One in Eight Americans Used Food Banks in 2009

[undeterred]

CHICAGO—A charitable organization estimated Tuesday that 37 million Americans—or one in eight people—turned to food pantries and soup kitchens during the 2009 recession, forcing some sites to cut meal portions and turn away people. Feeding America, a Chicago-based network of 200 food banks, said in its quadrennial hunger study that 46% more people visited a hunger-relief charity at least once in 2009 than did in 2005. The estimate was based on a survey of officials at 37,000 local feeding agencies nationwide.

President Barack Obama has a stated goal of ending childhood hunger in the U.S. by 2015. But the Feeding America study indicated that high unemployment and growing health-care costs were undermining increases in federal spending on nutrition programs.

As part of the hunger study, the group also interviewed 61,000 patrons at emergency feeding sites from February through June of last year. Among other things, the Feeding America study estimated that 13.9 million children were served by an emergency feeding center in 2009 compared with 9.23 million children in 2005.

Feeding America, which changed its name in 2008 from America's Second Harvest, said its survey showed that 76% of the adults who used a food pantry in 2009 were unemployed, including 3.2 million who had lost their jobs within the past 12 months. The food banks represented by Feeding America spend about $1 billion annually to supply tens of thousands of pantries and soup kitchens. The network is lobbying Congress to, among other things, double the Agriculture Department's $250 million annual budget for buying surplus commodities for charitable feeding programs.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704022804575040911372196350.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

[Purveyor]

1. Michigan recently reported that 1 in 5 in this state receive some sort of food assistance. eom

[cutlassmama]

2. I imagine this is a more accurate figure.