Obesity is driven in part by community conditions such as access to and price of healthy foods. Currently, millions of families nationwide experience food insecurity, or the inability to afford enough food to support a healthy life–and children are more likely to face food insecurity than any other group in the United States. Supporting access to affordable, nutritious foods is an important strategy for helping children grow up healthy and reducing childhood obesity.
Increasingly, climate change is driving extreme conditions–higher temperatures, droughts, floods, and other extreme weather–that threaten our food supply and can make nutritious foods less accessible and more expensive. This is detrimental to our overall health and raises the risk of food insecurity and obesity, which disproportionately affects people with low incomes and communities of color.
These factors act in cycles as well. The ways in which we produce food also contribute to climate change. Research shows that more than one-third of greenhouse gas emissions are driven by our global food systems, contributing to climate change that harms our crops and the food supply.
A growing number of community leaders and researchers are recognizing these connections and pushing for solutions that solve for multiple challenges. Improving our farming practices and reforming food systems in ways that reduce the impacts of transportation and other energy use can mediate some of the risks of climate change and help support healthier diets for children and families.
