Appleseed Humanity

[Appleseed] – America is a nation of bounty, but a report released on Monday by the US Department of Agriculture proves that bounty is not universally shared.

It reveals that 45-million Americans can’t even afford to eat every day.

Roughly 14-percent of the nation’s homes suffered what the report pompously calls “food insecurity” in 2009, meaning they had difficulty feeding one or more of their members last year.

And the cause was always the same. ‘Lack of financial resources,’ says the report.

In short, poverty. In this nation. In the 21st century.

The report also shares the depressing statistic that this is the highest number of people they have found going hungry since the Federal Government started keeping score of such figures in 1995.

One third of the number – about 6.8-million homes or 5% of the nation’s total of households – suffered ‘Very low food security.’ Which basically means they were close to starvation.

According to the report, the usual response of those who endured such injustice was to eat far less than normal, and sometimes not at all. Single-parent households were worst affected, it says, and the percentage of people who frequently went without food was higher among black and Hispanic homes.

“This report highlights how critical federal nutrition assistance programs are for American families,” USDA Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Kevin Concannon told CNN in a statement.

And he’s right – Most of those who suffered an unstable diet received some level of benefits from the Government’s three anti-hunger programs: ‘The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,’ the ‘National School Lunch Program’ and the typically long-winded ‘Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children,’ known as WIC.

The ‘Supplemental Nutrition’ program now supports 18-percent more people than it had to just two years ago. The ‘School Lunch’ program and WIC have also seen an increased need of over 5% each.

The mere fact that such numbers could exist in this glorious land in the 21st century should have protesters with banners taking turns lining up at the Capitol steps to protest until it was stopped. Instead, nobody cares.

And people still ask why we bother to do this…

Photo: M. Ihara

Tags: food, government, insecurity

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 16th, 2010 at 1:35 pm and is filed under General News, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.