10.1 Chapter Reading Guide
Elizabeth B. Pearce
Here, you will read about the ways families access food and water, as well as the social structures that support or get in the way of access and quality. For example, you may be surprised to learn about the ways the food banks benefit corporations in a way that does not directly improve nutrition for families. You’ll also read about how children form food habits and what social programs specifically benefit them. Keep your sociological imagination active, especially as you think about access to drinking water and sanitation in public places.
The reading is designed to help you meet the following chapter objectives. Preview those to have an idea of where you are headed. You may also want to preview the key terms that follow. These terms will be bolded the first time they appear in the chapter. You can read the definitions here and also in the hyperlinks.
Chapter Learning Objectives
- Identify equity issues related to families’ access to food.
- Describe the ways that the poverty line and food costs are related.
- Explain the ways in which family and social structures impact children’s nutrition and food choices.
- Describe the ways that social structures impact families’ access to water and sanitation.
- Describe the connection between the production of food and equity.
- Apply theoretical concepts to one’s own observations and experiences with food and water.
Key Terms Preview
- Environmental justice: an intersectional social movement pioneered by African American, Indigenous, Latinx, female, lower-income, and other people from historically oppressed populations fighting against environmental discrimination within their communities and across the world.
- Food desert: geographic locations where there is very limited or no access to affordable and nutritious foods.
- Food insecurity: low or very low access to food of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet (may or may not show patterns of disrupted eating).
- Food security: no or little reported indications of food access problems or limitations.
- Food stamps: the previous name for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a federal program that provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people.
- Food system: The interconnected systems and processes that influence nutrition, food, health, community development, and agriculture.
- Poverty line: the estimated minimum level of income needed to secure the necessities of life, adjusted annually for inflation.
- Sanitation: conditions relating to public health, especially the provision of clean drinking water and adequate sewage disposal.
- Sharecropper: a type of farming in which families rent small plots of land from a landowner in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year.
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP): a federal program that provides food-purchasing assistance for low- and no-income people.
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA): the government department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food in the United States.
- Wastewater: water that has been used for a domestic or industrial purpose that must be cleaned before it is used again.
Licenses and Attributions for Chapter Reading Guide
Open Content, Original
“Chapter Reading Guide” by Elizabeth B. Pearce. License: CC BY 4.0.
conditions relating to public health, especially the provision of clean drinking water and adequate sewage disposal.
ensuring that people have what they need in order to have a healthy, successful life that is equal to others. Different from equality in that some may receive more help than others in order to be at the same level of success.
the estimated minimum level of income needed to secure the necessities of life, adjusted annually for inflation.