Report: More Americans going hungry

[theHandpuppet]

Source: The Washington Post

Report: More Americans going hungry
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 16, 2009; 12:04 PM

The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a government report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children -- more than one in five across the United States -- were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million children the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Among people of of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.

Taken together, the findings provide the latest glimpse into the toll that the weak economy has taken on the well-being of the nation's residents. The findings are from a snapshot of food in America that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued every year since 1995, based on Census Bureau surveys. It documents both Americans who are scrounging for adequate food -- people living with some amount of "food insecurity" in the lexicon of experts -- and those whose food shortages are so severe that they are hungry....

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/16/AR2009111601598.html?wpisrc=newsletter

[imdjh]

1. I don't know what these people are up to, but new terminology sends up flares.

We've gone from "hunger" and "starvation" meaning actual hunger and starvation to being "food insecurity" or in this article "dependable access" , "food scarcity", or "running short". The article leads with a huge (and ridiculous) number dropping back from 49 million to 700,000 in two paragraphs, giving off a slight whiff of bullshit.

"Poor day, store day." is perfectly normal in struggling households but is hardly a sign of hunger or starvation on the horizon. It's simply that the cupboards are spare on Thursday morning and won't be stocked until Saturday. Eating soup for dinner is not hunger, this is hunger:

?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=86F19F6C94FCC84FDB4EDD700C99B9B4

[earcandle]

2. hunger is relative. have you even been hungry and unable to eat? hunger happens about every 4 to

hours in every body.  the body will eventually turn off this
sensation if not satiated. apathy sets in. and in an attempt
to overcome apathy, anger and violence sets in, if there is
the spirit to face the challenge for how to find food. 
killing your neighbor is not out of the question when survival
is at stake.  

the animal nature in human beings can be ugly when the human
nature is not divined enough to feed.

beware. taking care of your family, your neighbor, the well
being of your country is not a bad idea at all. 
taxing the rich never looked better.  better hurry my friends.
 

[imdjh]

3. pedantic + stoner = mess

[earcandle]

31. I doubt the hungry are pendantic or stoned.

[Gormy Cuss]

54. 'Food insecurity' is not a substitute for the words hunger and starvation.

There are a lot of people who are hungry but not starving for example yet both are food insecure. The term food insecurity came into use because it was an umbrella term for all degrees of situations where there may not be adequate food every day for each family member.

Your "poor day, store day" would fit into the category of mild food insecurity. So why does this matter? Because households where that situation happens EVERY week or nearly every week it's an indicator of people on the precipice, those who are one crisis away from having inadequate food more days in the week. No, those people aren't hungry yet but when millions of people are in that category policymakers do well to note it.



FYI: the USDA definition of the term "food security": food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies).

[AnneD]

4. What we have discovered in Houston......

Summer is a time of hunger for children. Poor children have little or no access to food since school is out. HISD now offers all kids breakfast and lunch during summer school-even if your child does not go to summer school. The parks department also offers lunch for kids.

I can always tell the free lunch kids. They eat everything put on their tray and stuff things in their pockets. We serve fruits and sandwiches that they can take food home on Fridays to sustain them over the weekend. No kid should go to bed hungry in this country or any other.

I remember doing that as a child (before these programs came into being)and it had an impact on my life. Mom did all she could and it killed her that we went hungry (she frequently didn't eat so we could have something). Yes this happened in this country in the late 50's early 60's. When Johnson declared the war on poverty-there were pockets of real poverty. Not everyone had an Ozzie and Harriet upbringing.

I keep peanut butter crackers, tail mix and other goodies in the clinic because most of my morning headaches are from kids that haven't eaten. The cafeteria is good to give me cartons of milk that kids don't open to keep in my clinic fridge.

Hunger is hidden but very real in this country.

