(Name-mce) ListServ 'My Stomach is Touching My Back' by Paul Ash

[KispokoT at aol.com]

Greetings,
 
I found this information a very interesting and kind of scary.  The  power of 
words can do more harm than good.
 
Warm Regards,
Gina Boltz, Director
Native Village Publications
_http://www.nativevillage.org_ (http://www.nativevillage.org) 
Member, Link Center 
 
 
Published on Monday, November 20, 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle 'My  
Stomach is Touching My Back' by Paul Ash
 
The federal government has decided to drop the word "hunger" from its  
vocabulary, according to a new report released by the USDA.  The  reason?  USDA 
sociologist Mark Nord, the author of the report, claims that  the term "hungry" is 
"not a scientifically accurate term for the specific  phenomenon being 
measured in the food security survey.  We don't have a  measure of that condition."
 
The USDA will now use the term "very low food security" to describe people  
who used to be considered "food insecure with hunger." Statistically speaking,  
hunger will no longer exist in America.
 
The release of the report, however, follows five straight years of  increases 
in the number of Americans unable to afford the food they need.   Nord and 
the USDA may feel comfortable saying there is no hunger in America,  simply 
because they can't find a precise scientific measure to describe  it.  It is not 
so difficult.  In fact, it's so easy a child could do  it.  A young boy at a 
San Francisco food pantry knows exactly how to  describe hunger.  He says, "My 
stomach is touching my back."
 
To be fair, the USDA's point is not that hunger doesn't exist, but that  this 
particular survey, the annual "Household Food Security in the United  
States," is designed to measure food security -- an economic and social  condition 
related to limited or uncertain access to food.  Hunger is a  physiological 
condition.
 
Because the USDA doesn't ask survey participants about their physiological  
symptoms, it can't claim that the study measures "hunger." Unfortunately, no  
national government survey exists that does measure hunger in a more precisely  
defined way, and there are no plans to start one.  In the meantime, the  
"Household Food Security" study is our federal government's principal gauge of  -- 
forgive my use of the term -- hunger in America.
 
If the government stops using the word "hunger," people may begin to  believe 
that hunger has gone away.  It hasn't.  Just ask that little  boy whose 
stomach is touching his back.
 
Whatever you call the problem, the statistics are grim: 35 million people  in 
America are living in food-insecure households.  And while the good news  is 
that this represents an 8 percent drop nationally over last year, here in  
California the rate of food insecurity has remained unchanged since 2000.
 
The USDA's study classifies 11 percent of Californians as food  insecure.  In 
San Francisco, the rate is even higher.  Based on  U.S.  Census data, 1 in 5 
adults and 1 in 4 children in San Francisco face  the threat of hunger.  
Hunger is especially devastating for our most  vulnerable citizens: children and 
seniors.  From lower academic achievement  to long-term cognitive impairment, 
chronic disease, illness and obesity, the  effects of childhood hunger can last 
-- or shorten -- a lifetime.  For  seniors, malnutrition can become a major 
health risk, often resulting in  extended hospital stays and increased 
health-care costs.
 
Yet for the past six years, the Bush administration has been cutting  
food-assistance programs, and in some cases, proposing to eliminate them.   For 
example, the administration's 2007 budget aims to "zero out" the national  
Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which serves nearly
10,000 low-income  seniors in San Francisco alone, and move these people to 
the Food Stamp  program.
 
There are two main obstacles to this working.  First, seniors who  receive 
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are ineligible for Food Stamps in  California 
- and almost all low-income seniors receive SSI.  Additionally,  a senior 
with just $3,100 in savings would be ineligible for Food Stamps but  still 
qualify for the supplemental food program.
 
The continued unraveling of our nation's food safety net, will mean that  
more elderly Americans will go to bed hungry, more working poor parents will  
have to choose between paying the rent or putting food on the table, and more  
children will perform poorly in school and be unprepared for productive work  
lives.
 
The new Democratic-led Congress has an important opportunity to reverse  
these policies.  They can take the lead in combatting hunger by restoring  and 
increasing funding for the government food-assistance programs that provide  
vital nutrition to low-income Americans.  And they should never be afraid  to call 
hunger by its name.
 
Paul Ash is the executive director of the San Francisco Food Bank 
(_www.sffoodbank.org_ (http://www.sffoodbank.org) ).