Artist Statement
"Food Insecurity ”
California has the 11th highest rate of hunger in the nation. Approximately 30% of children in Los Angeles County are in families with "food insecurity". That means that due to financial hardship, there is not a consistent ability on the part of the family to provide healthy, nutritious meals for their children. New terminology was evolved several years ago by the US. Department of Agriculture, to replace the term "hunger" with the notion of "food insecurity". Following is the explanation of terminology.
"Food insecurity—the condition assessed in the food security survey and represented in USDA food security reports—is a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food.
Hunger is an individual-level physiological condition that may result from food insecurity.
The word “hunger,” the panel stated in its final report, “...should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation.” To measure hunger in this sense would require collection of more detailed and extensive information on physiological experiences of individual household members than could be accomplished effectively in the context of the CPS. The panel recommended, therefore, that new methods be developed to measure hunger and that a national assessment of hunger be conducted using an appropriate survey of individuals rather than a survey of households.
The CNSTAT panel also recommended that USDA consider alternative labels to convey the severity of food insecurity without using the word “hunger,” since hunger is not adequately assessed in the food security survey. USDA concurs with this recommendation and, accordingly, has introduced the new labels “low food security” and “very low food security.”
While this change was meant to provide a more precise way of looking at the issue of hunger, it seems to me that it removes us a distance from the reality of what is happening. Lately I have been thinking a lot about hungry children. I can't get it out of my mind. There is something very wrong with the fact that so many children are living in poverty and dealing with hunger on a daily basis. Maybe if everyone could just give up one food thing that they do weekly.....that little extra indulgence....and donate to a food bank, maybe it could add up to something. Anyway, that's what I've been thinking. You may be fed up too.
Below are some links to organizations who help.
Los Angeles Regional Foodbank
Westside Foodbank
SOVA
Feeding America
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