[Sisaruus]

6. The Backpack Program

I work for one of the state Food Banks in Feeding America's networks. We run a kids' backpack program and currently send more than 1,000 kids home for the weekend with packets of easily prepared/no preparation food (2 entrees, 2 shelf-stable milks, 2 single-serve cereals, 2 juices, 2 snacks). The sad thing is we know this is only the tip of the iceberg and we could be serving tens of thousands of children (and we're in one of the richest states in the country).

http://feedingamerica.org/our-network/network-programs/backpack-program.aspx

[AnneD]

18. We are starting the back pack program here....

It was explained to us several weeks ago.

[closeupready]

8. Wow - it's terrific that the HISD does that, but how sad that its so necessary.

:( No child should ever fear going hungry - EVER.

[RedSock]

5. greatest nation on the face of the earth (tm)

meanwhile, roughly $12,000,000,000 is being spent every single month on war.

...

and this does not seem strange to most people.

[stiplic]

7. What a pathetic excuse for a country we've become

[earcandle]

32. We are NOT so great after all, huh? The choices we make are stupid and dangerous.

[Bushknew]

58. Yeah, Michael Medved hasn't received the memo.

[winyanstaz]

9. I grew up as a child in a home where five kids shared one can of tomato soup..

and that was all there was to eat that day..and many other days as well.
This was just before they started giving the government food out..which vastly inproved our diets around the time I entered jr high.
I grew up with what Dr. Pete called "border-line rickets" from lack of proper nutrition. I know hunger.
I know what it feels like to hold your baby sisters and baby brother in your arms while they whimper in hunger and their little bony arms shake from the cold..too frightened of the pedophile momma married to cry out loud.
Hunger in America is nothing new..but it is growing at an alarming rate.
I accompanied a friend to the food bank and I was appalled at the rotting fruits and vegetables put out for the people to pick through...and how little food was actually there.
When I also know for a fact that Fred Meyers management refuses to pull food for the food banks and rather than help the food banks on a daily basis..they let it rot in their garbage cans...it makes me furious! Even more so when I see them putting big ads on tv and doing a once a year food drive..(where the customers buy and pay for the food but not Fred Meyers) it makes me want to scream.
Who knows for sure if the other big stores are not doing the same heartless thing? This needs someone to investigate and expose this kind of crap. Wheres a real reporter when you need one?

[zalinda]

11. I know that Wegmans food markets

donate food to the food banks. My son has brought home food with their label on it.

zalinda

[winyanstaz]

12. Thats good to know....

hopefully that came directly from the store and not from a customer buying it first...but either way it makes it there is also good...at least someone got some food. :)

[InvisibleTouch]

15. I find it outrageous too...

...to think how much perfectly good and edible food is simply thrown away by the grocery stores and restaurants. That should be a crime.

[Igel]

45. That's a problem.

The food service organization I used to monitor routinely handed out a lot of food at closing--they paid an employee to load it all in a van at the close of business and take it to a food bank. It was perfectly good--pans of food that didn't make it to the steam table, pizzas ordered but not picked up or made "on spec", all sorts of stuff. Hundreds of pounds per night taken to a homeless shelter or two.

Then the lawyer said that if anything in that--anything--leads to a person being ill, or is plausibly what made somebody ill, there'd be lawyers lined up to offer their services on a pro bono basis. The indigent person would get some money, and certainly any hospital bills would be paid, but the lawyer would make a fair amount of money and the organization, through its largesse, would buy the lawyer a new BMW and pay for his vacation in Thailand--at a minimum.

The next day the organization cut the employee's hours and when a food operation closed for the night the excess food was put in the dumpster.

Yes. A lot of perfectly good food is wasted. But it's wasted because no mistake, even as part of a very large good deed, would go harshly and severely unpunished. You want the food to go back to food banks and shelters? Tort reform.

