Abstract
Food insecurity is a term used to measure hunger and food deprivation of a
large population. As per the 2015 statistics provided by Feeding America - one
of the largest domestic hunger-relief organizations in the United States, 42.2
million Americans live in food insecure households, including 29.1 million
adults and 13.1 million children. This constitutes about 13.1% of households
that are food insecure. Food Banks have been developed to improve food security
for the needy. We have developed a novel food distribution policy using
suitable welfare and poverty indices and functions. In this work, we propose an
equitable and fair distribution of donated foods as per the demands and
requirements of the people, thus ensuring minimum wastage of food (perishable
and non-perishable) with focus towards nutrition. We present results and
analysis based on the application of the proposed policy using the information
of a local food bank as a case study. The results show that the new policy
performs better than the current methods in terms of population being covered
and reduction of food wastage obtaining suitable levels of nutrition.