Not enough to eat

U.S. AGRICULTURE Secretary Tom

Vilsack called his department's annual report on American "food insecurity" this week a "wake-up call" to take the issue of hunger seriously.

A "wake-up call." Vilsack repeated it several times during a Monday news conference. But that phone's been ringing- unanswered - for years.

The USDA report showed a steep increase in "food insecurity" - what it used to call "hunger" - in 2008, up 3.5 percent from 2007. More than 49.1 million Americans, 14.6 percent of the nation, are "food insecure." At times during the year, they were uncertain of having, or not being able to get, enough food for everyone in the household. The total includes 16.7 million children. Of that number, 17.3 million of our fellow citizens are experiencing "very low food security." One or more members of their households were hungry at some time during the year.

A simpler way to put it: 49.1 million Americans, 16.7 million children, are literally malnourished.

As implied in the report, most parents go to great lengths to keep their children from feeling hunger, including not eating themselves. But even if they or their children don't feel actual hunger pains, one in seven Americans aren't getting enough vitamins and minerals to be healthy.

No doubt the increase - which was worse than many anti-poverty advocates expected - is a result of the economic crisis that began last fall. The figures are for calendar 2008, before the drastic rise in unemployment in recent months. So the figures for 2009 are likely to be much worse.

Since it provided a gauge of the effects of the recession, the report got a lot of media attention. But for years before the recent spike, when unemployment wasn't as much of an issue, the rate of hunger stayed steady at a shameful 11 percent, about 36 million Americans. What Drexel University hunger expert Mariana Chilton calls a "tidal wave of hunger" had gone largely unnoticed.

So now that the "wake-up call" has been sounded, what would would it mean to actually take the issue of hunger seriously?

In the relatively short term, Congress should increase funding and eligibility for safety-net programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - what used to be called Food Stamps - as well as child-nutrition programs like school lunch and breakfast, as well as after-school and summer food programs. More Americans may be malnourished than at any time in the last 15 years, but without federal feeding programs, the situation would be exponentially worse.

The Child Nutrition Act is up for reauthorization by Congress this year - hearings were held in the U.S. Senate yesterday. The Obama administration wants to add $1 billion to the $20 billion in the program's budget. That's a good start, but not nearly enough to deal with the worsening problem - and definitely not enough to get very far toward candidate Barack Obama's pledge to end childhood hunger by 2015.

The systemic problems that contributed to the high rate of hunger before the recession hit last fall won't go away even if unemployment goes down. They demand a systemic solution: a package of legislation that would include massive job creation, increases in the earned-income-tax credit, and - this is key - a higher minimum wage. About 85 percent of "food insecure" Americans have at least one adult worker in the household. They just don't make enough money.

In these dark times, donations to food banks and soup kitchens are needed desperately, but taking the issue of hunger seriously requires a full plate of public and private efforts.