No more hunger - now it's called Food Security

[maddercow]

Interesting article and lots of work to be done to fix the damage over the last 6 years of horrifc government.
-----------------------------------------------
My stomach is touching my back'
Paul Ash

The federal government has decided to drop the word "hunger" from its vocabulary, according to a new report released by the USDA. The reason? USDA sociologist Mark Nord, the author of the report, claims that the term "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey. We don't have a measure of that condition."

The USDA will now use the term "very low food security" to describe people who used to be considered "food insecure with hunger." Statistically speaking, hunger will no longer exist in America.

The release of the report, however, follows five straight years of increases in the number of Americans unable to afford the food they need. Nord and the USDA may feel comfortable saying there is no hunger in America, simply because they can't find a precise scientific measure to describe it. It is not so difficult. In fact, it's so easy a child could do it. A young boy at a San Francisco food pantry knows exactly how to describe hunger. He says, "My stomach is touching my back."

To be fair, the USDA's point is not that hunger doesn't exist, but that this particular survey, the annual "Household Food Security in the United States," is designed to measure food security -- an economic and social condition related to limited or uncertain access to food. Hunger is a physiological condition.

Because the USDA doesn't ask survey participants about their physiological symptoms, it can't claim that the study measures "hunger." Unfortunately, no national government survey exists that does measure hunger in a more precisely defined way, and there are no plans to start one. In the meantime, the "Household Food Security" study is our federal government's principal gauge of -- forgive my use of the term -- hunger in America.

If the government stops using the word "hunger," people may begin to believe that hunger has gone away. It hasn't. Just ask that little boy whose stomach is touching his back.

Whatever you call the problem, the statistics are grim: 35 million people in America are living in food-insecure households. And while the good news is that this represents an 8 percent drop nationally over last year, here in California the rate of food insecurity has remained unchanged since 2000.

The USDA's study classifies 11 percent of Californians as food insecure. In San Francisco, the rate is even higher. Based on U.S. Census data, 1 in 5 adults and 1 in 4 children in San Francisco face the threat of hunger. Hunger is especially devastating for our most vulnerable citizens: children and seniors. From lower academic achievement to long-term cognitive impairment, chronic disease, illness and obesity, the effects of childhood hunger can last -- or shorten -- a lifetime. For seniors, malnutrition can become a major health risk, often resulting in extended hospital stays and increased health-care costs.

Yet for the past six years, the Bush administration has been cutting food-assistance programs, and in some cases, proposing to eliminate them. For example, the administration's 2007 budget aims to "zero out" the national Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which serves nearly 10,000 low-income seniors in San Francisco alone, and move these people to the Food Stamp program.

There are two main obstacles to this working. First, seniors who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are ineligible for Food Stamps in California - and almost all low-income seniors receive SSI. Additionally, a senior with just $3,100 in savings would be ineligible for Food Stamps but still qualify for the supplemental food program.

The continued unraveling of our nation's food safety net, will mean that more elderly Americans will go to bed hungry, more working poor parents will have to choose between paying the rent or putting food on the table, and more children will perform poorly in school and be unprepared for productive work lives.

The new Democratic-led Congress has an important opportunity to reverse these policies. They can take the lead in combatting hunger by restoring and increasing funding for the government food-assistance programs that provide vital nutrition to low-income Americans. And they should never be afraid to call hunger by its name.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ November 21, 2006 05:32 AM: Message edited by: maddercow ]</font>

[funkycamper]

Good grief! This is a typical example of the BushCo's class warfare.

My husband sits on the board of our local foodbank distribution center. This is an operation with the ability to obtain food from major donors that then distributes food to the smaller foodbanks in the area. This distribution center has won state and national awards for its creative ability to find and tap into resources and to create unique partnerships with various companies that keep the shelves fairly full. But things are tightening up as the need stays high.

I also have a friend who is the volunteer director of one of the local foodbanks. Even with the resources from the above-mentioned distribution center, the foodbanks run way too low to meet the demand. It's sad.

Something like 65-70%, I don't remember the exact figure, of the kids in my town are eligible for subsidized school meals. Because of that, my town's park & rec program has been eligible for funding for a summer lunch program so these low-income kids still get one free meal each weekday during the summer months. But the funding for these things is lessening and becoming harder to secure. And the funding per meal hasn't increased since 1999 so the ability to purchase nutritious food for these kids has been severely impacted.

I just don't understand how anybody could sleep at night knowing that the policies they have created are causing these vulnerable people to have to go to bed hungry. I'm really hoping that the Democrats can make some serious changes starting in January.

To end on a bit of a happier note: Two of the towns in my area have had a big rivalry for decades. About 25 years ago, a contest was created to put that rivalry towards a good cause. It's called FoodBall. Each year, during the 2 weeks before Thanksgiving, these schools compete to raise food donations for the foodbanks. The food is loaded into semi-trucks that are weighed to see who the winner is. This year, almost 1 million pounds of food was collected! Pretty amazing when you consider the two towns only have a combined population of about 22,000 people, isn't it? This makes a huge difference to the local foodbanks and allows them to create holiday food baskets so poor families can have decent Thanksgiving and Christmas meals and to keep the larder full for everyday hand-outs as well.

While I'm proud of these types of local efforts, I'm also sad that it's necessary. And that, during the last 6 years, the need has increased. I'm sick of hearing how good the economy is supposedly doing when it's certainly not filtering down to the folks who need it most.