Nothing to Eat brought attention to the hardships of the poor and destitute living in the city of Philadelphia, and later went on to win the 1975 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for outstanding coverage of the problems of the underprivileged.
Schwartz-Nobel's work as a journalist started to bear fruit after at least fifteen federal agencies acknowledged the existence of a domestic hunger epidemic[citation needed].
However, the surge in public awareness in the early 1980s never directly led to any significant political action to alleviate hunger or poverty in the United States.
Elements of the book include her criticism of poverty among families in the U.S. military and the federal government solving international, rather than national, hunger problems.
The book is critical of the American government, arguing their involvement in deceptive and suppressive measures in relation to diseases, pollution and scientific data.