News flash: hunger no longer exists in America…
read time: 249 words, about a minute
… according to the Federal government.
Every year the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) measures American’s “access to food“. They used to apply the term “hunger” and associated word forms to the group of people who can least afford to buy food.
No more. You see “hunger” is a physiological state. This report does not measure that state; therefore, it’s not scientifically accurate to use the term. So says the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academies.
This report measures “food security“. Thus, folks who can’t afford to eat have “very low food security“. Doesn’t that sound more pleasant? Something you can make better with a pill?
Hah! you think I’ve had more than my daily dose of resveratrol and I’m making all this up, don’t you. Verify here. Go ahead (I’m not sure I could make this up).
Hey, let’s Google it…
By golly, Results 1 - 10 of about 223,000 for “low food security”.
(I think they all point to this report).
Ok, now we’ll Google “hunger”.
Well, there ya go… Results 1 - 10 of about 44,800,000 for hunger.
Does that unscientific test mean more people (roughly 200 times more people) are simply experiencing a transient physiological state rather than a persistent state of reality?
Or maybe it simply means more people are semantically challenged.
Oh, 12% of Americans (about 35 million) have very low food security. Not sure how they semantically express that. That number has increased for five years running.
