What is Food Insecurity?
Feeding America, a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks and the country’s largest charity defines food insecurity as “the consistent lack of food to have a healthy life because of your economic situation.”
The Journal of Nutrition calls it “the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or the limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.”
We define it as not knowing if or when you’ll have enough to eat.
Food Insecurity In America
Food insecurity is a nationwide problem that keeps growing every year. The recent statistics from Feeding America are shocking.
44 million people in the U.S. are food insecure, including 13 million children. This means 20% of U.S. children are not sure where their next meal will come from.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2022 17 million U.S. households were food insecure at some time. About 6.4 million households with children were affected by food insecurity.
More than 33% of households headed by single mothers experienced food insecurity and 7.3 million children (under 18 years old) lived in food-insecure households.
Food Insecurity In Nevada
In 2022 Feeding America reported that more than 144,000 Nevadan children were food insecure. Approximately 78.4% of Nevada’s food insecure children lived in Clark County, Nevada’s largest county.
In 2023, more than 90,000 children in Clark country were food insecure. In 2024, only one year later, that number has skyrocketed to 113,000. This means nearly one in four Clark County children were not sure when their next meal would be and where it would come from.
What is food insecurity? It’s an uncontrolled social pandemic that victimizes helpless children across the country, in every state and right here at home.