[Odin2005]

49. The food is thrown out because of fear of lawsuits.

[grilled onions]

10. We Are A Vast Wasteland When It Comes To Food

We have stores who constantly dump out day old goods without making any effort to recyle them to the local food pantry or soup kitchen. Gone are the days when you could easily buy day old bread and thanks to tighter controls the word surplus is nowhere to be found in todays leaner,meaner markets.
At the same time jobs are gone,money is scarce and many families are making do with a lot less in order to pay for rent,meds and utilities. Some cities are trying to bring make the idea of allowing city people to raise their own chickens. I believe the name of the org is CLUC. So many live where they can't have gardens so they don't have a lot of options to supplement their larder during hard times which seem to get harder all the time.
How many restaurants are guilty of tossing a day old salad or burgers that have gone cold? We need to have tighter networking between business and the food banks/soup kitchens.
In this country with all the farm land we have(not including much of it sitting vacant) we should not have anyone going hungry.

[justabob]

17. re restaurants

I agree with what you are saying, but the Health Dept put an end to restauarnts redistributing their unused food, at least around here. We used to have a group that funneled restaurant food to shelters, but at some point someone (or probably several someones)got food poisoned and the health department shut it down. I have no idea if it is the same everywhere, but that happened a few years ago here in Dallas. There used to be signs in cafes that participated, but I never see them anymore.

[fascisthunter]

13. we are rapidly becoming third world in the US

too many of us still haven't felt it enough I suppose.

[OhioChick]

14. People need JOBS! n/t

[llmart]

16. This article and all the posts........

just make me want to cry. I'm sure there are others on here who see food wasted every single day somewhere. Why?? Just why??? Where is the will in this country to do something about this? No child should EVER be hungry, EVER.
I grew up in a large family and we lived on unemployment most winters because my father worked in construction in the snowbelt of Ohio where work was slim to none for months. Still, I can't ever remember ever truly being hungry. My father would beg the local independent Mom and Pop grocery store to run a tab for him and he'd pay them back as soon as work started up again. Try getting the big conglomerate grocery chains to allow anyone to do that. Hell, they'd probably have you arrested if they found you picking in their garbage bins after close!

[NeoConsSuck]

19. Hunger in U.S. at a 14-year high

Source: MSNBC

NYT: 1 in 7 households struggles to put enough food on table

WASHINGTON - The number of Americans who lacked reliable access to sufficient food shot up last year to its highest point since the government began surveying in 1995, the Agriculture Department reported on Monday.

In its annual report on hunger, the department said that 17 million American households, or 14.6 percent of the total, “had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year.” That was an increase from 13 million households, or 11.1 percent, the previous year.

<snip>

Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization with a national network of more than 200 food banks, said that the Agriculture Department probably understated the problem. With unemployment and other economic indicators continuing to worsen in 2009, she said, “there are likely many more people struggling with hunger than this report states.”

In September, the group found a sharp increase in requests for emergency food assistance; the food banks in its network reported an average increase in need of nearly 30 percent this year over 2008.




Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33975517/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/

---

Hunger, schmunger! We still have, by far, the largest military budget in the world, and all the coolest weapons!

[Cant trust em]

20. I really feel like homelessness has gone up in recent months.

From my vantage point in San Francisco that is.

[llmart]

21. Love your response......

Isn't that the truth? As long as we continue to glorify and prioritize the military and weapons, we will never begin to solve the inequities in our society.

[TheCML]

22. How many?

How many could have access to health care and food for their families with the bailout money? How many could have access to health care and necessities with the 1 trillion dollars we have spent on two unnecessary wars?

[rabs]

23. An interesting juxtaposition

(Posted by Judi Lynn in Latin America Forum.)

Da Silva hailed for slashing hunger
BY AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
Update 10 hours and 16 minutes ago

ROME, Nov 16 - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva accepted an award Monday for his efforts to combat hunger on the sidelines of a UN summit on food security.

"The Brazilian experience and that of other countries shows that the fight against this problem requires above all political will and determination," Lula said as the anti-poverty group ActionAid honoured him for "successfully reducing hunger in Brazil."

Accepting the award at the Rome headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, Lula criticised the indifference of the international community to the plight of the hungry.

"Many seem to have lost the capacity for indignation over such suffering," he said, calling hunger "the worst weapon of mass destruction on the planet."

