8-23-2012
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout...tressing-humbling-scary-011618014.html?_esi=1
Going hungry in America: Distressing, humbling and scary
Dave Krepcho, director of the Second Harvest Food Bank, checks inventory at the food bank warehouse in Orlando, Fla. In the past four years, food distribution to 500 pantries, shelters, and other relief agencies in the six-county area has jumped about 60 percent. In the last year alone, that amounted to 36 million pounds of food. Krepcho estimates about 30 percent of those seeking help are first-timers. They're blue-collar and white-collar, many middle class, even some upper middle class. They include college-educated couples and professionals.
Eighteen percent of Americans say there have been times this year that they couldn't afford the food they needed, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday. In particularly hard-hit regions of the United States, like the South, at least one in five didn't have enough money for food. In Preston's Virginia, 15.2 percent of state residents are affected. (See a full list.)
When she worked as a Wal-Mart cashier, Michelle Croy remembers watching seniors decide between buying food and buying medicine.
"Their medicine often ranked first so that meant that Vienna sausages and crackers sufficed for the month for sustenance," she writes. "I never really entertained the thought that someday that would be me."
The single mother in Huntington, W.V., says she is shocked she must scramble to pay bills and feed her children. Milk runs upward of $4 a gallon, and a pack of hamburger costs $9. "This is why my family settles with a banana or cereal for breakfast, skips lunches entirely, eats a dinner that is produced almost entirely from our garden, and hardly ever eats out."
Croy, now a student teacher in Huntington ("where jobs are as scarce as rain in the Sahara"), writes that while groceries trump other needs and wants, they could be in worse shape.
"My case is nowhere near as disheartening as those of the children who go to bed hungry every night, or the families who survive solely on donations from food banks," she writes, "but it's indicative of the reality that most of us middle-class Americans face: We are all just one paycheck away from going hungry or living homeless out on the streets."
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout...tressing-humbling-scary-011618014.html?_esi=1
Going hungry in America: Distressing, humbling and scary
Dave Krepcho, director of the Second Harvest Food Bank, checks inventory at the food bank warehouse in Orlando, Fla. In the past four years, food distribution to 500 pantries, shelters, and other relief agencies in the six-county area has jumped about 60 percent. In the last year alone, that amounted to 36 million pounds of food. Krepcho estimates about 30 percent of those seeking help are first-timers. They're blue-collar and white-collar, many middle class, even some upper middle class. They include college-educated couples and professionals.
Eighteen percent of Americans say there have been times this year that they couldn't afford the food they needed, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday. In particularly hard-hit regions of the United States, like the South, at least one in five didn't have enough money for food. In Preston's Virginia, 15.2 percent of state residents are affected. (See a full list.)
When she worked as a Wal-Mart cashier, Michelle Croy remembers watching seniors decide between buying food and buying medicine.
"Their medicine often ranked first so that meant that Vienna sausages and crackers sufficed for the month for sustenance," she writes. "I never really entertained the thought that someday that would be me."
The single mother in Huntington, W.V., says she is shocked she must scramble to pay bills and feed her children. Milk runs upward of $4 a gallon, and a pack of hamburger costs $9. "This is why my family settles with a banana or cereal for breakfast, skips lunches entirely, eats a dinner that is produced almost entirely from our garden, and hardly ever eats out."
Croy, now a student teacher in Huntington ("where jobs are as scarce as rain in the Sahara"), writes that while groceries trump other needs and wants, they could be in worse shape.
"My case is nowhere near as disheartening as those of the children who go to bed hungry every night, or the families who survive solely on donations from food banks," she writes, "but it's indicative of the reality that most of us middle-class Americans face: We are all just one paycheck away from going hungry or living homeless out on the streets."