UVM researcher presents survey showing high hardship among food-insecure households in VT and ME

A University of Vermont researcher presenting to the Agriculture, Food Resiliency, & Forestry committee said data collected this summer from roughly 1,400 respondents in Vermont and Maine shows persistent and interconnected challenges for food-insecure households, including transportation barriers, medical costs and time constraints.

The researcher, identified in the meeting only as Professor (UVM), a professor in the Nutrition and Food Sciences Department at the University of Vermont, told the committee the sample was deliberately oversampled for low-income respondents to analyze differences between food-secure and food-insecure households.

Why it matters: The presentation framed food insecurity as tied to health care access and financial shocks that can persist for years. Committee members were given figures that officials and agencies can use to target programs or follow-up research.

Key findings presented included that about half of the survey respondents were classified as food insecure under the six-question U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) instrument used by the study, and that food-insecure…