MORE THAN a million children regularly go to bed hungry in the US, according to a government report that shows a startling increase in the number of families struggling to put food on the table.
US president Barack Obama, who pledged to eradicate childhood hunger, has described as "unsettling" the agriculture department survey, which says 50 million people in the US - one in six of the population - were unable to afford sufficient food to stay healthy at some point last year, in large part because of rising unemployment or poorly paid jobs. That is a rise of more than one-third on the previous year and the highest number since the survey began in 1995.
US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack said: "These numbers are a wake-up call . . . for us to get very serious about food security and hunger, about nutrition and food safety in this country."
Mr Vilsack said he expected the numbers to worsen when this year's survey is released in 2010.
The report defined 6.7 million people as having "very low food security" because they regularly did not have enough to eat. Among them, 96 per cent reported that the food they bought did not last until they had money to buy more. Nearly all said they could not afford to eat balanced meals. Although few reported that this was a permanent situation throughout the year, 88 per cent said it had occurred in three or more months.
Nearly half reported losing weight because they did not have enough money to buy food.
The number of children living in households where there were shortages of food at times rose by almost one-third to 17 million. The report says most parents who did not get enough to eat ensured their offspring received sufficient food but more than one million children still suffered outright hunger.
The worst-affected states are in the south, with Mississippi having the largest proportion of its population enduring shortages of food, followed by Texas and Arkansas.
More than half of those affected are minorities, principally black people and Hispanics. Millions more Americans do not go hungry only because they are so poor they receive government food stamps or rely on handouts from food banks such as Feeding America.
The report comes as the UN holds a summit in Rome on food security. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon told the summit a child dies of hunger every five seconds. - ( Guardianservice)