Student Name: Xin Zhang
Student Number:999620771
Title: Children and Food Security

One of the most imperious issues directly affects the world poverty acceleration is the increasing threats of food security. Food security is considered one of the basic human rights that every human being should be able to have access to adequate and clean fresh food. However, things always go contrary to our wishes. A report from household food insecurity in the United States in 2012 indicates that, 10% of the households in US have food-insecurity issues, meaning that they all lack of access to adequate healthy food due to stagnant family income as well as other limitations (Miller, Nepomnyaschy, Ibarra, & Garasky, 2014). Poverty is always the fundamental factor that leads to food insecurity. According to Martin and Lippert (2011), food insecurity can be categorized into four scales from food secure to very low food security. Among these, low food security means that lacking of means to buy different kinds of food, which will result in the insufficient of variety of people's diet. Very low food security takes place when people do not have means to purchase enough food which leads to insufficient food intake. Moreover, children are more vulnerable to damage during the period of growth and development when they do not have adequate food intake. This is also what makes food insecurity a significant social problem, a great number of children die every year due to malnutrition and hunger-related diseases. Children who are food-insecure are more easily in the condition of poor health and are more likely to be developmentally at risk than those who have access to healthy, clean food. A great deal of severe health problems, behavior deficits, and cerebral dysplasia are associated with food insecurity (Miller et al, 2014). For the great amount of children in the world who do not get enough clean food regularly would cause stunted growth, ill health, and reducing resistance to diseases. Severe impacts not only occurs on health, but also on social and environmental problems. Poor people do not have access to adequate clean food. Farmers who do not have enough food to feed the,selves are not capable of growing productive lands to feed other people, which will cause a cycle of poverty. Seeking for solutions to alleviate poverty on a worldwide scale is crucial to the problem of food insecurity. Achieving food security also needs the support of sufficient water supply and good environment as powerful backings. However, water is a scarce resource in many areas in the world, and those ares are also where most food insecurity occurs. The causes of food insecurity can be summarized by a complex combination of perishing social conditions, depressing economics, and severe environmental degradation. Based on the work of Cook et al (2006) that young, vulnerable children come from a household with low-income are a high-risk population of poor health affected by food insecurity. This paper presents a study about exploring the causes and impacts of food insecurity on children and the relevant responses from the International community, such as the research methods used in the study of food insecurity and children, as well as the work of those correlative organizations and programs working on a better future of food security. All the references used in composing this paper are found in the following databases: Social Sciences Abstracts (H.W. Wilson), EBSCO Host, CAB Abstracts, and ProQuest Environmental Sciences and Pollution Management addressed with the keywords children and food insecurity, using the criteria limited to peer reviewed articles.
In recent years, abundant researches have been done observing whether local food availability plays a role in giving rise to childhood obesity (Lee,2012). According to Lee's (2012) study on whether local food availability a determinant of childhood obesity, she points out that the availability of food retailers in