Caritas

We hear almost daily the staggering figures about hunger in the United States. For example: “The number of Americans who don’t have enough to eat has reached 49.1 million including nearly one child in four—the highest figures since the government started keeping track in 1995.”

We also are more often using the term “food insecurity.” Food insecurity is the “availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food, or having limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.” On the other hand, hunger is defined as “the uneasy or painful sensation caused by a recurrent or involuntary lack of food and is a potential, although not necessary, consequence of food insecurity .”

The USDA reported in 2009 that 17 million households (14.6 per- cent) were food-insecure in 2008, an increase from 13 million (11.1 percent) in 2007.