Absolutely shameful!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 government 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 children 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 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.
This country needs to seriously reconsider the amount of money we are investing in war in light of the growing number of hungry people. The proposed 2010 budget for the DOD is 664 billion dollars and represents a 7% increase(you do the math) over 2009. WTF?
Before my recent 'early retirement' I was trying to make monthly contributions to the Atlanta Community Food Bank but I had to stop for obvious reasons and while such contributions are good and help they are not the answer. I am probably not the only one that has had to trim my charitable contributions and regardless, community food banks are not the solution and only meager stopgap. This shouldn't be happening in the greatest economy in the world, deficits or not. Hungry adults are one thing but children going hungry or being undernourished is criminal. Children deprived of proper nutrition will impact the qualityof the next generation in many ways and while we may not be able to give every child everything they need to "be the best they can be" we can at least not challenge them with hunger on top of the other problems we are 'gifting' them with.
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