Annotated Bibliography
Broton, K. M., Weaver, K. E., & Mai, M. (2018). Hunger in higher education: Experiences and correlates of food insecurity among Wisconsin undergraduates from low-income families. Social Sciences, 7(10), 179. doi.org/10.3390/socsci7100179
In this source, the authors share statistics about food insecurity among college students, many of whom skip meals to make ends meet. Broughton et al. suggests that a very low percentage of students are eligible to participate in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) when they can get food stamps since this program has too strict income and asset criteria. These are criteria like “caring for a dependent child, working no less than 20 hours per week, or participation in employment-related programs” (Bronton et al., 2018, para. 20). In other words, the governmental SNAP initiative is targeted at the VLFS group, which is smaller than the total amount of food insecure students. This information can be nicely integrated into the research as it adds to the statistics regarding the hunger crisis among older people.
Cena, H., & Calder, P. C. (2020). Defining a healthy diet: evidence for the role of contemporary dietary patterns in health and disease. Nutrients, 12(2), 334. doi.org/10.3390/nu12020334
The authors discuss the popular diets that are rich in nutrients and are seen as healthy. These are the Mediterranean diet that is used in Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) and neurodegenerative delay, the Nordic diet, and traditional Asian diets. The scholars determine the diets, saying that the Mediterranean diet is traditional for European-Mediterranean countries, which determines the types of products consumed and their relative contribution to nutrient consumption. The information about how types of diets may impact the health of different groups of the population should be highly adequate for the research.
Food Security. (2022). CDC.
Nutrition, food safety, and food security are specific concepts that are used to determine the consistency of the CDC population-targeted campaigns, programs, and initiatives. The food security concept is determined as depending on agriculture and global climate changes due to the increase in severe weather events, changes in the amount of precipitation, and the impact of harmful insects and weeds due to the increase in pesticide prices. The CDC predicts rising food prices, which is the main cause of food insecurity. This article is extremely useful for research as it explains some aspects of how the nutritional value of food crops changes and how people alter their diets to make ends meet.
Houseman, P. (2020).The growing hunger crisis in America.
In this article, the author provides a comprehensive review of the hunger crisis problem. Houseman argues that the coronavirus pandemic worsened the food insecurity that was already present, providing facts and statistics on unemployment and food insecurity among children. The author reports that by the end of 2020 54 million Americans were facing hunger. Houseman speaks of the “No Kid Hungry” non-for-profit campaign, which donated $27 million to schools and communities to tackle the consequences of the hunger crisis. This article is very useful and lays the basis for the research, as it determines the scope of the problem in the US and points at the most vulnerable groups.
The Thrifty food plan: What it is and why it matters. (2021). US Department of Agriculture.
In this source, the Thrifty Food Plan is presented, which is the lowest-cost food plan among four USDA-developed plans. This plan is used to calculate the SNAP benefit amounts and is aimed at supporting families with children. The TFP is re-evaluated every five years to correspond to current prices for food supplies. Currently, the TFP is aimed at reflecting the cost of a nutritious and budget-conscious diet, while re-evaluation features factors of nutrition guidance, nutrients in food, cost of food, and most widespread food choices. This source is very helpful as it determines the scope of governmental practices in solving the problem of food insecurity.
Yu, E., Malik, V. S., & Hu, F. B. (2018). Cardiovascular disease prevention by diet modification: JACC health promotion series. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 72(8), 914-926. doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2018.02.085
In this source, the authors describe the ways of preventing cardiovascular disease in the American population. Some of the observed practices are particularly interesting, such as food and agricultural policies aimed at aligning with scientifically based dietary goals. Nutrition labeling of products with trans fats and the introduction of legislation on the removal of trans fats are important steps in this area. There are also government initiatives that are considering taxation of alcoholic beverages and products containing trans fats, as such taxation is guaranteed to reduce purchases, although the projected percentage of reduction may be small – about 7%. This source can be very useful in emphasizing the importance of healthy diets and their impact on patient outcomes and healthcare spending.
Ziliak, J. P., & Gundersen, C. (2020). The state of senior hunger in America in 2018: An annual report. Report for Feeding America. Web.
Besides presenting a detailed analysis of food insecurity among older people, the authors provide useful statistics. They report that in 2019 over 7 million older people face food insecurity (5.2 million) or very low food security (VLFS) (1.9 million). There was an increasing trend in food insecurity among older people over the last 20 years, with doubled and tripled the amount of elderly in two groups. Ziliak and Gundersen said they were using an annual online Food Security Supplement (FSS) questionnaire to evaluate the level of food insecurity in population groups. This source can be very demonstrable in agitating for immediate action on the part of the government.
Reflection Questions
Accurately recording bibliographic information is essential and saves you time, as you can transfer this information to the References page of your drafted essay. Each source entry should include a brief summary of the source as well as 3-4 sentences describing how you intend to use that source to build or support your argument. Discuss how your annotated bibliography meets these criteria.
My annotated bibliography meets the mentioned criteria since it is appropriately structured and presents the summary of each source, where the information on how the source will be integrated with the research is presented. There are one or two sentences at the end of each summary determining the importance of the source for the research, and the summary discusses the topics that will be included in the research.
Which strategies were most helpful for you when searching for credible sources?
When searching for credible sources, I determined some keywords like food insecurity and hunger crisis and categorized the search according to the groups of the population. I also relied heavily on the outline, since it helped me to adhere to the initial idea of what the research should talk about.
What difficulties did you face while searching for credible sources? How did you overcome these difficulties?
When searching for credible sources, I was sometimes overwhelmed by the number of sources that are indirectly related to the topic. Therefore, I just sorted out the sources that are not providing useful and reliable information.