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Nearly 30 million Americans told the Census Bureau they didn’t have enough to eat last week
This week the US Census Bureau published results of a survey in which nearly 30 million out of 249 million respondents said they did not have enough to eat at some point in the week before July 21. It was the highest number of people reporting insufficient food since the Census started tracking that information in early May.
According to the data released Wednesday, about 23.9 million people said they "sometimes" did not have enough to eat, while 5.4 million said they "often" did not have enough to eat -- a statement Webb says applies to her.
Food insecurity equates to an inadequate access to food for a healthy, nutritional diet. It’s separate from hunger, which the US Department of Agriculture describes as a physiological condition that may result from food insecurity.
Before the pandemic, there were an estimated 37.2 million Americans who were potentially food insecure, according to Katie Fitzgerald, chief operating officer of Feeding America, a national network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs.
But the group projects that food insecurity will only worsen in the months ahead.
