What is
food insecurity and what does it look like in America?
Food insecurity refers to USDA’s measure of lack of access, at times, to
enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited
or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods. Food-insecure
households are not necessarily food insecure all the time. Food insecurity may
reflect a household’s need to make trade-offs between important basic needs,
such as housing or medical bills, and purchasing nutritionally adequate foods.
In
Massachusetts, 652,760 people are struggling with hunger - and of them 167,450
are children.
1 in 10 people struggles with hunger. 1 in 8 children struggles
with hunger.
People facing hunger in Massachusetts are
estimated to report needing $376,759,000 more per year to meet
their food needs.
The
average cost of a meal in Massachusetts is $3.38.
Data from Feeding America's Map the
Meal Gap 2016 from
the Feeding America web site