"Millions and millions of dollars are being wasted on saving failed banks," he added. "With less than half of these sums we would have made it possible to wipe out hunder in the world."

ActionAid's research found that Brazil ranked first among 30 developing countries, the group said, adding that Lula has reduced child malnutrition by 73 percent and child deaths by 45 percent since assuming office in 2003.

http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/International/Da-Silva-hailed-for-slashing-hunger-6534.html

[Luciferous]

24. Interesting article

thanks for sharing

[Sherman A1]

25. Thanks for posting.

[prolesunited]

26. We need more victory and community gardens

With perhaps agencies providing free instruction, plants and seeds. It's not passed down from generations like it used to be. I grew up with a backyard garden and have had one on and off (more on than off) most of my adult life.

We expanded ours and it's kept our bellies full. It's amazing how much you can produce in small spaces. And I taught myself how to can last year. The Ball Co. has said that canning supply purchases are up 30%.

[mcwillig]

27. Interesting

I found this article on hunger in America, very interesting. I am very surprised to find it so prevalent these days, check it out
Hunger in America

[Sabriel]

28. Are we calling it "hunger" again?

I thought it was "food insecurity."

The principals around my area are all reporting more and more kids coming to school without breakfast. Many of them know several students who eat only half their lunch, so they can take it home to younger siblings. Heartbreaking.

There's one middle school in my area that went from 55% free-and-reduced-lunch eligible students last year to 75% this year. And that's happening around the country.

[dysfunctional press]

29. does that count the people who are on the lemonade diet...?

:shrug:

that may be why the numbers are so high.

[AlphaCentauri]

30. You just remind me I have to take care of the community food bank this thursday

to give out free turkeys

[DU GrovelBot]

33. ## PLEASE DONATE TO DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND! ##

[center]
http://upload.democraticunderground.com/img/09/q4_grovelbot.jpg

This week is our fourth quarter 2009 fund drive. Democratic
Underground is 
a completely independent website. We depend on donations from
our members 
to cover our costs. Please take a moment to donate! Thank you!

[/center]

[kpete]

34. Recession causes more families to go without food

Source: McClatchy

Recession causes more families to go without food
By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The number of U.S. households that are struggling to feed their members jumped by 4 million to 17 million last year, as recession-fueled job losses and increased poverty and unemployment fueled a surge in hunger, a government survey reported Monday.

These "food-insecure" households represent about 49 million people and make up 14.6 percent, or more than one in seven, of all U.S. households. That's the highest rate since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began monitoring the issue in 1995.

Additionally, more than one-third of these struggling families — some 6.7 million households, or 17.2 million people last year — had "very low food security," in which food intake was reduced and eating patterns were disrupted for some family members because of a lack of food.

In phone interviews, more than two-thirds of people with very low food security said they went hungry from time to time, and 27 percent of these adults said they didn't eat at all some days.



Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/78986.html

[zelta gaisma]

35. It makes that whole 5yr limit on welfare seem like a gun to the head for some families, hmm?

[fascisthunter]

37. I Wonder how a Wealthy People would feel if they had

"a gun to their heads"?

[fascisthunter]

36. class warfare... people will die for the wealthy

every year until Americans wise up and demand they be treated equally to those on top of this pyramid scheme people call capitalism, which our economic system isn't anymore.

[clear eye]

38. Record numbers go hungry in the US

Source: The Guardian

Government report shows 50m people unable to put food on the table at some point last year

Chris McGreal in Washington guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 November 2009 18.25 GMT

More than a million children regularly go to bed hungry in the US, according to a government report that shows a startling increase in the number of families struggling to put food on the table.

President Barack Obama, who pledged to eradicate childhood hunger, has described as "unsettling" the agriculture department survey, which says 50 million people in the US – one in six of the population – were unable to afford to buy sufficient food to stay healthy at some point last year, in large part because of escalating unemployment or poorly paid jobs. That is a rise of more than one-third on the year before and the highest number since the survey began in 1995.

