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Problem: Hunger and malnutrition persist in developing countries and even in wealthy America, with particularly serious consequences for children. Moreover, in the wake of the 9-11-01 attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, giving for food banks has declined dramatically as the need has increased even more strongly.

"Food banks across the [Washington, DC] region are reporting grave shortages, even as requests for assistance have in some places tripled. Organizers faced with bare shelves attribute the troubling scarcity of supplies at least in part to the outpouring of charity to terrorist attack relief efforts here and in New York City." Whoriskey and Lenhart, "Food Banks See Need Rise, Giving Fall: Donations Diverted to Relief for Victims of Trade Center, Pentagon Disasters," Washington Post, September 29, 2001, B1.

The amount of food contributed by churches, grocery stores and individuals this month is down 34 percent from last September . . . Monetary donations also have plummeted, by 67 percent. . . . The number of new applicants requesting food assistance from the Arlington center tripled this week compared with a normal caseload." (B1, B4)

Sources: For information on the nation's and world's underlying hunger and malnutrition problems, see Beckman & Simon, Grace at the Table: Ending Hunger in God's World, New York: Paulist Press (1999); U.S. Dep't of Agriculture (USDA), Household Food Security in the United States in 1995 (Sept. 1997); Kramer-LeBlanc and McMurray (eds.), "Discussion Paper on Domestic Food Security," Family Economics and Nutrition Reviews, (Washington: USDA, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion), v. II, nos. 1 and 2, 1998), p. 49; U.S. Bureau of the Census, "Current Population Survey," March 1998; Brown, "The Disease America's Never Cured," Bread (June 1997), p. 5; Hoehn, "Feeding People: Half of Overcoming Hunger," Transforming the Politics of Hunger: Hunger 1994 (ed. Cohen, Bread for the World Institute, Silver Spring 1993), p. 12.

"Eight hundred twenty-eight million people in developing countries around the world go hungry in the stark sense of lacking enough food to sustain normal activity, according to the most recent estimate of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)." (Beckman & Simon, p. 15)

"Hunger hits young children especially hard. Poor nutrition during the first few years can result in permanent physical and mental damage, and often death. Of the 31 thousand children who die each day in developing countries, about half die from causes related to hunger. That's one child dying for every breath we take." (Id., p. 15)

Progress: "The proportion of people going hungry in developing countries has fallen sharply, from more than one in three in 1970 to one in five by the mid-1990s. The number of hungry people in these developing countries has also declined since the early 1970s even though the world's total population has increased rapidly." (Id., p 16)

"Eleven million people [in the United States] live in households that suffer severe or moderate hunger, and 2 million of those live in households that suffer severe hunger." (Id., p. 24) [citing USDA, 1997] In a separate exercise, USDA "estimated that roughly 3 percent of the U.S. population--about seven million people--are hungry according to the definition which the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) uses in developing countries. . . [i.e., food intake regularly deprives them of enough calories]." (Id., p. 24) [citing Kramer-LeBlanc and McMurray]

"Even mild undernutrition -- the kind seen widely in the United States -- produces cognitive impairments in children that can last a lifetime, according to J. Larry Brown, director of the Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy at Tufts University. When children don't eat enough, they become less alert--less engaged with their environment, less able to pay attention to parents and teachers." (Id., pp. 29, 32)

[Note: The Year 2000 Census Report, indicates that the child poverty rate in the U.S. improved somewhat in the past 10 years. "Yet 1 in 6 children lives in poverty." Cohn & Cohn, "Census Sees Vast Change in Language and Employment," Washington Post, August 6, 2001, A1.]

"Hungry children suffer from two to four times as many individual health problems, such as unwanted weight loss, fatigue, headaches, irritability, inability to concentrate and frequent colds, as low-income children whose families do not experience food shortages. This relationship between hunger and health problems was unaffected by income. In other words, hunger had a strong effect on children's health no matter what the income level of their families.," according to the Food Research and Action Center.

"The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate quantity or quality in the diet of the infant's mother. In 1996, the infant mortality rate in the United States was 7.3 deaths per 1,000 live births. Black infants in the U.S. died at more than twice the rate of white infants, according to the National Center for Health Statistics." Id.

Is the situation in the U.S. getting better or worse? "The U.S. Government just recently began gathering data on hunger and food insecurity. But the dramatic growth of private charitable feeding efforts since the late 1970s suggests growing hunger. . . . There were few [food pantries, soup kitchens, food banks] in 1980, but an estimated 150 thousand private feeding agencies are . . . passing out food to hungry Americans [in the mid-90s]." (Beckman & Simon., p. 27) [citing Hoehn] ". . . Catholic Charities, Lutheran Services of America, the Salvation Army and other assistance networks all reported sharp increases in requests for emergency food in the late 1990s [after food stamps and other welfare-based forms of assistance were curtailed in 1996]. Catholic Charities reported a 26 percent increase between June 1997 and April 1998. The U.S. Conference of Mayors reported a 14 percent increase in requests for emergency assistance in 1998, and said that 21 percent of all requests went unmet." (Id., p. 29)

Solutions: A variety of approaches are being explored as ways to reduce or eliminate hunger in the U.S. and abroad. Among them are:

Campaign to End Childhood Hunger: a public education and advocacy coalition to build public support to end childhood hunger in the U.S.

Feinstein Foundation Educational Campaigns: focusing on elementary, middle, high school, and college programs on hunger education.

Heifer Project International/Read to Feed Program: a program to promote reading and enable students to raise funds used to help families "obtain a sustainable source of food and income."

[more to come]

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