We really don’t think about how many things we take for granted in this world nowadays, especially food. After watching “A Place at the Table” it really opened up a new light for me in terms of food deserts across the country. For instance, when you think about Sunday dinner it doesn’t seem as a big deal to you. You value food as an every day privilege as expected three times a day; however, imagine your life consisting of consuming three bags of potato chips a day and that being the source of your daily nutrition. The problem across the country today is that many people are ashamed of acknowledging this problem, along with our government. They constantly talk about trying to resolve this problem but never really seem to make such difference.

As stated in the documentary, across the country today, one of out every six Americans say that they don’t have enough to eat. Along with this issue many families are food insecure, which means that they don’t know when their next meal is coming. Can you envision waking up everyday hoping and praying that you will be able to put some sort of food on the table for your children? This is an underlying problem especially in Mississippi. When I first heard that this state holds the highest obesity rate as well as well as has the highest food insecurity in America I was surprised. I thought to myself how could that be? I soon learned that this is occurring because a lot of residents in Mississippi don’t make enough money to buy healthy foods, therefore they have to resort to junk food such as donuts and chips. The price of healthy foods has gone up about 40% since 1980, which is why it’s so hard to acquire nowadays especially for people who receive a small salary. Throughout the years, while the price of healthy foods boosted up, the price of processed foods shot down about 40%. One of the primary reasons for this and the growing rate of obesity is the farm policy that we run by – which indicates what we subsidize and what we don’t subsidize. All of the natural and healthy options that are laid out in the supermarkets are all subsidized while the junk food that’s now sold at almost every deli, gas station, and supermarket is unsubsidized. The 23.5 million Americans that live in food deserts nowadays just eat what’s available to them, which is ultimately not much. Since these low-income families have to resort to eating junk food due to the unavailability and high costs of healthy food, obesity continues to grow. The government has set up a food stamp policy across the nation that is based on your total income. Even though food stamps may help a family for the first week or two of the month, they cant be the consistent source of food that’s needed for a family of at least 4. A very large issue with food stamps that a woman experienced in the movie was that as soon as she started to make some money that was above the maximum salary needed to receive food stamps, she could barely put any food on the table for her kids. The problem is, is that it’s a lose-lose situation nowadays. Either you don’t have a high paying job and receive food stamps that put some sort of food on the table, or you get a job that no longer qualifies you for food stamps which poses an even bigger struggle when acquiring food. I believe that one of possible solutions that should be more addressed would be to lower the cost of these healthy and nutritional options rather than just implementing supermarkets in these food deserts. Just because the healthy and nutritional options all of a sudden become available doesn’t mean that these residents can purchase them or are willing to change their eating habits. The government should start more programs that will provide and distribute free healthy food options to those in need. After watching this movie I became much more intrigued with the subject and hope to learn more about it throughout the semester.