~snip~

Vilsack said he expected the numbers to worsen when the survey for this year is released in 2010.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/17/millions-hungry-households-us-report

---

Tell us again, rwers, how the recession is ending?

[msongs]

39. time to cut the military budget by at least 50% - lower taxes AND free healthcare nt

[Rick Myers]

40. No one in this nation should go hungry!!!

We are on the verge of becoming a 3rd world nation... And the study is correct, it is going to get WORSE. Insane.

[beyond cynical]

56. Funny...

[struggle4progress]

41. Early LBN thread exists:

Report: More Americans going hungry
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=4148448

[notesdev]

42. That's not important

all that is important is making sure that investment bankers get mega-million dollar bonuses!

Glad to see our unified Democratic government has its priorities in order and is effective at putting them into practice - one can only imagine the horror if the GOP was running the show!

[Igel]

47. Read the report.

If you follow enough links at the Guardian site you'll eventually get to it.

Unfortunately, the Guardian tried to digest the numbers for everybody and didn't do a very good job.

[marshall]

43. Does that mean the rampant obesity problem will balance itself out?

It's got to turn a corner at some point.

[laughingliberal]

50. Yes, it will balance itself out with rickets and other disorders of

malnutrition

[marshall]

52. So we'll have the opposite of a bell curve

Instead of most people being in the middle, we'll have either the obese or the emaciated.

It's a problem that needs to be addressed from both ends. Bring everybody to the middle.

[wickerwoman]

60. In the US, prevalence of obesity increases with poverty

and food insecurity.

"In 2001, in a study by Marilyn Townsend, at the University if California (Davis) found that poorer women were fatter. More specifically, she found that the prevalence of overweight in women increased as food insecurity (not enough food on a regular, predictable basis) increased, the percentages of obese were 34% for those who were food secure, which jumped to 41% for those who were mildly food insecure, to 52% for those who were moderately food insecure."

The cheapest, most satiating foods are the highest in fat, salt and sugar and low in nutrition. Many obese and poor Americans are actually malnourished because of all the cheap empty calories they consume. And the poorer Americans are, the fatter *and* more malnourished they tend to be.

So no, more poverty isn't going to solve the obesity epidemic. If anything, it will make it worse.

[clear eye]

44. Here's the link to the USDA study:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/usda_report_household_food_security_2008.pdf?sid=ST2009111601621

If you scroll down to page 20 you can see table 7 that reports on the % of households in trouble on a state by state basis.

[mcwillig]

46. Obesity Does Out Weigh the Hunger In America

I do believe that the level of obesity in this country almost evens it out, even though I also think its horrible to say but look at these statistics of obesity in this country.
http://www.obesityinamerica.org/statistics/index.cfm">Obesity in America
Any one of these links on that page is more than enough to prove that it does in a way make up for the hunger in America. But in my opinion, both are terrible epidemics and must be halted before the youth of our nation descend even further into things such as depression and suicide, due to hunger and obesity.

[beyond cynical]

48. Obesity, not starvation, is the problem.

The fact of the matter is, there is no starvation in America (except starvation by abuse).

A little "food insecurity" is what most kids need.

[laughingliberal]

51. Horrible sentiment in a post about hungry children

I'm guessing from someone who never had a day when they wondered if they could eat.

[beyond cynical]

53. If children in this country were actually starving, you would have a point.

I'm guessing that you do not know the meaning of the word "starvation."

[laughingliberal]

59. As an RN since 1982, I am aware of what starvation is

Just because a child or family is not at the point of starvation does not mean they are getting enough to eat.

[RedRocco]

57. its deceptive ..

a lot of the obesity is caused by malnutrition ie: the more affordable foods being high in fats and carbs and sugars

[rrneck]

55. An interestng thread.

I've seen posts about the need for more gardens among all the available farmland. Posts about the difficulties in giving away unused food. And posts about obesity in America.

Here's your problem: Cargil, ADM, Best Foods...

The wealthy oligarghy owns so much of our country they have been able to starve us into eating the crap they produce.