This is part of the series on the insecurities produced by American capitalism for most Americans.

Food

Food Insecurity

The US Dept. of Agriculture reports that 10.2% of the US population was food insecure over the last decade. That is approximately 34 million people, or 1 in 10 Americans. Food insecurity means “one or more household members experienced reduced food intake and disrupted eating patterns at times during the year because of limited money and other resources for obtaining food.”¹

School Breakfast and Lunch Programs

The Federal school breakfast and lunch programs feed more than 14 million kids daily.²

Food Stamps

The Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (known earlier as Food Stamps) provides food assistance to more than 44 million Americans, 1 in 8 people.³

Low Income and Low Access to Food

About 39 mil­lion peo­ple — 13% of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion — were liv­ing in low-income and low-access areas, more than 1 mile (urban) or 10 miles (rur­al) from the near­est super­mar­ket or large gro­cery store, accord­ing to the USDA’s most recent food access research report, pub­lished in 2022.

With­in this group, researchers esti­mat­ed that almost 19 mil­lion peo­ple — or 6% of the nation’s total pop­u­la­tion — had lim­it­ed access to a supermarket⁴USDA Food Access Research Atlas, Low Income and Low Access Lay­ers, 2019[/note]

 

1. Average calculated from data in Alisha Coleman-Jensen et al., “Household Food Security in the United States in 2020,” accessed March 3, 2022,http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=102075
2. “School Meals Report, 2020–2021 School Year (February 2022),” Food Research & Action Center (blog), accessed August 6, 2022, https://frac.org/research/resource-library/breakfast2022.
3. “A Closer Look at Who Benefits from SNAP: State-by-State Fact Sheets,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, accessed August 6, 2022, https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-at-who-benefits-from-snap-state-by-state-fact-sheets.
4. https://www.aecf.org/blog/communities-with-limited-food-access-in-the-united-states