Toward an End to Hunger in America

Toward an End to Hunger in America PDF Author: Peter K. Eisinger
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815791249
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Cheap, plentiful food is an American tradition. We spend a smaller percentage of our income on food than any other nation. We feed much of the world with our surpluses. Consumers, retailers, and restaurants throw away one-quarter of our food stock every year. And yet data collected by the federal government show that almost 12 percent of American households either suffer from hunger or worry about going hungry. Why are so many Americans afflicted with "food insecurity" during such prosperous times? According to this book, it's not simply an artifact of poverty: even most of the poorest homes have access to adequate food. Nor is it indifference to their plight or a lack of ways to help: Americans strongly support government food assistance, and there are a host of public and private programs devoted to feeding the hungry. Peter Eisinger seeks to unravel the puzzle of America's hunger and asserts that it is a problem that can be solved. He believes that the perception of hunger and responses to it emerge from a complex, intellectual, political, and social context. He begins by looking for a meaningful definition of hunger, then examines the structure and funding of government food assistance programs, the roles of Congress and community interest groups, and the contributions of volunteer organizations. He concludes by offering ideas to reduce the nation's perplexing hunger problem, based on creating stronger partnerships between public and private food programs.

Toward an End to Hunger in America

Toward an End to Hunger in America PDF Author: Peter K. Eisinger
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815722823
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Cheap, plentiful food is an American tradition. We spend a smaller percentage of our income on food than any other nation. We feed much of the world with our surpluses. Consumers, retailers, and restaurants throw away one-quarter of our food stock every year. And yet data collected by the federal government show that almost 12 percent of American households either suffer from hunger or worry about going hungry. Why are so many Americans afflicted with "food insecurity" during such prosperous times? According to this book, it's not simply an artifact of poverty: even most of the poorest homes have access to adequate food. Nor is it indifference to their plight or a lack of ways to help: Americans strongly support government food assistance, and there are a host of public and private programs devoted to feeding the hungry. Peter Eisinger seeks to unravel the puzzle of America's hunger and asserts that it is a problem that can be solved. He believes that the perception of hunger and responses to it emerge from a complex, intellectual, political, and social context. He begins by looking for a meaningful definition of hunger, then examines the structure and funding of government food assistance programs, the roles of Congress and community interest groups, and the contributions of volunteer organizations. He concludes by offering ideas to reduce the nation's perplexing hunger problem, based on creating stronger partnerships between public and private food programs.

Toward an End to Hunger in America

Toward an End to Hunger in America PDF Author: Peter K. Eisinger
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815791249
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

Get Book

Book Description
Cheap, plentiful food is an American tradition. We spend a smaller percentage of our income on food than any other nation. We feed much of the world with our surpluses. Consumers, retailers, and restaurants throw away one-quarter of our food stock every year. And yet data collected by the federal government show that almost 12 percent of American households either suffer from hunger or worry about going hungry. Why are so many Americans afflicted with "food insecurity" during such prosperous times? According to this book, it's not simply an artifact of poverty: even most of the poorest homes have access to adequate food. Nor is it indifference to their plight or a lack of ways to help: Americans strongly support government food assistance, and there are a host of public and private programs devoted to feeding the hungry. Peter Eisinger seeks to unravel the puzzle of America's hunger and asserts that it is a problem that can be solved. He believes that the perception of hunger and responses to it emerge from a complex, intellectual, political, and social context. He begins by looking for a meaningful definition of hunger, then examines the structure and funding of government food assistance programs, the roles of Congress and community interest groups, and the contributions of volunteer organizations. He concludes by offering ideas to reduce the nation's perplexing hunger problem, based on creating stronger partnerships between public and private food programs.

