1 in 8 households struggling with hunger: report

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/households-struggling-hunger/

WASHINGTON — Some 17.4 million US households struggled to get enough food to eat last year because money was tight, the US Department of Agriculture said Monday.

In more than a third of those households -- around one in eight US homes -- at least one person did not get enough to eat at some time during the year and normal eating patterns were disrupted.

Hardest hit by hunger were urban households with children headed by single parents and African American and Hispanic households, the USDA said in a report.

While the number of hungry people was deemed too high for the affluent United States, the report found that it had held steady from the previous year, thanks in large part to government-funded food assistance programs.


More at the link ---

no more entitlements....WTF?

"No one is going hungry. They may have missed one meal during the past year. Et cetera...."

That's the problem with "food security" instead of "hunger" as the criterion. They are far from being the same. Generalizing all "food insecure" people as "going hungry" is as mistaken as saying that "food insecurity doesn't mean going hungry, so the people who are food insecure aren't going hungry." These are the two extremes interpretations: The truth is far from being that simplistic.

Many of the people covered by the stats go hungry, at least one day out of 2009, because of lack of money to buy food. That can be for any reason--daddy took the money to get drunk, parents were unemployed and had 6 kids to feed, mommy was mugged and robbed. Many ate less than they'd like because they were afraid they wouldn't be able to buy sufficient food. Many are chronically hungry, whether kids or adults. These sometimes require the same solutions; sometimes not.

But many of the people covered by the stats didn't miss a meal. They merely relied on a limited variety of foods or didn't provide balanced meals at least once during 2009. By that measure, when I was in grad school I was chronically food insecure. I was not confident I would have enough money for food; I had to alter my diet because of lack of money for food; I might even miss a meal because of lack of money for food, esp. if I wasn't home and able to live on my rice, beans, and occasional ground beef or Jarlsberg cheese.

Another chunk of the people involved didn't miss a meal, but relied on food banks or government assistance for food. Most of them would have run out of money for food without the aid, without the free or reduced lunch program, but not all would have. A neighbor has a kid on a free/reduced lunch program, yet just got a new wide-screen tv. They're FIMA--"food insecure my ass". Minus the FRLP, they still wouldn't be food insecure, and are food insecure because they meet the criteria on paper even though a relative picks up a good chunk of their mortgage. On the other hand, a kid in Scouts that I know would probably starve without the FRLP or his mother would waste away because the fathers don't pay child support for her kids and she's unemployed.

Mixed bag. Portraying those who aren't starving as poster children for increased government intervention breeds cynicism and charges of crying wolf. Portraying those who are "FIMA" as representing the entirety of the "food insecure" is no less cynical or wolf-crying. Few are interested in understanding the term and what it means because most of the people in the conversation are at the extremes, where their truth is very much partial.

:argh:

Unrec for poor journalistic writing. The issue is not hunger. Hunger is a craving for food, and is not necessarily indicative of a person actually needing more food.

The issue is malnutrition.

The issue is food insecurity.

There's chronic hunger, which is dire. There's transitory lapses in food, not as dire but indicative of those on the edge. There's rearranging your diet--you can still have a decent diet, but it's not as varied as many would like. Or it can rely on a few staples and be unhealthy.

Some are problems that everybody agrees on. Some aren't--still, some activists (for want of a neutral term) are concerned about it.

Others find that having those receiving government subsidies isn't a valid metric. Yet others figure that to argue that not everybody receiving subsidies needs them is prelude to gutting the system--and sometimes it is.

The study specifically said lack of money for buying food, so diets and fasts don't count. It didn't actually specify the priority given to food, so if you bought a new iPod and then had to feed the kids spuds and pasta you might be listed as "food insecure" because you altered your diet because of lack of money. It also relied on self-reporting: If you don't think that the diet you're feeding is balanced but don't want to say that you unbalanced it, you hedge on the truth. Lie? Perhaps. Perhaps you misremember; that happens, too.

My entire rant is because the report is clear what it means. There is no reason for the story to be reported inaccurately, skewed, or in a biased manner. Yet the news stories are seldom clear, and partisans on the numerous sides of this story seldom seem to have any interest in what the report itself says. They all prefer partial truths to be considered as the Truth because it is the only truth they consider important. /rant off/

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR108/ERR108.pdf, for those who have an appetite for the whole enchilada, including the chile con queso.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR108/ERR108_ReportSummary.pdf for those on an information diet and willing to settle for an empanada. Dry.

Who cares if people go hungry in (supposedly) the richest country on the planet? :sarcasm: