Food Security Blog - L.A.

Food Security and Malnutrition

Yesterday, a guest speaker came and told us about malnutrition. She showed us many pictures about families and what they eat weekly. Surprisingly, most of the families in the pics were big and yet they eat small amounts of food daily, but their food is well balanced. And they don’t spend much on weekly food. As for Americans, we eat tons of food each week. Since we eat a lot of food weekly, we usually spend more than $100 each week. Not to mention that our food isn’t well balanced because we eat more fattening foods than healthy. This is why there are tons of obese and overweight people. And we also passed around food that was used like sugar cane, rape (a type of green-leaf vegetable), and a vegetable that looks like a potato. But America, we need to eat more healthy.

At Mercy Corps, we learned about food security, which is where everyone can have food at all times. But before we have food security, we need to have food availability, food access, food utilization, and risk management. Food availability, is where food is present. Food access is where we can get food through money. Food utilization is where the food is healthy and clean. And risk management is where you have a plan and are ready for anything. Not everybody has food security, so lets try and change that.