Still Hungry in America

Still Hungry in America PDF Author: Robert Coles
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820353248
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Originally published in 1969, the documentary evidence of poverty and malnutrition in the American South showcased in Still Hungry in America still resonates today. The work was created to complement a July 1967 U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty hearings on hunger in America. At those hearings, witnesses documented examples of deprivation afflicting hundreds of thousands of American families. The most powerful testimonies came from the authors of this profoundly disturbing and important book. Al Clayton’s sensitive camerawork enabled the subcommittee members to see the agonizing results of insufficient food and improper diet, rendered graphically in stunted, weakened and fractured bones, dry, shrunken, and ulcerated skin, wasting muscles, and bloated legs and abdomens. Physician and child psychiatrist Robert Coles, who had worked with these populations for many years, described with fierce clarity the medical and psychological effects of hunger. Coles’s powerful narrative, reinforced by heartbreaking interviews with impoverished people and accompanied by 101 photographs taken by Clayton in Appalachia, rural Mississippi, and Atlanta, Georgia, convey the plight of the millions of hungry citizens in the most affluent nation on earth. A new foreword by historian Thomas J. Ward Jr. analyzes food insecurity among today’s rural and urban poor and frames the current crisis in the American diet not as a scarcity of food but as an overabundance of empty calories leading to obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries

Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries PDF Author: Katie S. Martin
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642831530
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
In the US, there is a wide-ranging network of at least 370 food banks, and more than 60,000 hunger-relief organizations such as food pantries and meal programs. These groups provide billions of meals a year to people in need. And yet hunger still affects one in nine Americans. What are we doing wrong? In Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries, Katie Martin argues that if handing out more and more food was the answer, we would have solved the problem of hunger decades ago. Martin instead presents a new model for charitable food, one where success is measured not by pounds of food distributed but by lives changed. The key is to focus on the root causes of hunger. When we shift our attention to strategies that build empathy, equity, and political will, we can implement real solutions. Martin shares those solutions in a warm, engaging style, with simple steps that anyone working or volunteering at a food bank or pantry can take today. Some are short-term strategies to create a more dignified experience for food pantry clients: providing client choice, where individuals select their own food, or redesigning a waiting room with better seating and a designated greeter. Some are longer-term: increasing the supply of healthy food, offering job training programs, or connecting clients to other social services. And some are big picture: joining the fight for living wages and a stronger social safety net. These strategies are illustrated through inspiring success stories and backed up by scientific research. Throughout, readers will find a wealth of proven ideas to make their charitable food organizations more empathetic and more effective. As Martin writes, it takes more than food to end hunger. Picking up this insightful, lively book is a great first step.

Ending Hunger Now

Ending Hunger Now PDF Author: George Stanley McGovern
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451404395
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Veteran statesmen George McGovern and Robert Dole here find common cause with theologian and activist Donald Messer in this powerful testimony and appeal to people of faith. They are each convinced we can overcome global hunger now, and their informed, strategic, impassioned thoughts encourage and equip. This book brings together their disparate yet powerful voices behind a shared conviction: that helping the millions who lack basic provision for food has become a religious imperative and human priority. Writing for congregations and individuals of faith, McGovern, Dole, and Messer appeal to the biblical, theological, and ethical foundations of action against hunger.

The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy

The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy PDF Author: Joel Blau
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195109689
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
Preface and AcknowledgmentsPart I: Introducing Social Welfare Policy 1. Introduction: Social Problems, Social Policy, and the Triggers of Social Change2. Definitions and Functions of Social Welfare Policy, Mimi AbramovitzPart II: The Policy Model 3. The Economy and Social Welfare4. The Politics of Social Welfare5. Ideological Perspectives and Conflicts, Mimi Abramovitz6. Social Movements and Social Changes, Mimi Abramovitz7. Social Welfare History in the United StatesPart III: Policy Analyses: Applying the Policy Model 8. Income Support: Programs and Policies9. Jobs and Job Training: Programs.

