The USDA has released its data for hunger in the United States, and the numbers aren't good.

In 2007, 36 million people were classified 'food insecure'. In 2008, the figure was 49 million - an increase of 13 million.

Children were badly affected, though older children took the hit if they had younger siblings. Those in the front lines were, of course, women. The graph shows the differences in US hunger between 2007 and 2008: single mothers and women living alone were worst hit. ... read more »

Raj's blog | 1 comment

Posted on 16 November, 2009 - 21:52

I'm very much looking forward to seeing the new film by Steve McQueen (no, this Steve McQueen) about hunger-striking IRA prisoners, entitled Hunger. I'll write about that when I've seen it, but in the meantime, here's another film, La Faim - 'hunger' in French - that remixes ideas of hunger, gluttony, desire and fear. It's an entirely captivating eleven minutes long, and one of first 1970s stabs at computer animation.

... read more »

Raj's blog | 13 comments

Posted on 17 May, 2009 - 15:28

50 Percent More US Kids Hungry in 2007

By Michael K Sniffen

WASHINGTON (Nov. 17) - 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 downturn, 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. ... read more »

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Posted on 21 November, 2008 - 20:16

This just in from Alternet. It's bleak reading for the festive season.

One in Ten Americans Went Hungry Last Year ... read more »

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Posted on 3 December, 2007 - 04:16

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) have come out with some useful research on the nation’s health, and food poverty. The message from the media seems to be this: ‘the poor don’t have it as bad as we thought’.

To some extent this is a welcome message – it goes some way to countering the national sport, as British as cricket, of heaping contempt on poor people (though I suspect that it’ll take a little more than this report to make the practice disappear completely).

... read more »

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Posted on 17 July, 2007 - 18:39