“Households are classified as food insecure with hunger if their reported food-insecure conditions suggest that one or more household members was hungry at some time during the year because the household could not afford enough food.”

And:

“Most food-insecure households obtained enough food to avoid hunger, using a variety of coping strategies, such as eating less varied diets, participating in Federal food assistance programs, or getting emergency food from community food pantries or emergency kitchens.”

The statement, “1 in 8 Americans is at risk of going hungry” meshes, more or less with what the USDA classifies food-insecure. You could make the argument that the statement is true, perhaps off by a bit since its more like 1 in 10.

The number of people in the US who truly go hungry as most would think of it, i.e. not eating, is the 3.8% statistic. Which makes a good argument as to why you should do your charitable duty and donate food when you can.

I do find it interesting that it was on The Biggest Loser.

I don’t think it’s that high, but I do know there are people who are hungry in this country, who won’t go on government assistance for religious or moral reasons. I belong to an e-mail group for large families on which grocery budgets are a hot topic. One lady wrote in something that was very sobering. “I feed my family of 10 on $50 a week because I have to, there isn’t more money and we don’t take handouts. Sometimes my husband and I don’t eat dinner, but the babies are fed, so we’re ok. God is good ALL the time”. And I thought our budget was tight. The thing is though, we can’t really help these families. They aren’t lazy, they work a LOT, but they do have a standard that doesn’t include receiving food stamps or other government assistance and they don’t make much money. I actually agree with them, but am not sure I’d have the guts to do it if my babies were hungry. I also have had friends go on government assistance temporarily (a smaller family, 3 kids) and it was really hard for them emotionally. Not everyone who has to do it is rejoicing at the “free ride”. There are organizations out there that can help, because they provide bulk food for little money, and most of these families are ok with that. http://www.angelfoodministries.com, although I’ve recently read some not so great things about them, is one of them.

So to sum up, the statistic is probably a lie, but there are people in our country who are hungry, or would be without help. Some intelligent and compassionate investigation should be able to give you a feeling for the real story in your community.

what qualifies as hunger in the US though? not being able to eat a In-n-Out animal style burger and fries every day?