nutrition security

1 in 3 households in Montgomery County experienced food insecurity in 2025.

Source: 2025 Capital Area Food Bank Report (no data on nutrition insecurity)

What is nutrition insecurity?

While food insecurity focuses on whether enough food is available, nutrition insecurity also considers the quality and variety of food people can obtain. Individuals and families experiencing nutrition insecurity may have enough calories to eat, but not enough consistent access to the nutrient-rich foods (like fruits and vegetables) needed for good health.   

Why does CFS do this work?

CFS focuses on nutrition security to address the health and food insecurity challenges that historically marginalized communities face, including:

• Increases in food prices and the overall cost of living, including housing, utilities, healthcare, and childcare, pressuring households into difficult decisions about their food, whether that’s choosing cheaper, less nutritious options or even skipping meals altogether.   
• Physical barriers, including limited transportation, lack of nearby grocery stores, and mobility challenges, which further restrict access to fresh foods. Grocery stores and farmers markets in lower-income communities face significant challenges in selling fruits and vegetables, as fresh produce is more expensive to transport, stock, and sell compared to processed, shelf-stable foods. As a result, communities may become saturated with convenience stores and fast-food options, with less access to fresh produce.
• Time constraints and caregiving responsibilities: Limited time for grocery shopping (especially when stores are far from home) and cooking can push households toward quick, calorie-dense, ultra-processed foods.
• Language barriers, which can prevent families from understanding nutrition labels, navigating social services support like registering for SNAP and accessing food pantries, or communicating with healthcare providers about dietary needs.
• Limited nutrition education access, which can limit people from making the most of limited food budgets, understanding which fruits and vegetables have the vitamins and minerals most helpful to their diet-related conditions, and knowing how to cook the vegetables into delicious, easy, nutrient-dense meals.
• Decreases in nutrient density of available food: Produce varieties grown far away are prioritized for their durability for transport and storage, rather than for flavor and nutrient density.   

When families face nutrition insecurity, their physical, mental, and financial health are negatively affected.

“The diets we eat today have less nutritional density than what our grandparents ate, even if we eat exactly the same thing,”

Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, told The Washington Post.

How CFS addresses nutrition insecurity:

Shaped by community feedback, we center our work around the following key programs:

Impact:

Effectively addressing nutrition insecurity improves health, reduces healthcare costs, reduces family stress, and advances equity.

• Improves individual health: Reducing nutrition insecurity improves diet-related chronic disease rates, risks, and impacts. Nutrient-rich diets also support brain function, immune function, and healthy bone density, among many other physiological benefits.
• Save billions in healthcare spending: Every dollar spent reducing nutrition insecurity and improving individuals’ physical health returns multiples in avoided emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and long-term diet-related chronic disease management. (see more at Food is Medicine)
• Reduce family stress: Food insecurity is a chronic stressor. The cognitive and emotional load of not knowing where the next meal is coming from, of stretching inadequate resources across a week, of watching children go hungry — this kind of sustained stress has measurable effects on anxiety, depression, and family stability. When that stress is relieved, families can engage with schools, communities, and work in ways that chronic scarcity makes nearly impossible.   
• Advance equity: Food and nutrition insecurity disproportionately affects communities of color, who have been affected by decades of historical disinvestment through discriminatory housing policy and unequal access to land and capital. Access to good food is not a lifestyle preference; it is a crucial dimension of equity.

CFS’s Impact on Reducing Nutrition Insecurity:

In 2025, we:

• Enrolled 566 families in our Farm to School program across 17 MCPS schools, including 5 School-Based Health and Wellness Centers
• Enrolled 405 patients in our Food is Medicine program, run in partnership with 7 community health clinic partners
• Bought and distributed 337,000 lbs of local produce

“The help that you give us is very important. Thanks to this program, I always have fresh vegetables at home for my family.”

– 2024 program participant