This annotated bibliography contains summaries of 7 sources on the topics of hunger and poverty in America. The sources include magazine articles, books, websites, and academic journal articles. They provide statistics on the number of Americans struggling with food insecurity and poverty, especially among children, the elderly, and certain demographic groups. The sources also discuss the relationship between poverty and hunger/obesity, and evaluate government programs and policies aimed at reducing hunger in the US.

1. Annotated Bibliography 1
Annotated Bibliography: Hunger and Poverty in America
Samantha Steffensmeier

2. Annotated Bibliography 2
Citation: McMillan, T. (2014, August 1). The New Face of Hunger. National
Geographic, 66-89.
Identification of Source: This is a magazine from a primary source.
Summary Paragraph: The author is Tracie McMillan. Her audience is for the American
public. She created this source so she can inform the American public that there is still
hunger in America. Her reason to communicate is to show what hunger in America
looks like today, it does not look the same as the depression era look on hunger. Her
main points of her article are to connecting hunger to poverty and then connecting
poverty to obesity in America.
Evaluative Paragraph: One type of evidence McMillan uses in her article is
interviewing Iowans and Huston, Texan families that are considered hungry. She also
gets opinions and facts from respected people such sociologist Janet Poppendieck from
the City University of New York. She gives statistics of how hunger has grown over a
certain time. For example, there was a jump in people being hungry by 57% since the
late 1990’s. She also talks about the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program) program and how it effects and concerns families going through financial
trouble. SNAP is a well-known organization that many families throughout the US are
on. McMillan also shows a mother who is on the SNAP program yet with the amount
given provides her family healthy food by spending the money on seeds so she can
grow a vegetable garden. It’s just that many poor people are also mostly uneducated.
She also gives price amount of how much America spends to subsidize and insure on
“specialty crop” which is considered fruits and vegetables is lower than other crops
produced in America. At the end of her article she shows a diagram of poverty in
Huston, Texas and how it relates to people who are too poor to own a car to drive to a
supermarket. This, she explains, can also lead to obesity because of the closeness to
fast food instead of healthy food. In my opinion all these sources seem to be credible.
Application: I am planning on using this article to prove how hunger in America is
caused by poverty and in turn leads to obesity.

3. Annotated Bibliography 3
Citation: Berg, J. (2008). All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America? New York, NY:
Seven Stories Press.
Identification of Source: This is a secondary source from a book.
Summary Paragraph: The author of this book is Joel Berg. You can tell Berg is
credible because he is the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against
Hunger and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He has also either
been featured or quoted in many news outlets such as The Washington Post, CNN, and
the Wall Street Journal. He wrote this book because he wants to inform America that
“food insecurity” is upon us too and there is a way of ending it quickly and cost-
effectively. One of his main ideas presented is how poverty is linked to hunger. Another
one of his points is that the main reason that hunger is a reoccurring is because of the
American government taking funds away from federal nutrition assistance and other
antipoverty programs.
Evaluation Paragraph: For the authors claim, he uses past references of what different
Presidents of the United States have done to prevent hunger in America or how they
taken less funding’s that originally went towards antipoverty funds or other such as
President Reagan reducing and nutrition assistance and other anti-poverty programs
which almost took away food insecurity in America. He also tells us his firsthand
experience when he visited West Africa in the nation of Mali and tried to explain to a
man that there is a problem with hunger in America. It was difficult for him to understand
and he ended up making a bigger picture from that saying the even people in America
have trouble coming to census that there is hunger in America. I also like how he uses
statistics of how food insecurity has increased in over the years. He also says that if you
put all the people in America that are considered food insecurity then it is roughly the
size of California’s population. He also explains how some religious practices do not
believe that there is no hunger and that if there are people hungry it’s inevitable and
God’s will. I researched that idea online and I came up true to radical Christian religions.
All of these sources have shown credibility.
Application: I will use this to show how not just poverty, but also politics have impacted
hunger in America.

