Biden unveils plan to end US hunger

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration is unveiling its plan to meet the ambitious goal of ending hunger in the United States by 2030, including expanding monthly benefits that help low-income Americans buy groceries.

The administration, at a plan released on Tuesday, also tries to promote healthy eating and physical activity so that fewer people suffer from diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and other diet-related diseases. It said it would work to expand Medicaid and Medicare access to obesity counseling and nutrition.

“The consequences of food insecurity and diet-related disease are significant, far-reaching and disproportionately impacting historically underserved communities,” Biden wrote in a memo outlining the White House strategy. “However, food insecurity and diet-related diseases are largely preventable if we prioritize the health of the nation.”

Biden is hosting a conference on hunger, nutrition and health this week, the first from the White House since 1969. That conference, under President Richard Nixon, was a pivotal moment that shaped the US food policy agenda for 50 years. It led to a greatly expanded meal stamp program and led to the women, infants and children programserving half of the babies born in the United States by providing women with parenting advice, breastfeeding support and nutritional support.

Over the years, cutbacks in federal programs coupled with welfare stigma and major changes in the way food and farming systems are operated have meant that access to food has declined.

Biden, a Democrat, is hoping this week’s conference will be similarly transformative. But Republican Nixon’s goal was also to “end hunger in America forever”.

And yet, as of 2021, 10% of US households were food insecure, meaning they were unsure if they could get enough food to feed themselves or their families because they lacked money or resources to buy groceries, the researchers said study the Food and Drug Administration.

To succeed, Biden needs private sector approval and an increasingly partisan Congress. Some of the gates commemorate former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative to fight childhood obesity and promote healthy eating. The conference will also highlight the need for access to better, healthier diets and exercise.

Biden said in his memo that “over the past 50 years we have learned so much more about nutrition and the role that healthy eating plays in our children’s classroom performance, as well as about nutrition and its connection to disease prevention.”

According to the White House plan Supplemental nutritional support program eligibility would be expanded, children would have better access to free meals, and summer benefits would be extended to more schoolchildren. Such changes require the approval of Congress.

Other tenets of the strategy include developing new food packaging to truth-check the “healthy” claims for some products, expanding SNAP incentives to choose fruit and vegetables, providing more programs to encourage people to get outside walking and moving, and increasing funding for research.