The number of people who do not have enough food in the United States is a serious problem.
Information from the United States Department of Agriculture in 2011 shows:
- 50.1 million people in the United States live in food insecure households
- 33.5 million are adults
- 16.7 million are children
- 14.9% of all U.S. households are food insecure
Host Don Marsh talked with guests about the food crisis nationally as well as locally.
His guests were:
- Sunny Schaefer, Executive Director ofOperation Food Search, a St. Louis area food bank that distributes food to the poor and hungry
- Glenn Koenen, Chair of the Hunger Task Force of the Missouri Association for Social Welfare
- Lisa Vitale, Backpack Coordinator of Moline Elementary School in St. Louis
Among other things, they discussed the food crisis in St. Louis, misconceptions about those who need food assistance, the growth in the number of food banks, and the link between obesity and food insecurity.
Note
All of our guests agreed that the term “food insecurity” desensitizes the issue of hunger. Food insecurity is a relatively new term. In the early 2000s, the USDA, according to an article in the Washington Post, stopped using the term “hunger” because those who are food insecure may not be hungry.
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