According to the Feeding America Website, food insecurity refers to USDA’s measure of lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods.
Food-insecure households are not necessarily food insecure all the time. Food insecurity may reflect a household’s need to make trade-offs between important basic needs, such as housing or medical bills, and purchasing nutritionally adequate foods.
This means that food insecurity has many faces, with each suffering family dealing with the physical, emotional, and financial effects of food insecurity. From an extended sickness that burdens the family budget to the single parent carrying the load of a one-income household, these life challenges make it difficult to make ends meet at the family dinner table.
About Our Mission
~ Cyndi
My husband’s body was ravaged by an incurable disease that took him from me and our children way too soon. His death left me in despair and financial devastation. However, I could not afford the luxury of disappearing into the waves of depression that constantly called out “What are you going to do?” “How are you going to feed your family?”
America’s Facts As It Relates To Hunger
- According to the USDA, more than 38 million people, including 12 million children in the United States are food insecure.
- The pandemic has increased food insecurity among families with children and communities of color who already faced hunger at much higher rates before the pandemic.
- Every community in the country is home to families who face hunger; however, rural communities are especially hard hit by hunger.
- Many households that experience food insecurity do not qualify for federal nutrition programs and visit their local food banks and other food programs for extra support.
- Hunger in African American, Latino, and Native American communities is higher because of systemic racial injustice. To achieve a hunger-free America, we must address the root causes of hunger and structural and systemic inequities.