According to a new report released today, 49 million Americans lack adequate access to healthy food. Here’s a clip from the article in the Washington Post:
The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a federal report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.
In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children — more than one in five across the United States — were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million youngsters the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.
Among people of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report…
As this report is based on 2008 data, one imagines that things have only gotten worse since, especially here in metro Detroit, where unemployment is double what it is in the rest of the nation… If you have the ability this winter, please consider making a donation to your local food bank, wherever you might be.
A PDF of the Agriculture Department report, entitled “Household Food Security in the United States, 2008,” can be found here.
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Nothing to add. Just want to say thanks for addressing this.
Information on the SOS Food Pantry can be found here.
http://www.soscs.org/cs_pantry.html
As an addendum to this post on food security, I thought that I’d offer up this newsletter we get through the comfood listserv. In you look in the SNAP Shots section, you’ll see an alarming statistic. About 50% of all kids in the US will live in a household using food stamps at some point in their childhood… and for African-American kids, that number is 90%. (Which makes it that much more crucial to accept food stamps at the farmers’ market.)
Why are we even having this conversation when we have the technology to grow meat in a lab?
http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/scitech/release.cfm?ArticleID=1098
I was recently at a forum put on by the Michigan Business & Professional Association. They are slightly more useful than the Chamber of Commerce because they at least offer the group Blue Cross discount to their members. Anyway, they sponsored a “health care” forum for their members at a swanky country club in Dearborn. Rep. Mike Rogers and Rep. Pete Hokestra (also running for Governor) were there to talk about health care reform in the Congress and their attempts to block… well you know the talking points.
When time came for Q&A, I noted that I have MS and the drugs that let me walk and be mostly normal are $2400 a month without insurance. I explained that I work for a small business that is not covered under COBRA, and gave other info that explained how it was impossible for me to get coverage with an individual health insurance policy in MI unless I’m employed and on a group policy. I asked how Rep. Rogers alternative plan would address the hundreds of thousands of people like me in MI that fall through the cracks when circumstances leave us unemployed. I also asked why a single-payer system would be so bad if as a society we could shift the baseline from the crisis mentality we operate in now, to one where everyone had baseline coverage that could be more affordable than what we spend now.
Their tag team response was that I should not demonize the profits of the health insurance industry. Rep. Hokestra then said that if we demonized the profits of the health insurance industry, then we might move to the food industry. He went further to say that millions of people go hungry in America every day and nobody attacks the food industry for profiting off the sale of food.
I’m not a proponent of a socialized state, but I do think that FDR was on to something when he suggested that all Americans should have adequate health care, shelter, food, education, a job, and never live in poverty. We are innovative enough as a society to figure out how to do this without degenerating into a communist government.
I’m tired of politicians who think that large sections of society need to suffer so that private and massive “not-for-profit” corporations (that are run like for-profit businesses) can make a 4% profit instead of a 3% profit. For the insurance industry this seeming small % is that of $2 trillion… it’s a lot of money, folks.
Rep. Dingell was invited to this event, but sent a ra-ra fluff letter in-lieu of showing up. Dingell has failed at meaningful health reform for over 50 years, the folks who were starving back when Kennedy announced a war on poverty… well they are still starving today, in fact there are more of the starving folks now than then; Dingell has been in the same seat for the entire time.
Accountability (lack there-of) for these elected types has been noted on a number of posts. I’m fed up and am strongly considering running for state house as an Independent in 2010. I have almost no faith that anything positive will change as relates to poverty, food security and meaningful health care reform unless new people engage the process. It would be great to have other independents to vote for running for State Senate, Governor, and US House, even in local elections. Please contact me if you are interested in building a robust campaign to defeat the destructive and often unquestioned political inertia of the Democrat Party. Not because you are a Republican, but because you are among the majority of Americans who do not identify with either of the two parties and want a real voice in the process.
If you loved America, you wouldn’t be pointing these things out, Mark.
“He went further to say that millions of people go hungry in America every day and nobody attacks the food industry for profiting off the sale of food.”
People certainly do attack the food industry, specifically retailers for failing to adequately invest in low income communities. I know that a couple of years ago, the city of Detroit did not have a single major food retailer and instead had to either cross 8 mile to buy food or buy expired potato chips and macaroni and cheese from a liquor store/market. They may or may not have one now, but I think this speaks loud and clear as to the failings of the corporate retail food industry when it does not even attempt to provide even a minimum of services to a willing groups of customers.
This is nothing compared to the number of Americans who go to bed horny each night. We need to think of them as well.
I agree with you, Peter. The disconnect between our “Representatives” and reality is pretty intense.
1 in 8 Americans, 1 in 4 children, are now on food stamps.
Socialism!!!
If we just allowed children to work, they would have the money to buy food. We need to let the open market solve this.
It never fails that big government failures are used to justify big government, even in the midst of big government itself failing.
Hey Brack, Big government is just trying to re-invent itself as the the Champion Of The Hungry. I think they are getting pretty good at getting America to eat shit everyday! Now, if I could just do something about the foul taste…hmmm…maybe some more catsup.
I came here looking for a quote on yacht Insurance. Imagine my surprise.