As a food banker, I pay special attention to how hunger issues in the United States are portrayed in the media - I look at everything. I look at statistics, I look at anecdotes. I read client stories, I read about access issues.
I'm not a big fan of euphemisms to begin with, but the USDA just came up with one that's leaving me here at my desk scratching my head and wondering how the hell I'm supposed to be doing my job when the USDA is going around acting like the hunger issues in the US are well on their way to being solved.
The USDA's report on Household Food Security was released this week - you can find it
here.
There is much fanfare surrounding the statistics about hunger in the US - it's DOWN! I mean, yeah, 35.1 million Americans can be classified as "food insecure" (not having access to enough food to ensure a healthy, active lifestyle for all household members) and those who were the hungriest became even more so, but fewer people overall are "food insecure"!
From the Washington Post (I love the headline, and all emphases are mine):
The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security."
Every year, the Agriculture Department issues a report that measures Americans' access to food, and it has consistently used the word "hunger" to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. But not this year.
Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey." Nord, a USDA sociologist, said, "We don't have a measure of that condition."
The USDA said that 12 percent of Americans -- 35 million people -- could not put food on the table at least part of last year. Eleven million of them reported going hungry at times. Beginning this year, the USDA has determined "very low food security" to be a more scientifically palatable description for that group.
The United States has set a goal of reducing the proportion of food-insecure households to 6 percent or less by 2010, or half the 1995 level, but it is proving difficult. The number of hungriest Americans has risen over the past five years. Last year, the total share of food-insecure households stood at 11 percent.
Last year, my foodbank served, through its agencies and programs, about 31,000 people/month in a 14-county area. That's up from 24,000 the year before. Hmmmm.
This time of year is particularly busy for regional foodbanks, like the one I work for, and their agencies - the pantries, soup kitchens, and other emergency food programs people access when they're in need.
We work hard year-round, but the holiday season is when we work the hardest to secure food and to secure donations - we need both to ensure that people in our communities and regions have access to food when they need it. It's really frustrating to have a government agency trumpeting victory when... really, nothing has changed.
You can find FRAC's (Food Research and Action Center) response here.
Find your regional food bank.