-
Supermarket shopping - Source: ONE News
More than 49 million Americans - one in seven - struggled to get
enough to eat in 2008, the highest total in 14 years of a federal
survey on food insecurity, the US government said.
While Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said programs such as food
stamps softened the impact of an economic recession, anti-hunger
groups pointed to the huge increase from the preceding year when
36.2 million people had trouble getting enough food and a third of
them occasionally went hungry.
"The survey suggested that things could be much worse but for the
fact that we have extensive food assistance programs," Vilsack told
reporters.
"This is a great opportunity to put a spotlight on this
problem."
About 14.6% of US households, equal to 49.1 million people, had
difficulty obtaining food for all their members due to a lack of
resources during 2008, up 3.5 percentage points from 2007 when
11.1% of households were classified as food insecure.
About 5.7% of households, or 17.3 million people, had very low food
security, meaning some members of the household had to eat
less.
Typically, food runs short in those households for a few days in
seven or eight months of the year, USDA said.
President Barack Obama called the USDA report unsettling and vowed
to reverse the trend of rising hunger.
"Our children's ability to grow, learn, and meet their full
potential - and therefore our future competitiveness as a nation -
depends on regular access to healthy meals," Obama said in a
statement.
USDA's annual report was based on a survey conducted in December
2008, soon after financial markets slumped and when the jobless
rate was marching toward its current 10.2%.
"The numbers are even worse than people otherwise believed," said
Jim Weill of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger
group.
"We all know we have the worst downturn since the
Depression."
David Beckmann of the anti-hunger group Bread for the World called
for stronger federal anti-hunger programs.
"The recession has made the problem of hunger worse, and it has
also made it more visible," he said.
Vilsack said the report represented an opportunity here for the
country to make a major commitment to end childhood hunger by 2015,
an administration goal.
He called on Congress to make it easier for poor children to get
free school meals and to improve the nutritional quality of those
meals.
Child nutrition programs, which cost about $32 billion a year, are
overdue for renewal but Congress is not expected to act before
2010.
The administration backs a $1.3 billion increase but has not
found offsetting cuts at USDA to pay for it.
The number of Americans receiving food stamp assistance soared
above 36 million for the first time in August, the eighth month in
a row that enrolment set a record, the USDA said earlier this
month.
As part of the stimulus package, food stamp benefits were raised
temporarily through September 2010.
Vilsack said it was too early to judge if the increase should become permanent.
