Well, well, well. I’m tired…of blogs, of class, of people, of work, of everything. Never the less, I must not quit. Hah! At any rate, we need to blog about stats concerning our project. I was able to find some pretty good information about hunger in the United States. There are actually seperate categories for different degrees of hunger. There is food secure, food insecure, and hunger.

Food security is what all people should have. It is defined as access to enough food for an active, healthy life. When you are food secure there is no need for emergency food in order to meet basic food needs.

When there is a lack of access to enough food to fully meet basic needs at all times, that is food insecurity. Many times food insecurity is due to a lack financial resources.

Hunger is the most severe of the three categories. It is the uneasy or painful sensation caused by lack of food. It is also the recurrent and involuntary lack of access to food due to poverty, which can lead to malnutrition. There are mental and physical changes that come with inadequate food intake: harmful effects on learning, development, productivity, physical & psychological health, and family life.

The most people are in the food secure category, but there are still too many that are food insecure or hungry. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2002, 3.8 million households were hungry and 12.1 million households were food insecure.

There are some things that make a person more apt to be food insecure. Those at greatest risk for being hungry are in homes:
- headed by single woman
- Hispanic or Black
- below poverty line
- with children
- in urban area
- in western and southern states.

Other Stats:

America’s Second Harvest (2001)
- Served 28 million people; over 9 million were children
- Only 30% of those who recieved emergency food participated in Food Stamp Program.

2003 Survey of U.S. Cities
- 40% of emergency food programs did not provide adequate amounts of food.

It was a little bit harder to find information about New Orleans specifically. I will add it when I get a trustworthy source.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 28th, 2005 at 9:39 am and is filed under Project Progress, Week 07: Research Stats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.