Food Insecurity is when individuals don’t have sufficient access to the food they need to live a healthy life. Hunger can play a role in food insecurity when impoverished communities simply do not get enough access to sufficient quantities of any food at all. However, it is worth noting that hunger is not necessarily always a factor of food insecurity. As a direct result of the current U.S. fast food marketing culture, there is a huge economic incentive to spend less on foods of less nutritional value. Understanding the mental health effects of food insecurity with and without hunger in different environments is important because it is a way of visualizing mental wounds, that are harder to recognize than physical ones and often last long into the life of a food insecure person due to inconspicuous effects. Interviews from the Southern Oral History Project provide glimpses into how food insecurity can affect the mental health of individuals in North Carolina.
An interviewee from the Southern Oral History Project’s Stories to Save Lives, Nell Burwell, grew up living in the resource-limited Edgecombe County side of Rocky Mount, North Carolina. She talks about how her area saw limited food options and the ones that made the most sense to go to were fast food diners. In her interview she discusses how she grew up surrounded by people who were accustomed to going there regularly. This greatly affected her perspective on viable food options as she matured. She talks about how she wouldn’t even think twice about going to fast food places, even mentioning going to some on a regular basis multiple times each week. She explained how it she faces difficulty to change her eating habits that she grew up with which became instilled into her life. This is a great example of how mental effects due to food insecurity can last long-term throughout a person’s life.
Another Stories to Save Lives Interviewee, Andrea William-Morales, describes her life growing up in a non-english speaking household in North Carolina and the challenges that came with it. She illustrates that rural communities receive foods with lower quality of nutrition due to their cheaper cost. She mentions that apart from money, it is very hard to change people’s decisions on building their diets with more nutritional value, given the poor diets that they were raised with, almost like removing an addiction. People who ate unhealthy foods frequently as they grew up will likely continue those same eating habits unless they are educated otherwise, which most in this group are not.
Elizabeth J. Adams, Laurence Grummer-Strawn, and Gilberto Chavez’s 2003 article, Food Insecurity Is Associated with Increased Risk of Obesity in California Women, explores the relationship between food insecurity and obesity in Californian women. The study found that women who grew up food insecure were more likely to have higher Body Mass Indexes and face obesity as well as associated diseases. This was likely due to the women facing the same challenge described by Burwell and William-Morales leading them to choose cheap fast food over more expensive and healthier foods. The authors of the study additionally noted that this increase in body mass index may be a result of food insecurity-related stress which can lead to weight gain.
In the article Hunger of the Body and Hunger of the Mind: African American Women’s Perceptions of Food Insecurity, Health and Violence, Mariana Chilton and Sue Booth examined the mental health effects of food insecurity in African American women and found that food insecurity is associated with a range of negative psychological outcomes, including depression, anxiety, and stress. Victims of food insecurity also have an increased risk of exposure to violence and trauma, such as intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. Women who experience food insecurity are also more likely to experience chronic health problems, such as obesity and diabetes, which can further exacerbate mental health issues.
Just as shockingly if not more, food insecurity can cause anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues in children. According to Food insecurity and hunger: A review of the effects on children’s health and behaviour by Janice Ke and Elizabeth Lee Ford-Jones, food insecurity has devastating effects on the daily lives of children and presents them with uniquely impossible challenges with their developing maturity in school and in their lives. In addition to lower academic performances due to food insecurity-related anxiety and depression, children would also have to face negative physical health effects as a result of food insecurity, causing further developmental delays. The mental burden on parents and caregivers of not being able to adequately provide sufficient food for their children can also be severe.
In conclusion, food insecurity is a critical issue that affects can create devastating mental health effects. Regardless of whether food insecurity takes place involving hunger or not involving hunger, it seems to affect mental health by adding compounded challenges to the lives of individuals early on. The Southern Oral History Project’s Stories to Save Lives interviews with Nell Burwell and Andrea William-Morales demonstrate the challenges of breaking unhealthy eating habits and the impact of limited food options in impoverished communities. The studies conducted by Elizabeth J. Adams, Laurence Grummer-Strawn, and Gilberto Chavez, as well as Mariana Chilton and Sue Booth, backup this idea by explaining how childhood food insecurity influences future dieting lifestyles and leads to negative psychological outcomes including depression, anxiety, and stress. The review by Janice Ke and Elizabeth Lee Ford-Jones further reinforces this claim by illustrating the particular challenges food insecurity places on children, such as lower academic performance and developmental delays. These studies illustrate the urgent need for interventions that address the root causes of food insecurity and improve access to healthy food options. Such interventions could include increasing the availability of healthy foods in low-income communities through farmer markets, education programs that focusing on nutrition in rural communities, and wider support for treating obesity.
References
Elizabeth J. Adams, Laurence Grummer-Strawn, Gilberto Chavez, Food Insecurity Is Associated with Increased Risk of Obesity in California Women, The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 133, Issue 4, April 2003, Pages 1070–1074, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/133.4.1070
Frey, Lauren. Interview with Nell Burwell. 19 June 2019 (Y-0089). Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Janice Ke, MSc, Elizabeth Lee Ford-Jones, MD, Food insecurity and hunger: A review of the effects on children’s health and behaviour, Paediatrics & Child Health, Volume 20, Issue 2, March 2015, Pages 89–91, https://doi.org/10.1093/pch/20.2.89
Mariana Chilton, Sue Booth, Hunger of the Body and Hunger of the Mind: African American Women’s Perceptions of Food Insecurity, Health and Violence, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, Volume 39, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 116-125, ISSN 1499-4046, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2006.11.005.
Williams-Morales, Andrea. Interview with Madelaine Katz. 23 July 2019 (Y-0137). Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.