4. Annotated Bibliography 4
Citation: Hunger and Poverty Fact Sheet. (2014, January 1). Retrieved November
18, 2014, from http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-
hunger/hunger-and-poverty/hunger-and-poverty-fact-sheet.html
Identification of Source: This is a secondary source from a website.
Summary Paragraph: For this web article there is no author. Yet we know that his
website is a good source because this program has been around since 1979. They
started out as the nations first food bank. They were normally known as America’s
Second Harvest the Nation’s Food Bank Network until 2008 when the switched it to
Feeding America. Their audience is the general public. The reason they are
communicating about food insecurity is to inform the public about the different ways
children, adults and even the elderly can be food insecure.
Evaluative Paragraph: One thing I liked that this website said is that higher
unemployment, lower household assets, and certain demographic characteristics also
lead to the act of access to food insecurity. This makes me look at hunger from a
different angle than just poverty, yet it is still a main contributor to food insecurity.
Comparing this to my other sources I am using in this essay it seems to be that the
statistics given are credible. One thing that I also like about this article is that it not only
talks about children and adults that are hungry, but also elderly people. To see it this
information is credible I looked on the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons)
and they also said that 9 million elderly people are food insecure. This is higher from
what this website said yet it gave the statistic from 2011 which is obviously not totally up
to date, yet still similar. The website also gave the top 9 States in America ranked in
order from highest food insecurity for their entire population. Arkansas is ranked first
with 21.2% of their population considered to have low food nutrition. After looking at this
source, all of these statements add up to be credible.
Application: In my speech, I will use the chart given on the website of the poverty
rankings, with Iowa being 6th (and it goes from least to greatest). I will also show the
surrounding states ranking in poverty to show how well off Iowa is compared to it’s
neighboring states.

5. Annotated Bibliography 5
Citation: Chilton, M. & Rabinowich, J. (2010). Ending Childhood Hunger in America.
Human Rights, 37(1), 14-14. Retrieved November 9, 2014, from Info Trac Legaltrac.
Identification of Source: This is an article that is a secondary source.
Summary Paragraph: The authors are Mariana Chilton and Jenny Rabinowich. Chilton
has her PHD and is a Professor at the Drexel University of Public Health located in
Philadelphia. She is also the director of the Center of Hunger Free Communities which
research and monitors health consequences to food insecurity and to find science-
based solutions to hunger and economic insecurity. She is also the Co-Principal
investigator of Children’s Health Watch which tries to improve children health in
America. Rabinowich also work at Drexel University of Public Health yet I do not know
what position she has there. I also know she’s involved in the Center of Hunger Free
Communities and once again I do not know what position she holds. Even though I do
not know much about Rabinowich, Chilton seems incredibly credible person so I will
make the educated guess that Rabinowich is also credible. Their audience is geared
towards the American public. Their reason for communication is to get the American
public to force the American government to fix hunger in America.
Evaluative Paragraph: In this article, they show statistics that I have already seen in
other sources. What they do differently is that they give step by step instructions on how
to eliminate food insecurity. First you have to show where food insecurity is and how
much of it there is in America. The second step is to improve agency coordination and
cooperation. Which means that the corporations that deals with hunger should work
better together to put an end to hunger. The third step is to enforce the American
government to make the change and to set a deadline to enforce the new policies. The
final step is to the citizens of the United States work together to make this new program
work. There are many different opinions on how to end hunger in America should be
handled yet I believe that their tactics are good. With the help of both of their high
education and positions in different hunger organizations, this helps make their opinion
a credible source.
Application: I will use this in my speech by saying the steps the American public must
take in order to create a better nation without or very little hunger.

