One in eight Americans needs emergency food assistance

One in eight Americans does not have enough to eat and requires emergency food assistance. This staggering number is revealed in a report released on Tuesday by Feeding America (FA), a network consisting of thousands of food pantries, soup kitchens and similar agencies serving 37 million people in the US. The report, entitled Hunger in America 2010, paints a devastating portrait of the social misery faced by millions of American working people.

In what is the largest single study of domestic emergency food assistance ever carried out, Feeding America conducted 61,000 face-to-face interviews and surveyed more than 37,000 charitable agencies in its network to assess the level of “food insecurity” among their clients. “Food insecurity” means, simply, that people are going hungry. Survey respondents classified as “insecure” stated they could not afford to buy more food once they had run out, that they had been forced to skip meals because they could not afford them, and that they had not been able to eat when they were hungry because they could not afford to do so.

The FA investigation revealed the organization now serves 37 million people annually, of which 14 million are children. This marks an alarming 46 percent increase in people seeking emergency hunger relief since 2006. Seventy-nine percent of the 14.5 million households served by FA have annual incomes below the official federal poverty line, an absurdly low threshold of $22,025 for a family of four. Ten percent of the families surveyed are currently homeless; 60 percent do not have access to a car. More than one third of FA client households reported one or more adult family members were currently employed but still struggled to get enough to eat.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/hung-f04.shtml

and I consider it to be a damn shame that we are in this boat.

I do what I can at work (grocery store) to set aside anything that is usable for Operation Food Search pickups and have my vendors pitch in with their stales (they can't always do so due to their policies, but some of them "tend to forget" as they can). We have 4 pickups per week and while it's mostly bakery items we have up to 8 shopping carts stacked full going out on a pickup.

and the Bush admin. We think its bad now if the CONS had won just how bad would it be then. IF they win these seats and try to continue with their obstrutionist bullshit they will soon find out who in the hell the sleeping giant really is.

I will be you that at least half of that percent of people are teabaggers and republicons who now want to pretend that they are outrage and they haven't had enough yet. Some of these silly ass people don't even have a job and are still talking about how they don't want to pay taxes...

I'd like to see everyone fed but we all know the earth would collapse upon itself into a puss-filled ball if we didn't make sure rich bankers didn't get their publicly funded bonuses, right?

America is turning into a one massive soup kitchen.

wants to be an American. :sarcasm:

is tied directly to the ability to purchase it. I'm redoubling my garden effort this year, if only to have some extra to donate to the mission. We're starting on our third year of gardening/canning and quickly getting better!