Almost one in five US families were unable to buy food they needed in 2009

Excerpt:

The Food Research and Action Center in collaboration with Gallup have been tracking what they term "food hardship" over the last two years. The poll question asked 535,715 adults, "Have there been times in the past twelve months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?"

The question was asked in all 50 states and in the largest Metropolitan Statistical areas as well as Congressional Districts. In 20 states, more than one in five answered "yes" to the question.

Families with children under 18 fared worse than single adults and the highest number of people responding with "yes" were in southern states.

26.2% of people in Mississippi responded yes. Mississippi was ranked first of the states in terms of food hardship. Below are the rankings for the states with the highest numbers of people who were unable to buy the food they needed in 2009:

(this is followed by a table of the top 10 states along with links, etc.)

Are we talking basic, life sustaining nutrition food or high-calories, low nutrition junk food? What people consider to be "needed" id very subjective and will vary greatly from person to person.

There have been times in the past year that I was unable to afford to buy food for my family for a week so we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for an entire week. I realize that doesn't mean we were starving but I was unable to buy fruits, meats and vegetables. We chose to keep paying over $1000 a month for our health insurance for two people rather than eat well.

This is the first time in my adulthood that this happened. Our business bottomed out in the fourth quarter of 2008, we went through all our savings and though things have picked back up thank goodness, 2009 was not an easy year for us.

and hopes that things will get better for you.