Studies find Food Gap: the wealthier you are, the better your diet, and the poorer you are, the worse your diet

Wall St. Cheat

Income inequality has gotten a lot of press recently. It’s on the minds of many Americans who are increasingly concerned about the disappearance of the middle class. Indeed, according to a 2014 report by Feeding America, the nation currently has the largest number of people living in poverty since statistics on poverty in America were first available some 50 years ago. Currently, in the United States, there are more than 46 million people living at or below the federal poverty line, equating to about 15 percent of the U.S. population.

Feeding America, the non-profit organization aimed at ending hunger in America, which published the study, notes that the current high rates of poverty have affected more than just the nation’s slow-to-recover economy and the worsening tensions between upper and lower classes. “Much like the poverty rate, the number of Americans who have difficulty putting meals on the table has stayed stubbornly high since the recession,” Feeding America notes.

Fourteen percent of American households have suffered from “food insecurity,” a term for what the USDA describes as “lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods” at one time or another since the recession, according to Feeding America’s 2014 report on hunger in America. Currently, Mississippi — which, as it happens, is also one of the most impoverished states in the nation — has the highest rate of food insecurity, with more than 22 percent of residents experiencing food insecurity at one time or another.

Still more disturbing, 17.1 million Americans suffer from actual hunger, a figure which has budged only slightly since 2008 when, due to the recession, 17.3 million Americans went hungry. Further, “the number of householders receiving nutrition assistance from the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has increased by approximately 50 percent between 2009 and 2013,” the study found. It seems that aside from affecting Americans’ ability to spend, the economy as it stands is also affecting Americans’ ability to feed themselves.

There are other adverse affects of the rising gap between rich and poor households — even among those families who don’t suffer from food insecurity. According to multiple studies, there is a correlation between an person’s income and the quality of that person’s diet; in general, the wealthier you are, the better your diet, and the poorer you are, the worse your diet. This “food gap” it turns out, is widening steadily, even in lieu of a recovering economy.