Thousands of children go hungry in a land of immense wealth

[dArKeR]

DPA , WASHINGTON
Friday, Mar 05, 2004,Page 9

It's difficult to pin down the exact numbers, but most nutrition experts agree that on any one day, about 13 million children go hungry across the US.

For older children, the situation improves during the school year when many receive free or reduced-price lunches.

But when the schools close, like they did in the Washington region and up and down the East Coast recently because of heavy snow, these children -- instead of cheering over the free day off -- must put up with emptier stomachs than usual, child advocates say.

Even more worrisome to people who help feed such children are the long summer months of school vacation.

"The food banks see an increase of families with children during the summer months," Lynn Parker, director of nutrition policy at the Food Research and Action Center in Washington said in an interview.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/03/05/2003101235

[Fred Duke]

1. 13 million children go hungry across the US???

I will say it more or less straight. That 13 million number is fabricated bullsh*t. Do the math. Roughly 290M Americans. That gives us 50 - 60M kids. You can tell me with a straight face that 25% of American kids are going hungry? No fing way.

This sort of statistical fraud really pisses me off. The less aware will fall for any damn number. Heck, they don't know a million from a billion.

Everyone that repeats it is also guilty.

[Raster]

2. so fred, do you have any info, stats, sources to back up your claim?

[bemildred]

3. So what do you think is a "good" number?

Is it OK of it's only say, 15%?

[Fred Duke]

6. The real number...

..is likely quite small. It would certainly depend on your definition of the problem. Are we going to define 'Hungry' as a child lacking a Snickers bar after school? We certainly do not have rampant Somaila style famine in America. The 13 million number is strictly used to inflate the problem in the eyes of the sympathetic. The definiton used to get to 13M is clearly a fraud. That is strictly my point.

I am not a pro-hunger spokesman nor have I been paid by the pro-hunger/child abuse lobbies, er, well, not this month anyhow.

[Fred Duke]

7. Having read #4...

... I see I am correct in diagnosing the 13 million number as dubious definition thoughlessly repeated slightly out of content resulting in a totally twisted statement fraudently used to generate sympathy for a much smaller problem.

Hell, I'm food insecure when there are no more Famous Amos cookies.

[Lindacooks]

8. How much smaller do you need the problem to be?

ONE hungry kid is one too many. I don't care if it's 1 million or 13 million, there is a terrible problem with hunger in this country. Spend some time at food shelves or soup kitchens and you'd see the crisis for yourself.

[Fred Duke]

14. I know it's almost unheard of here but...

... there's this economic principle called 'the law of diminishing returns'. When you apply it to a problem like hunger in America you find that for every additional dollar invested in the problem you get a smaller and smaller unit of non-hunger, problem solution , if you will. There comes a point where the solution per dollar is not so attractive when compared to some other pressing social or environmental problem.

That said, when someone sez "ONE hungry kid is one too many!" I say this is an economically ignorant statement. The money needed to cure a problem 100%, never ever a hungry child , might be the total resources of the planet. And a child still might be hungry.

Same goes when someone sez "If it saves just one life..." this is often unsound thinking however compelling the cause.

[Logansquare]

4. The figure is for children living in "food insecure" households

"Most food-insecure households do not report hunger among household members. For example, of the 17.6 percent of children who lived in foodinsecure households in 2001, most (13.5 percent) lived in households classified as food insecure without hunger, 3.5 percent lived in households with hunger among adults only, and 0.6 percent lived in households with hunger among both adults and children."

"Food-insecure households report difficulty obtaining enough food, reduced diet quality, anxiety about their food supply, increased use of emergency food sources or other coping behaviors, and, sometimes, reduced food intake and hunger."
http://www.childstats.gov/ac2003/indicators.asp?IID=116

The government counts child hunger, child hunger in food insecure households, and food insecure households. It doesn't mean it isn't a problem, but I do think the newspaper may have not understood the figures. American kids aren't hungry like Sudanese children, but they also often don't know where the next meal is coming from, or have their hunger satisfied with inappropriate cheap food (like crackers, bread).

[Logansquare]

5. "any one day" addendum

I re-read the newspaper excerpt, and the "any one day" phrase is important. They could have explained the findings better, without the sensationalistic language, but it's true--on any one day 13 percent of U.S. children go to bed without enough food in their bellies. Some of them will get a free school lunch on Monday, thank God.

[Disturbed]

9. The real question is.

What is that Compasionate Conservative doing about it?

[Malva Zebrina]

16. why would any have to suffer "anxiety" about food?

In this enormously wealthy country?

Oh, I know--it is their fault.

and why should any other have to give "their" money to feed those whose children are at nutritional risk when it is theor own fault? Especially when they are black or hispanic or single moms who committed a sin of having sex without marriage?

Hell no--it is their own fault that their children are lacking in nutritional substenance.

Kill them all, but do not take my money away from me to feed them.

[The Zanti Regent]

11. You live in a Lasseiz-Fairyland Fred!

You're reading too much Ayn Rand for your own good.

Millions of children are starving, and Bush's answer is to outlaw birth conrtol so there will be even more.

Only a sick and warped mind sees nothing wrong with that.

[Fred Duke]

12. You must read , then respond....

...not just emote. Your post is nonsense when looked at in context.

[The Zanti Regent]

15. Fred, walk with me into Los Angeles Skid Row

see THOUSANDS of people going hungry and homeless. But you won't, you refuse to leave your Fox News Lasseiz-Fairyland.

Live in your fantasy, I'll live in reality trying to help those spit out by Christians like you in the hell where you put them.

[Sugarbleus]

10. There are any number of children who

Don't get enough to eat compared to the budgets of the more financially secure in this country. The other thing is that what they DO get to eat is usually not entirely healthy.

The stats are reporting that what we DO have is way too many kids that are OBESE and starting into type II diabetes early. This also works into the unhealthy foods thing. Abundant and accessible healthy foods, for less than wealthy families, is expensive--even for some of the working class.

The issue that really gets to me is not the children but the elderly! Even some young struggling workers (mostly female) go without proper nutrition--my daughter being one. She can hardly afford the rent, utilities, and insurances, with her wages, as a single woman, let alone feed herself properly.

Then there's the "almost" and the truely homeless families and persons...eating at soup kitchens and out of garbage cans!!
I get sick and tired of people using "children" to elicit sympathy so as to distract the public of the WHOLE picture .........Every catagory is suffering from something in this greedy, selfish, filthy stinking rich nation.!!

[rfkrocks]

13. Its interesting

to note that the food bank in our town is really hurting because of increasing use. Also I have walked through a couple of East Coast cities in the last few months and I seem to notice more homeless on the streets. I think the failure of the federal government to help out cities is due to the Fraud-in Chief President Moron we have in the white house. You see the Iraq money we spent turning our plowshares into swords is going to hurt us in so many ways-while our dear postee Fred Duke says we don't have Somalia like hunger-it is true that you can go to bed hungry without being malnourished to the point of distended bellies. If a child loses a meal a day Fred its called failure to thrive because the human body needs many sources of nutrition during its growing years. So I believe in that sense there are hungry children and yet another example of how little the gop cares about this country