‘Hunger’ now dubbed ‘very low food security’

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture has decided that Americans who go without food are no longer hungry — instead they possess "very low food security." In an annual report released Nov. 15 that measures Americans’ access to food, the word "hunger" was omitted in favor of what the department has decided is the more scientifically accurate term.

David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, an ecumenical Christian anti-hunger group based in Washington, blasted the department’s move as an attempt to play down the reality of hunger in the United States. "This was a politically motivated resort to jargon in order to reduce the scandal of hunger in America," Beckmann said. The Committee on National Statistics of The National Academies, an independent panel of scientific experts who made the recommendation, is defending the change in terminology, saying that hunger is a term that describes the consequences rather than the state of food security.

The Department of Agriculture said there were 35 million Americans in 2005 — down from 38 million in 2004 — who lived in households that at some point in the year were not able to put food on the table. The number of people threatened by "very low food security" was stable at 10 million after five consecutive years on the rise. Bread for the World’s annual hunger report, released Nov. 20, found that by the third week of each month, nearly 91 percent of food stamp recipients had depleted their benefits and didn’t have enough to make it through an entire month.

"It’s clear that God cares about hungry people," Beckmann said. "There’s nothing in the Bible about very low food security."