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Latest News on November 2007

November 19
New Study on Childhood Hunger

One of every four children in New Mexico and Texas and one of every five in a dozen other states, live in households that struggle to provide enough food at some point during the year, a report released Thursday says.

Study Tracks Hunger Among Children

By Wendy Koch
USA Today
November 16, 2007

The report is the first to give a state-by-state look at child hunger based on annual Census Bureau data, says Ross Frazer, spokesman for America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s largest hunger-relief group, which released the study. It analyzes data from 2003 to 2005, giving a three-year average.

“It is a real eye-opener to see that so many states have such high rates of child food insecurity and hunger,” says author John Cook, an expert on child hunger and pediatrics professor at Boston University School of Medicine. He says lack of healthful food can damage a child’s physical and mental development.

Nationwide, the report finds that 13 million children, or 18%, were hungry or at risk of hunger. That percentage has held fairly steady in the past decade. New Hampshire had the smallest share of kids facing hunger, 7%, followed by North Dakota with 9%.

States with rates of 20% or above include California, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee and Utah. The District of Columbia also was in this group.

The nation’s neediest kids do receive help. Nearly 15 million low-income children get free school lunches, and 7 million get free breakfasts, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

More than 50,000 also take home backpacks on Fridays that are filled with a few pounds of healthful food provided by local food banks, civic groups and churches, Frazer says.

“The problem is the gap in services,” says Jan Pruitt, chief executive officer of the North Texas Food Bank in Dallas. She says not enough needy families get food stamps and free school meals because of the stigma of being poor.

“I call it the demonization of food stamps,” Pruitt says.

In Texas, Pruitt says, demand for food has steadily risen in recent years as working poor families struggle to pay for gas and housing.

In New Mexico, hunger among kids has been a consistent problem, says Jasmin Holmstrup, spokeswoman of the Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico.

She says the state has a high poverty rate and large rural areas, so people have to drive far to buy food. She says there is one food store for every 480 square miles.

In another report on hunger this week, the USDA said a total of 35.5 million, or 12%, of U.S. residents, were “food insecure” at some time during 2006, up from 35.1 million in 2005. The data, also culled from the Census, do not include people who are homeless.

Single mothers and their kids were the most likely to face hunger, the USDA report said.

Relatively few kids — less than 1% — lived in “very low food security” households where members ate less because they could not afford to buy enough food.

In these households, adults are the ones most likely to skip meals because “parents go to heroic lengths to protect their kids from hunger,” says John Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a hunger-relief advocacy group.

Even if the kids are fed enough, Weill says, they suffer from seeing their parents stressed.

Weill says he expects the number of food insecure people nationwide will rise because of higher food and energy prices.

November 15

USDA Study: Over 35.5 Million Hungry in 2006

By HOPE YEN
Associated Press
November 15, 2007

More than 35.5 million people in this country went hungry in 2006 as they struggled to find jobs that can support them, a figure that was virtually unchanged from the previous year, the Agriculture Department said Wednesday.

Single mothers and their children were among the most likely to suffer, according to the study.

The 35.5 million people represented more than 1 in 10, or 12.1 percent, who said they did not have enough money or resources to get food for at least some period during the year, according to the department’s annual hunger survey. That is compared with 35.1 million people who made similar claims in 2005.

“This is encouraging, but we know we have more work to do,” said Kate Houston, USDA’s deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services. She said the numbers aren’t much different from 2005, which saw a decline after five straight years of increases.

Of the 35.5 million people, 11.1 million reported they had “very low food security,” meaning they had a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat. For example, among families, a third of those facing disruption in the food they typically eat said an adult in their family did not eat for a whole day because they could not afford it.

“No one in America should go hungry,” Houston said.

The survey was based on Census Bureau data and does not include the homeless. About three-quarters of a million people were homeless on a given day in 2005, according to federal estimates.

Among the findings:

  • Among families, about 12.6 million, or 10.9 percent, reported going hungry for at least some period last year. Those disproportionately reporting hunger were single mothers (30.4 percent); black households (21.8 percent); Hispanic households (19.5 percent); and households with incomes below the official poverty line (36.3 percent).

  • States with families reporting higher prevalence of hunger from 2004-2006 included: Mississippi (18.1 percent); New Mexico (16.1 percent); Texas (15.9 percent); and South Carolina (14.7 percent).

  • Of the 35.5 million people reporting periods of hunger last year, 12.6 million were children.

“This report comes at a critical time for hungry Americans and those of us who help serve them,” said Vicki Escarra, president of the nation’s largest hunger relief group — America’s Second Harvest-The Nation’s Food Bank Network. “There simply may be no food for many families when the rest of the nation gathers to celebrate Thanksgiving and religious holidays.”

In the report, the terms “low food security” and “very low food security” replace the old descriptions of “food insecurity without hunger” and “food insecurity with hunger.” The change was made last year based on a recommendation by the National Academies, which advise the government on science issues, a move that has drawn criticism by some Democrats who say the report speaks too euphemistically.

Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group, said he is troubled by the report. He said figures for 2007 could prove to be worse, given rising food prices and an uneven economy this year.

“We need to do more to make sure that households have access to healthy food by improving and expanding proven programs that help,” he said.