on food tend to get the closest to meeting the federal guidelines for potassium, dietary fiber, vitamin D and calcium, the study found. Those who spend the least have the lowest intakes of the four recommended nutrients and the highest consumption of saturated fat and added sugar.

And that's because fat, sugar, and processed grains are so heavily subsidized by the government.

The poor in the US can get sufficient calories to maintain life - obviously, in some cases, more than that - but they're empty calories. Hence, the phenomena of malnourished fat people. However, for the very poor, living in big cities in a food desert, getting even enough calories can be a problem.... which leads to the Boston boy in the OP.

Hilary Seligman, assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said Monsivais' research is an interesting addition to the debate about healthy eating and food insecurity, her area of expertise.

A lot of people assume the poor eat cheap food because it tastes good, but they would make better choices if they could afford to, said Seligman, who was not involved in the Health Affairs study.

"Almost 15 percent of households in America say they don't have enough money to eat the way they want to eat," Seligman said. Recent estimates show 49 million Americans make food decisions based on cost, she added.

"Right now, a huge chunk of America just isn't able to adhere to these guidelines," she said.

But Monsivais may have oversimplified the problem, according to another professor who does research in this area. Parke Wilde, associated professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said it's not expensive to get all the nutrients a body needs to meet the federal guidelines.

What is expensive, in Wilde's opinion, are the choices Americans while getting those nutrients.

He said diets get more and more expensive depending on how many rules a person applies to himself, such as eating organic or seeking local sources for food or eating vegetables out of season.

I wonder if Wild's understands that for 8 months of the year in my area ALL fruits and vegetables are out of season because it's WINTER and nothing is growing.

Of course, frozen foods are an alternative - but the variety of frozen foods (meaning basic foods, not processed meals), even in the best grocery stores I've seen, is definitely limited.

"The longer your list gets, the more expensive your list will be," he said.

Seligman said her list can get longer than Wilde's, but not everything is a choice. Adding to the cost of buying healthful food could be how far away from home a person needs to travel to get to a grocery store that sells a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables.

See "food deserts"

The government also affects food prices through the subsidies offered to farmers growing certain crops, she added.

Yes - that's why HFCS is so fucking cheap, and it's in every goddamned thing. Ditto for corn. Why don't we grow more fruits and vegetables and subsidize THEM?

[Broomstick]

That's right! A 58% increase in the number of severely underweight babies! BABIES!

Yeah, from 24 to 38. Wow, who's surprised that in a major city of 600,000 people, there might be several dozen severely underweight babies? And only "severely underweight" by American standards, no less.

Go back to my post where I compare that child's weight to WHO guidelines. He's in the lowest 15% of body weight by world standards, not US. Do you think that is somehow OK? Even if that's not low enough to die from lack of food, is a child stunted that much to be ignored simply because he lives in the US rather than some other place?

Is it somehow acceptable to you that even 38 or 24 babies in a city are that malnourished? We're not talking about kids that have a medical problem, these are kids that are just not getting enough to eat. How does that compare to European rates? I rather suspect Europe doesn't see that as often.

[Serafina]

I think your statement is containing some assumptions that, while reasonable in your society, do not hold true in the US.

I'm quite aware of that.

This is why German unemployment benefits (and insurance companies, too) try to include proper education on how to have healthy meals and balanced nutrition. Now they don't necessarily succeed, but doing so is quite necessary.

What do you do about people who don't have a proper kitchen, though?

Nothing, as far as i know. Which is quite understandable given that unemployment benefits around here provide for an apartment which would include a kitchen.

You get 364€ if you are single, 328€ per person if married (or living in a marriage-like relationship), children get around 240€ (a bit less if younger, a bit more if older). Single parents also a get extra money. That's for food, clothing, phonebills and all that stuff - you can spend it however you want, unlike food stamps.

In addition to that your rent (and the costs that go with that, like heating) will be paid as long as the apartment does not exceed a certain size and cost per square meter (which depends on how many people you are living with you) - it starts at 20-50 square meters for a single person and adds about 15 per additional person. The closest we have to SRO's are student dormitories and such, which do include proper kitchens and bathrooms (albeit shared between the residents, of course).
And of course you'll also be provided with health care.


If there was a genuine strategy to keep the poor fed&occupied, i'd rather go with something like the German system - because you can actually live decently off them.

Also, there is the problem of “food deserts”. Detroit, for example has no grocery stores. NONE.

The only area where you could remotely find something like that would be out in the country. German retailers are based around small, local stores that carry all sorts of food and other items, but offer less selection than an american store would (so you might only have a choice between three cereals or two types of milk, but the store is much smaller). I have about three of those within 5-10 minute walking distance (in a city), they're just built into apartment blocks. Kinda like the Kwik-E Market from The Simpsons, i suppose. We don't have as many super-large retail stores, you'll generally only find those in suburbs or rural areas where people would have to drive a large distance anyway.
Most of our retail business is handled via these small stores. No fancy greeters or superlarge selections, rather cheap, mediocre-quality products. (Incidentally, that's why Wall-Mart failed utterly to establish itself in Germany - they had fierce competition with cheap prices already, and they utterly misunderstood german consumer culture).