 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
  |
|
|
|
Published Friday, November 17, 2006
Oregon spent a couple of years atop the U.S. Department of Agriculture's list of states with the worst hunger problems. The distinction was so shameful that the state took meaningful action, such as working harder to ensure that qualified people received food stamps. As a result, Oregon has moved toward the middle of the pack in terms of its hunger rate - just in time for the government to drop the word "hunger" from its annual reports.
Henceforth, people formerly described as hungry will be categorized by the USDA as having "very low food security." Somehow, being the state with the highest proportion of people experiencing very low food security doesn't have quite the sting as being No. 1 in hunger.
The USDA claims its aim is accuracy. The department doesn't actually measure hunger, but surveys the number of households that periodically have trouble putting food on the table. That's a yardstick of poverty, not hunger. The kind of hunger the USDA found in Oregon is usually the result of expenses such as housing, utilities and medicine having first claim on families' food budgets - by the time people have paid the bills that can't be avoided or postponed, there's no money left over for groceries. Those who make such choices aren't hungry in the same way as, say, the victims of famine in Ethiopia.
The USDA's new terminology, however, has the pungent aroma of euphemism. Someone who is forced to delay a trip to the supermarket until after the first of the month doesn't have food in the house - and if the USDA would assign a team of researchers to the subject, it would find that not having food is the leading cause of hunger. The word "hunger" may have a different meaning in the United States than elsewhere, but American children who don't eat breakfast aren't experiencing very low food security. They're going to school hungry.
If the USDA sticks with its food security label, other government agencies will no doubt notice that the department solved the nation's hunger problem with a single semantic switch. The Department of Labor could end poverty in the United States by referring to certain people as income-deficient. Unemployment could become a thing of the past if the jobless were reclassified as people unencumbered by workplace obligations. The homeless? They're experiencing a very low level of housing expense. The uninsured? They're policy-free.
Substituting a bloodless phrase for a word that describes a painful and damaging condition, of course, doesn't make the condition go away. No child ever cries, "Mommy, I have very low food security." The kid is hungry, no matter what the USDA says.
Hunger no more: A Register Guard Editorial|
|
||
| Home | Contact Us |
© 2006 Food for Lane County
|