men April, Kimberly Hart made the decision to lose some weight on the advice of her doctor. Hart, who is 61 years old and lives in New Haven, Connecticut, has high blood pressure and cholesterol. These factors, combined with her age and weight, put her at high risk for developing diabetes, and she wanted to do everything she could to prevent that from happening.
One item under his control, Hart thought at the time, was his diet. He started seeing a nutritionist, a cost covered by Medicaid, and eating healthier. But it wasn’t long before his efforts collided with the reality of rising grocery costs.
In May, Hart started to really feel the pressure of higher prices, and by June, she realized she had to completely change the way she put food on the table for herself and her son.
He switched from wheat bread to brand-name white bread, “which is a shame,” he said, “because I know wheat bread is healthier for me, but I also know white bread is cheaper.” She switched from frozen to cheaper canned vegetables, despite their lower nutritional value and higher sodium content, and no longer buys fresh fruit. Four months since her April resolution, she said, the scale has not moved.
“The more color a dish has, the healthier it is, because you get the color from fresh vegetables,” he said. But because of his financial situation, “I really can’t do that.”
Inflation is pushing healthy eating out of reach for millions of people like Hart, a trend that public health experts worry could increase their risk of diet-related disease in the long run. Over the past year, food prices have risen rapidly as agricultural supply chains have collapsed under the pressure of food shortages, labor shortages and high fuel costs.
At the end of July, the cost of eating food at home had raised by more than 13% compared to the same period of the previous year, according to the Consumer Price Index. According to a survey conducted by the Urban Institute in June and July, more than 20% of adults reported experiencing food insecurity in the past 30 days, an increase of more than 6% from the spring of last year.
It may sound counterintuitive, but scientists have long pointed links between poverty and obesity. This week, the Biden administration released a national strategy to address the “urgent health crisis related to nutrition”, including the “increasing prevalence” of diet-related diseases, such as obesity.
In response to higher prices, people are buying cheaper processed foods high in calories, sugar and sodium instead of more expensive options like fruits and vegetables, protein and whole grains, according to public health researchers and experts in fight against hunger.
“Highly processed foods are still the most affordable for people and can stretch the most and have the longest shelf life,” said Mariana Chilton, professor and director of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities at Drexel University. “People want to buy healthy foods, but then they choose foods that aren’t as healthy but stay on the shelf longer and can stretch and help their kids feel fuller.”
In the long term, researchers have found that food insecurity, defined by the Department of Agriculture as uncertain access to a nutritionally adequate diet probably associated with obesity, a condition that in turn increases the risk of problems such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
“People in the United States who are more food insecure have higher rates of overweight and obesity,” said Parke Wilde, a professor of food and nutrition policy at Tufts University. Wilde added that low-income people without access to social security programs bear the brunt of food insecurity caused by inflation and associated health risks.
While researchers have investigated the link between food insecurity and obesity for decades, exactly how the two problems are related remains unresolved, Wilde said. An explanation may lie in the uncertainty it brings. “Having a boom-and-bust cycle in the amount of food you could have sends a signal to your body that it needs to retain energy from food, and that could put people at higher risk for overweight and obesity,” Wilde said. .
Anti-hunger advocates say inflation-driven food insecurity illustrates the powerful role poverty plays in shaping dietary choices and healthy eating, which have historically been framed as a matter of individual decision-making.
“There’s a sense that low-income people don’t know how to eat,” said Thomas Reynolds, chief executive of Northwest Harvest, a network of 300 food banks in Washington state. “I just totally reject it. It’s really about making very practical decisions, because money is so tight right now.”
Katrena Ross, 40, a paralegal and mother of three who lives in Redford, Michigan, started worrying about inflation in February. At the time, Ross was already struggling to feed her family on a monthly budget of less than $200, a situation that made her especially cognizant of even the slightest price increase.
When prices began to rise in the spring, Ross couldn’t afford to buy as much meat and fresh produce. Instead, he reached for $1 peanut butter and jelly, pasta, boxed mac and cheese and ramen noodles, a food he hadn’t bought in years.
“I would love to say that I think about what it would do to me and my children to eat like that, but that is not really a luxury that I have, because I can only think: what am I feeding them now? What do I have to do to make sure they don’t go to bed hungry?
Public health experts emphasize that food insecurity has more than a physical cost, it can also have damaging psychological impacts.
“A lot of people just think about obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease and yes, all of that can be exacerbated, but a lot of people tend to forget about the emotional consequences,” said Drexel University’s Chilton.
Eventually, Ross made the decision to move his family back home with his mother and stepfather, a move that allowed the merged household to pool resources and shoulder the burden of inflation together. It is a choice that also gave him the peace of mind that he so badly needed.
“My ability to not provide the basics for my family, like food and a roof over my head…that was destroying my mental health,” Ross said. “I felt that I had failed them. I felt like I couldn’t keep them safe or take care of them properly, which for a mother or any father really takes a toll on your self-esteem.”
Reynolds of Northwest Hunger said there are many ways lawmakers can strengthen the social safety net to prevent families like Ross’s from experiencing food insecurity in the first place, as well as help them cope with the unexpected costs of rapid inflation.
“Poverty and hunger are so closely related that they are almost interchangeable,” he said. He believes policies like universal basic income, free school meals and higher payments to people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) could bolster food security and make healthy eating more affordable. affordable.
For Hart, Snap’s more generous payments could make a significant difference in his life. Before the pandemic, he estimates that he was receiving about $400 a month from the program. But her 20-year-old son recently got a part-time job and the extra income caused his household’s profits to plummet. Her son is now considering taking a higher-paying position, something she supports, but worries it will lead to even more cuts in his monthly Snap allowance.
“It’s a catch-22,” he said. These days, he organizes his week by waiting in lines at food pantries, which he relies on for extra produce, dairy and meat.
Hart said she feels demoralized because she hasn’t lost weight since April. Sometimes she lies to her nutritionist about eating a healthier diet, just to get around the fact that she can’t really afford it. “One day, she might wake me up diabetic,” Hart said. “If only I could eat healthier… but I can’t.”
