Inadequate nutritional intake is a major factor in chronic cardiometabolic disorders. In addition, dietary quality differences contribute to socioeconomic and racial, and ethnic health inequities. Food insecurity, defined as a household-level social or economic state characterized by restricted access to enough food, is a common cause of insufficient dietary intake. Although food aid laws and programs in the United States intended to increase food security, there was growing agreement that they should also address nutrition security. Nutrition security is defined in the policy statement as an individual or household condition of equal and consistent availability, access, affordability, and use of foods and drinks that enhanced well-being and prevent and cure illness. Despite current rules and initiatives, major gaps in nutrition security across the life cycle remain. To attain nutrition security, researchers provided proposals for increasing and strengthening current food assistance policies and programs. Several overarching principles guide these recommendations: emphasizing nutritional quality, improving reach, ensuring optimal utilization, improving coordination across programs, ensuring the stability of access to programs across the life course, and ensuring equity and dignity for access and utilization.
They believed that a vital next step would be to create and execute national nutrition security measures that may be added to the existing US food security measures. To achieve equality in nutrition security, coordinated and sustained actions at the federal, state, and local levels will be required. Future lobbying, creativity, and research would be required to extend existing food assistance laws and programs and create and implement new policies and programs that will promote cardiovascular health and minimize chronic disease inequalities.
Reference:www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001072
