{"id":144672,"date":"2022-08-18T12:18:37","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T20:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=144672"},"modified":"2022-08-18T12:18:37","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T20:18:37","slug":"hunger-can-be-hard-to-recognize-8-18-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=144672","title":{"rendered":"Hunger can be hard to recognize? (8-18-22)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was walking down the street and saw this ludicrous billboard.<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QIkApKmXncc\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been to Friday night services in Orthodox programs where fighting food insecurity is the main agenda item. Apparently, it is an effective way to appeal to left-of-center Jews disaffected with Judaism. <\/p>\n<p><A HREF=\"https:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2014\/sep\/9\/bovard-the-hunger-hoax\/\">James Bovard writes in 2014<\/a>: According to the U.S. Agriculture Department, American households suffer far more \u201cfood insecurity\u201d than do families in Angola, Mozambique and Pakistan. The USDA uses different standards to gauge domestic and foreign \u201cfood security,\u201d but neither measure make senses. Still, that technicality will do nothing to deter politicians and pundits from demagoging the hunger issue.<\/p>\n<p>The Agriculture Department reported Sept. 3 that 14.3 percent of American households \u2014 49 million people \u2014 suffered from \u201cfood insecurity\u201d last year. This number is little changed from last year despite the fact that the federal government is now feeding more than 100 million Americans.<\/p>\n<p>The USDA defines food insecurity as being \u201cuncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food\u201d at times during the year. Most of those USDA-labeled \u201cfood insecure\u201d did not run out of food; instead, they reported \u201creduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet\u201d with \u201clittle or no indication of reduced food intake.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If someone states that they feared running out of food for a single day (but didn\u2019t run out), that is an indicator of being \u201cfood insecure\u201d for the entire year \u2014 regardless of whether they ever missed a single meal. If someone felt they needed organic kale, but could only afford conventional kale, that is another \u201cfood insecure\u201d indicator. If an obese person felt they needed 5,000 calories a day but could only afford 4,800 calories, they could be labeled \u201cfood insecure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of the survey\u2019s preliminary screening question asks: \u201cIn the last 12 months, did you ever run short of money and try to make your food or your food money go further?\u201d Why should we be concerned that shoppers want their food dollars to go further? This was formerly taught as a virtue in high school home-economics classes, and now it is a pretext for a federal alarm.<\/p>\n<p>Even though USDA\u2019s food-security statistics do not measure hunger, that is how the media portrays the report. After the recent announcement, a Voice of America headline proclaimed: \u201cUSDA: Hunger Threatens 1 in 7 Americans.\u201d A Philadelphia Inquirer headline lamented: \u201cUSDA: Despite slight improvement, hunger persists.\u201d The Sioux Falls Argus Leader in South Dakota announced: \u201cHunger a growing problem for South Dakota.\u201d Slate declared: \u201cThe Number of Hungry Americans Has Barely Fallen Since the Recession.\u201d The media are following in the footsteps of President Obama, who announced after the 2009 food-security report was released, that \u201chunger rose significantly last year \u2026 . My administration is committed to reversing the trend of rising hunger.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some comments on the report focus on data highlighting the plight of minorities. A North Dallas Gazette headline stressed: \u201cBlack families facing hunger at nearly twice the rate of other groups.\u201d But a survey by USDA\u2019s Agricultural Research Service found that black children aged 2 to 11 consume significantly more calories than white children.<\/p>\n<p>Many liberals are invoking the USDA report as proof that more food handouts are needed. Joel Berg, a New York \u201canti-hunger activist\u201d who pockets a six-figure salary thanks largely to AmeriCorps grants, wailed, \u201cA country that combines massive hunger with record Wall Street markets is so derailed, we can\u2019t even find our tracks anymore.\u201d But food insecurity has surged at the same time that far more Americans became government dependents. The number of food-stamp recipients soared from 26 million to 46 million at the same time that food insecurity rose from 11.1 percent to 14.3 percent of the nation\u2019s households.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was walking down the street and saw this ludicrous billboard. I&#8217;ve been to Friday night services in Orthodox programs where fighting food insecurity is the main agenda item. Apparently, it is an effective way to appeal to left-of-center Jews &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=144672\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144673,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144672\/revisions\/144673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}