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Food Insecurity and Health Disparities: Experiences from New York City

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Food Poverty and Insecurity: International Food Inequalities

Part of the book series: Food Policy ((FP))

Abstract

Opportunities exist to further enhance the effectiveness of policy and programs that target the nexus of hunger and health equity. These entail intersectional action, crossing levels of government, and societal sectors. Federal nutrition assistance programs in US are an economic and moral policy lever currently used for feeding a socially acceptable subset of the full population of people living in poverty at a given time. The most fundamental approach to reducing diet-related disease disparities—and other health problems—is to reduce wealth inequality and poverty. Against this mark, it becomes clear that much of what is done to reduce food insecurity in the US, and its contribution to health inequities, falls short of addressing the root causes of modern malnutrition. As experiences of this system indicate, its reliance on free markets, restrictions on food choice, and the conditional terms of program participation, promote the hierarchical distribution of wealth and food that nutrition assistance programs should remedy. This chapter looks at these problems using New York as a case study. The chapter will address the following issues: (1) The advantages and disadvantages of nutrition assistance programs that provide electronically transferred funds for use with eligible food products, vis-à-vis general income support policies. (2) The extent to which nutrition assistance programs exclude foods with low nutritional value, and/or offer financial incentives for purchasing fruits and vegetables. (3) The role of public institutions in alleviating modern malnutrition in New York City.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Health Policy, The New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, 10029, USA

    Kimberly Libman

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  1. Kimberly Libman
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Correspondence to Kimberly Libman .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Northhampton Square CM516 City University, London EC1V OHB, United Kingdom

    Martin Caraher

  2. Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

    John Coveney

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Libman, K. (2016). Food Insecurity and Health Disparities: Experiences from New York City. In: Caraher, M., Coveney, J. (eds) Food Poverty and Insecurity: International Food Inequalities. Food Policy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23859-3_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23859-3_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23858-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23859-3

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