Everyone gets fed

Saturday, December 24, 2011  4:56 pm

This year again, according to national data, food prices jumped higher and faster than nearly anything else we buy. For most of us, it’s an inconvenience and causes us to scale back – maybe skipping the occasional grass-fed meats, or shifting from super-clean bpa-free (like Eden brand) canned garbanzos to soaking and cooking your beans from dry.

But for families hit by poverty or unemployment, food insecurity means not knowing where your next meal will come from – it’s skipping meals, poor nutrition, getting sicker and not performing or feeling well. Eventually, it impacts us all as our neighbors become less and less able, physically or emotionally, to realize their full potential.

Here in the Berkshires among the households served by The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, 71% are food insecure, according to the U.S. government’s official food security scale.

According to the non-profit advocacy group Feeding America, though related, food insecurity and poverty are not the same. Unemployment rather than poverty, they say, is a stronger predictor of food insecurity.

With food prices as well as unemployment up now, food pantries – often the last stop for hungry and food insecure families, are having difficulty keeping their shelves stocked even with the basics. If there is ever a time for intention in action, it’s now. Please help everyone get fed this winter by helping your neighbors through your local food pantry.

Find you local food pantry with Feeding America’s directory.

Food security

  4:52 pm

Definition: Food security for a household means access by all members at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum (1) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and (2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways (that is, without resorting to emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other coping strategies).
Source: USDA