The Food-Security Charade<\/strong><\/span>
\nby James Bovard
\nFederal spending on food aid has skyrocketed in recent decades, and the feds are now feeding more than 100 million Americans. Yet, according to the Agriculture Department (USDA), far more Americans are \u201cfood insecure\u201d now than before the mushrooming of subsidized feeding programs. But rather than seeing this as evidence of a government failure, a chorus of activists and pundits insist that it proves that even more people should be encouraged to depend on Uncle Sam for their next meal.<\/p>\nThe USDA announced last September that 14.3 percent of American households suffer from \u201cfood insecurity.\u201d There are 49 million people living in those households, and the media coverage presumed that all those residents were either hungry or \u201cfood insecure.\u201d But the USDA\u2019s report states that many residents \u2014 especially children \u2014 in such households actually do not go hungry or suffer doubts about food. That statistical contortion is typical of a report seemingly crafted to provide cover for bureaucrats while permitting politicians to fan public fears.<\/p>\n
Over the past 15 years federal surveys have profoundly muddled Americans\u2019 understanding of the hunger problem. During the Clinton administration, the USDA began using a \u201cfood insecurity\u201d survey that had been initially created by the Food Research Action Center (FRAC), a left-wing advocacy organization renowned for hyping hunger. FRAC\u2019s goal is to vastly increase the number of Americans receiving government food aid \u2014 and it slanted the questions accordingly.<\/p>\n
One of the USDA\u2019s surveys\u2019 preliminary screening question asks, \u201cIn the last 12 months, did you ever run short of money and try to make your food or your food money go further?\u201d Why should we be concerned that shoppers want their food dollars to go further? That was formerly taught as a virtue in high-school home-economics classes. Now it is a pretext for federal alarm.<\/p>\n
The USDA defines food insecurity for a family as being \u201cuncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food.\u201d The USDA noted, \u201cFor most food-insecure households, the inadequacies were in the form of reduced quality and variety rather than insufficient quantity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWorry\u201d about being able to buy sufficient food is the number-one source of food insecurity. If someone states that he feared running out of food for a single day (but didn\u2019t run out), that is an indicator of being \u201cfood insecure\u201d for the entire year \u2014 regardless of whether he ever missed a single meal. If someone felt he needed organic kale but could only afford conventional kale, that is another \u201cfood insecure\u201d indicator. If an obese person felt he needed 5,000 calories a day but could only afford 4,800 calories, he could be labeled \u201cfood insecure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democrats have a long history of demagoging this particular report. After the 2009 food-security report was released, Barack Obama announced that \u201chunger rose significantly last year\u2026. My administration is committed to reversing the trend of rising hunger.\u201d Obama\u2019s comment spurred a Washington Post headline, \u201cHunger a growing problem in America, USDA reports,\u201d while the New York Times chimed in with a story titled, \u201cHunger in U.S. at a 14-Year High.\u201d<\/p>\n
The USDA\u2019s most recent report, which focuses on food insecurity and not hunger, spurred the usual deluge of misleading media coverage. A Voice of America headline proclaimed, \u201cUSDA: Hunger Threatens 1 in 7 Americans.\u201d A Philadelphia Inquirer headline lamented, \u201cUSDA: Despite slight improvement, hunger persists.\u201d The Sioux Falls Argus Leader announced, \u201cHunger a growing problem for South Dakota.\u201d<\/p>\n
In its 2013 report on food insecurity, the USDA asserted that federal food programs \u201cincrease food security by providing low-income households access to food, a healthful diet, and nutrition education.\u201d But food insecurity is far more widespread now than in 2007 (11.1 percent versus 14.3 percent now), even though the number of food-stamp recipients has soared from 26 million to 46 million in the meantime.<\/p>\n
Actually, rising government dependency may help explain rising insecurity. A 2007 Journal of Nutrition study concluded that families receiving food stamps are more than 50 percent more likely to be food-insecure than similar households not on food stamps. Three years later, the Government Accountability Office stated that food-stamp participants \u201ctend to be more food-insecure compared to\u201d eligible nonparticipants. A Harvard School of Public Health 2013 study also found that enrolling in the food-stamp program failed to significantly boost participants\u2019 food security regarding dietary quality.<\/p>\n
Perhaps relying on others for one\u2019s next meal spurs insecurity. Many food-stamp recipients spent the entire month\u2019s allotment on the same day they received it. Some reports indicate that binge buying is sometimes followed by binge eating.<\/p>\n
