NKCC

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is celebrating its 40th year of providing better access to healthy food for children and adults in need.

Congress should make a priority of expanding federal nutrition programs that are aimed at helping millions of struggling families feed their children.  The need to bolster these programs was underscored again this week in a dismaying Department of Agriculture study showing that a record number of households had trouble getting sufficient food at one time or another last year.  These facts are troubling enough, but a separate federal study showed that even before the recession began, more than two-thirds of families with children who were defined as “food insecure” under federal guidelines contained one or more full-time worker.  This suggests that millions of Americans were trapped in low-wage jobs before the downturn that made it more difficult for them to provide children with adequate nutrition.  - NYT, Nov. 2009