50 percent more US children went hungry in 2007

WASHINGTON – Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year’s sharp economic downtown, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department’s annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than 50 percent above the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

Overall, the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year was up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006. That was 12.2 percent of Americans who didn’t have the money or assistance to get enough food to maintain active, healthy lives.

Almost a third of those, 11.9 million adults and children, went hungry at some point. That figure has grown by more than 40 percent since 2000. The government says these people suffered a substantial disruption in their food supply at some point and classifies them as having “very low food security.” Until the government rewrote its definitions two years ago, this group was described as having “food insecurity with hunger.”

The findings should increase pressure to meet President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to expand food aid and end childhood hunger by 2015, said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

He predicted the 2008 numbers will show even more hunger because of the sharp economic downturn this year.

SNIP

Now let me see if I’ve got this right.  There are thousands and thousands of children in the US ‘who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat’ and that last is a quote from the article.  Now if memory serves there has been a major brouhaha over child obesity in this country for some time now.  You’ll note the words ‘typically eat’ in the quote.  Err could it possibly be that parents or the children are cutting back on the calories in order to lose weigh?  Surely I jest because if that’s the case then this story is just what it seems to be, a lie.

I’ve got this question, as well.  Just how do you go about arriving at the stated figures?  Do you go around asking children if they’re feeling a bit peckish?  Do you ask charities if they see poor waifish children on a regular basis?  Do you ask state and local authorities if they believe they have hungry children begging for a crust on street corners?  Or do you just make up the figures, mount your white charger and go off tilting at windmills that don’t exist?

For quite some time now it has been fashionable for many people to utter the word ‘child’ and then go off on a mindless rant about how children are being used, abuse, etc.  Well of course no one wants to see children abused, but that’s not the crux of the matter.  The crux of the matter is using the ‘code word child’ in context with your particular agenda so you can get your way, get more money, or power.  And that my friends is one of the most evil things a person can do.

There are thousands upon thousands of people out their with an ax to grind and most of the time grinding that ax puts money in their pockets and the grinders know that the squeaky wheels get the grease.  I on the other hand don’t make ‘one red cent’ off my blog.