Though the food-security survey results are touted as evidence of widespread hunger, another USDA survey debunked that conclusion. The USDA\u2019s Agricultural Research Service conducts periodic surveys on \u201cWhat We Eat in America.\u201d The most recent survey (2009-2010) revealed that children 2 years old to 11 in households with less than $25,000 in annual income consume significantly more calories than children in households with incomes above $75,000. The same report showed that black children in the same age group consume significantly more calories than white children. (The Journal of the American Medical Association noted in 2012 that \u201cseven times as many [low-income] children are obese as are underweight.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Secrecy<\/p>\n
Some of the \u201cfood security\u201d problem may result from how food stamps are spent, but the Obama administration maintains an iron curtain of secrecy around the program.<\/strong> Rep. Tom Marino (R-Penn.) introduced the SNAP Transparency Act last year to compel the USDA to disclose the food items for which food stamps are used. Marino complained, \u201cCongress has virtually no information to ensure that the program is operating effectively.\u201d The Association of Health Care Journalists, the National Association of Science Writers, and other organizations endorsed Marino\u2019s legislation, but Democratic lawmakers made sure it went nowhere. But that also makes a mockery of the millions of dollars of federally funded research on low-income diets and nutrition problems. The feds would rather withhold the key information than risk disclosures that might demolish the pretense that food stamps are a \u201cnutrition program.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cFood security\u201d is something invented by government statisticians to serve political purposes.<\/strong> The USDA uses a radically different standard when it estimates \u201cfood security\u201d for foreign nations, basing its judgments on whether residents may be presumed to consume at least 2,100 calories per day. A recent USDA report declared that only 13.9 percent of the population in the world\u2019s 76 poorest nations are \u201cfood insecure.\u201d According to the USDA, American households suffer far more \u201cfood insecurity\u201d than do families in Angola, Mozambique, and Pakistan. It claims that most developing nations have zero problem with \u201cfood security\u201d \u2014 a conclusion that would shock the downtrodden residents in those countries.<\/p>\nThe USDA\u2019s food-security survey has been harshly criticized by experts in the past. The National Academy of Science (NAS) recommended in 2006 that the USDA radically overhaul the survey. The USDA juggled the terminology, adapting the phrase \u201clow food security\u201d to signify that survey respondents reported \u201creduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet\u201d with \u201clittle or no indication of reduced food intake.\u201d The NAS panel recommended that the \u201cUSDA should explicitly state in its annual reports that the data presented in the report are estimates of prevalence of household food insecurity and not prevalence of hunger among individuals.\u201d The panel also recommended that \u201cresource-constrained hunger (i.e., physiological hunger resulting from food insecurity) \u2026 should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NAS panel lamented that there is little solid data on individual hunger in the United States and urged the government to develop reliable gauges of hunger. That is a sound recommendation, but it is appalling that it would be necessary to make such a proposal more than 40 years after Richard Nixon first declared war on hunger. Decade after decade, politicians have talked as if higher federal food-aid spending would automatically banish hunger from the land. Nixon also set a precedent followed by the vast majority of subsequent politician\u2013hunger warriors by failing to reform federal farm policies that sharply inflated food prices to all consumers while claiming to be concerned about the poor. Federal policies currently make sugar, milk, peanut butter, and many other basic products far more expensive than they would otherwise be. But neither Obama nor the hunger lobby has exerted elbow grease to end policies that brutalize Americans at the grocery checkout.<\/p>\n
Some Americans are suffering badly, but the USDA has never tried to accurately count them. The department is far more enthusiastic about pretending to measure \u201cfood insecurity\u201d (instead of hunger) because it produces vastly higher numbers to justify expanding federal food programs. An honest survey of actual problems could wreak havoc on bureaucratic job security.<\/strong><\/p>\nThis article was originally published in the December 2014 edition of Future of Freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the December 2014 issue of Future of Freedom, from the Future of Freedom Foundation – The Food-Security Charade by James Bovard Federal spending on food aid has skyrocketed in recent decades, and the feds are now feeding more than 100 million Americans. Yet, according to the Agriculture Department (USDA), far more Americans are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[149,415,322,423,27,38,324,165,151,571],"class_list":["post-8115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agriculture","tag-boondoggle","tag-food-stamps","tag-hunger","tag-lying","tag-obama","tag-obesity","tag-paternalism","tag-waste","tag-welfare-recruiting"],"yoast_head":"\n
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