Florida below average in ‘food insecurity’ - South Florida Business Journal:
As most of the nation prepares for a Thanksgiving feast comes a report from the Food Research and Action Center that Florida is below the national average in "food insecurity."
The term means that access to adequate food is limited by a lack of money and other resources.
Florida was 30th among the 50 states, with 12.2 percent of households food insecure while 4.9 percent had very low food security.
That means the food intake of some household members was reduced, and their normal eating patterns were disrupted because of the household’s situation.
The latest rankings, which come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ranked Mississippi the worst and North Dakota the best. The USDA monitors the extent and severity of food insecurity in U.S. households through an annual, nationally representative survey. This latest report presents statistics on households’ food security, food expenditures and use of food and nutrition assistance programs in 2008.
USDA found that 17 million households in the U.S., or 14.6 percent, were food insecure. The prevalence of food insecurity was up from 11.1 percent in 2007, and was the highest observed since the surveys were launched in 1995.
“As the recession hit, the number of Americans in households struggling against hunger skyrocketed to one in six last year, and it’s likely that the number is even higher today,” said Jim Weill, FRAC president. “Millions have lost jobs or seen their wages reduced over the past two years. While many more people are turning to the federal nutrition programs for help, those programs don’t reach enough people and their benefits often aren’t enough to stop hunger.”
Regionally, food insecurity was most prevalent in the South, intermediate in the Midwest and West and least prevalent in the Northeast.