Big Hunger

Big Hunger PDF Author: Andrew Fisher
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262535165
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
How to focus anti-hunger efforts not on charity but on the root causes of food insecurity, improving public health, and reducing income inequality. Food banks and food pantries have proliferated in response to an economic emergency. The loss of manufacturing jobs combined with the recession of the early 1980s and Reagan administration cutbacks in federal programs led to an explosion in the growth of food charity. This was meant to be a stopgap measure, but the jobs never came back, and the “emergency food system” became an industry. In Big Hunger, Andrew Fisher takes a critical look at the business of hunger and offers a new vision for the anti-hunger movement. From one perspective, anti-hunger leaders have been extraordinarily effective. Food charity is embedded in American civil society, and federal food programs have remained intact while other anti-poverty programs have been eliminated or slashed. But anti-hunger advocates are missing an essential element of the problem: economic inequality driven by low wages. Reliant on corporate donations of food and money, anti-hunger organizations have failed to hold business accountable for offshoring jobs, cutting benefits, exploiting workers and rural communities, and resisting wage increases. They have become part of a “hunger industrial complex” that seems as self-perpetuating as the more famous military-industrial complex. Fisher lays out a vision that encompasses a broader definition of hunger characterized by a focus on public health, economic justice, and economic democracy. He points to the work of numerous grassroots organizations that are leading the way in these fields as models for the rest of the anti-hunger sector. It is only through approaches like these that we can hope to end hunger, not just manage it.

Beginning to End Hunger

Beginning to End Hunger PDF Author: M. Jahi Chappell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520293088
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Beginning to End Hunger presents the story of Belo Horizonte, home to 2.5 million people and the site of one of the world’s most successful city-run food security programs. Since its Municipal Secretariat of Food and Nutritional Security was founded in 1993, Belo Horizonte has sharply reduced malnutrition, leading it to serve as an inspiration for Brazil’s renowned Zero Hunger programs. The secretariat’s work with local family farmers shows how food security, rural livelihoods, and healthy ecosystems can be supported together. While inevitably imperfect, Belo Horizonte offers a vision of a path away from food system dysfunction, unsustainability, and hunger. In this convincing case study, M. Jahi Chappell establishes the importance of holistic approaches to food security, suggests how to design successful policies to end hunger, and lays out strategies for enacting policy change. With these tools, we can take the next steps toward achieving similar reductions in hunger and food insecurity elsewhere in the developed and developing worlds.

All You Can Eat

All You Can Eat PDF Author: Joel Berg
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1583229787
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
With the biting wit of Supersize Me and the passion of a lifelong activist, Joel Berg has his eye on the growing number of people who are forced to wait on lines at food pantries across the nation—the modern breadline. All You Can Eat reveals that hunger is a problem as American as apple pie, and shows what it is like when your income is not enough to cover rising housing and living costs and put food on the table. Berg takes to task politicians who remain inactive; the media, which ignores hunger except during holidays and hurricanes; and the food industry, which makes fattening, artery-clogging fast food more accessible to the nation's poor than healthy fare. He challenges the new president to confront the most unthinkable result of US poverty—hunger—and offers a simple and affordable plan to end it for good. A spirited call to action, All You Can Eat shows how practical solutions for hungry Americans will ultimately benefit America's economy and all of its citizens.

Issues for Debate in Social Policy

Issues for Debate in Social Policy PDF Author: CQ Researcher,
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 148334357X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 473

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Book Description
Is more government aid needed? Who will pay for care of aging baby boomers? Will all Americans finally get health insurance? These are just some of the topics covered in Issues for Debate in Social Policy. Engaging and reader-friendly articles encourage students to think critically about some of the most pressing social policy issues of our time. Classroom discussions will sparkle as a result! About CQ Researcher Readers In the tradition of nonpartisanship and current analysis that is the hallmark of CQ Press, readers investigate important and controversial policy issues. Offer your students the balanced reporting, complete overviews, and engaging writing that has consistently provided for more than 80 years. Each article gives substantial background andanalysis of a particular issue as well as useful pedagogical features to inspire critical thinking andto help students grasp and review key material: A Pro/Con box that examines two competing sides of a single question A detailed chronology of key dates and events An annotated bibliography and Web resources Outlook sections that address possible regulation and initiatives from Capitol Hill and the White House over the next 5 to 10 years Photos, charts, graphs, and maps