6. Annotated Bibliography 6
Citation: Hunger in America: 2014 United States Hunger and Poverty Facts. (2014, July
1). Retrieved November 18, 2014, from
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm
Identification of Source: This is a secondary source from a website.
Summary Paragraph: There is no author for this website article. Their audience is the
general public. Their reason to communicate is to inform the public about what
programs are out there to assist the poor, what programs the US puts more money
aside towards rather than on poverty and hunger and other such subjects. One main
point of the article are the different types of programs that people and families in poverty
can obtain such as SNAP, WIC, and the National School Lunch Program. Another main
point is the causes of hunger and poverty.
Evaluative Paragraph: What this article did very well is that it cited all the sources it
used. It mostly used credible sources such as the United States Bureau of Census,
United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Services, and other
sources. The only thing I was not so sure about was that one of their sources was
Wikipedia, yet with the vast amount of better source use compared to using the
Wikipedia source it still keep this a credible source. What I like about this article is that it
actual explains what the different programs that help out people who are hungry. They
also got the sources of what these different programs such as SNAP, WIC, and the
National School Lunch Program from their official websites. This article also talks about
the different programs a family can acquire if they are poor such as the Temporary
Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), and minimum
wage. This article also talks about what kinds of programs the United States federal
government invests more on, such as military and security, rather than on expenditures
to assist the poor.
Application: I will use this in my speech to talk about the different programs that a
family in poverty can apply for.

7. Annotated Bibliography 7
When most Americans think of hunger, they would imagine the type of people
who lived during the depression era, gaunt, sickly and on the brink of death. Though in
today’s society it does not appear that way; it does not mean that America does not
suffer from hunger. At first I tried to write this essay mainly on hunger, it soon became
impossible to not talk about poverty as well because the two are so closely related.
Hunger is a subject more Americans should recognize and try to act upon eliminating it
from our society.
Hunger, in America, is defined as food insecurity which means that at certain points
during the year the food intake of a household is disrupted in their normal eating
patterns because of lack of food resources or of money. Poverty and hunger are
associated together because when someone cannot afford nutritional food, or in some
cases any food, it leads to hunger. One would think that since food can be cheap that
being hungry should not be an issue. But cheap food is mostly fast food, which does not
hold many nutritional values in it. So therefore poverty, which is closely associated to
food insecurity, usually leads to obesity because of ones diet of mostly fast food. Over
the years, America has tried to prevent hunger by creating programs such as SNAP
(Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition
Program for Women, Infants and Children) and the National School Lunch Program. Yet
in the early 1980’s President Reagan cut federal spending towards nutrition assistance
programs and other anti-poverty programs which at the time almost eliminated food
insecurity. Since then Congress has barely helped out programs such as the ones
Reagan cut. The most commonly forgotten people that are overlooked when cuts are
being made are the elderly. In 2012, 4.2 million elderly people were in poverty and 4.8

8. Annotated Bibliography 8
million in 2011 were considered hungry. These numbers are much greater than most
would realize. Yet 26.4 million adults, as recorded in 2013, are ranked the highest in
food insecurity within the population. Children are ranked in the middle with the
Conesus in 2013 that 14.7 million are considered hungry. If you put all these numbers
together it would be roughly the size of California’s population. To help fix this problem,
many people have made up a system of how to fix it in simple, easy steps. Yet it takes
the enforcement of the American population to pass new laws to help end poverty which
in terms will end hunger. The multiple viewpoints I obtained about hunger and poverty
helped expand my horizon of what some Americans are truly going through today. Even
though I had different sources they mostly added up together.
In this essay I used 5 sources. They were mostly similar. The only differences
were the statistics used in the article. When I looked at the dates of each article I
noticed they were all different so it made sense why the statistics would be different.
Overall each article had the same concepts about hunger and poverty. Some went into
more detail than other or some focused on different parts of hunger and poverty than
other. Yet with these differences, I can create a better essay.
With the different aspects each article gives me on hunger and poverty in
America I can create a stronger essay. I can cover more topics in the subject by giving
the audience the basic knowledge of one idea and moving on to the next. I can also
compare Iowa to other surrounding states to gives the audience a better connection of
our world to the topic of choice. Hunger in America is something many people overlook
in today’s society.

9. Annotated Bibliography 9
Hunger today does not look like the depression era look on hunger where
everyone is gaunt and dying of malnutrition. In today’s society, it is when we have a lack
of nutrients throughout certain times of the year which is normally called food insecurity.
Even though the government has given us programs to end hunger and poverty they do
not put enough funds in it to truly help out America. What I like most about my sources
is that they each touch on a different aspect on hunger and poverty which in turn will
help me present a well-rounded speech.