Free Republic

More than 36.2 million Americans – 11 percent of U.S. households – suffer from food insecurity. That is, their access to enough food is limited by a lack of money and other resources. -- More than 35 million Americans – one out of nine – are receiving food stamps, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. -- 17.5 percent of rural households with children are food insecure.

As many families gather for this splendid holiday feast, there are too many others who in the year suffer the American equivalent of hunger. This is more like deprivation and thankfully not the clinical malnutrition and starvation it is in the Third World. At the same time, this super-rich nation is also battling what is described as an epidemic of overweight and obesity. Obesity, according to the experts, is mushrooming faster than any other health problem. If not slowed down, it will exact $344 billion in health care costs in 2018. By that time 43 percent of Americans, or 103...

Forget buying a ton of gifts. A week before Thanksgiving, the holidays are shaping up as a season of no frills. And for some, the joy of family time and gift-giving has been replaced this year by a quest for basic necessities as more jobs are lost and unemployment benefits start to expire. Michigan, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation at 14.8 percent in September, has a food crisis going into the holiday season. "We have people coming to the food bank who said they were donating to us last year, but who are now out...

Proposed Cuts Could Impact Queens’ School Lunch Program by Jessica Bruder, Chronicle Correspondent May 01, 2003 It’s Friday afternoon at Long Island City’s PS 166, and a girl is nibbling on a pizza crust while waiting in line to throw away her lunch tray. All around her, the cafeteria buzzes while kids eat their lunches, many provided by the government.    Four out of five children at PS 166, 948 out of 1,164 students in all, are considered poor enough to qualify for federally funded school lunch. But according to child advocates, many of them risk losing their subsidized meals if...