The Hunger Challenge is ON!

How's it going? Check out posts and tweets from the 2011 Hunger Challengers. Just click on the links on the right-hand side of this page. 

To see what everyone's saying about the Hunger Challenge, check out this Twitter feed, or visit the Food Bank's Facebook page.

Taking the Challenge?

• Post on Facebook daily about what you’re eating (or not able to eat). Or join the discussion on our FB page.
• Tweet all about it – use the hashtag #HungerChallenge
• Post pictures of your meals on your blog or Facebook 
• Talk to your friends, families and co-workers about what you’re doing – they’ll want to listen
• Support other Hunger Challengers by reading and commenting on their blogs

Still need to sign up for the Challenge? It's not too late! You can join at any time.

Sign up for the 2011 Hunger Challenge!

Think you could live on a food stamp budget - for a week or even a day? We invite you to sign up for the 2011 Hunger Challenge, which will take place September 11-17.

Throughout the year, we post news on this site about hunger and food stamps, so subscribe to our RSS feed to receive updates, too!

"Hunger and Children in America: a Slow and Steady Starvation"

ABC News has been running a series on hunger in America. This shocking story appeared on Good Morning America:

A little 2-year-old boy came to the hospital hungry, not just for dinner, but every day of his young life. He is smaller than he should be and his organs, including his brain, are not developing fully. And he lives in Boston, one of America's most prosperous cities.

Doctors at Boston Medical Center's Grow Clinic, which provides assistance to children diagnosed with "failure to thrive," say they have seen a dramatic increase in the number of children they treat who are dangerously thin.

"What's so hard is that a lot of families are working so hard," said Dr. Megan Sandel, an associate professor of pediatrics and public health at BMC. "They are working jobs. They are earning money and their dollars just don't go far enough."

That is life for nearly 15 million children living in poverty in the U.S., according to the National Center for Children in Poverty...Across the country, nearly 5.5 million children live in families that have lost homes to foreclosures and 8 million children live in families where at least one parent has lost a job, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation.... READ MORE

California ranks next to last in food stamp participation - and it's hurting our economy

The Sacramento News & Review reports on one woman's struggle to obtain food stamp assistance in California, following Monica Turner through "the food stamp process’s web of appointments and paperwork." Fixing the broken system could go a long way toward helping California's economy. Here's why:

Many Californians give up or don’t bother. As a result, the state leaves $4.9 billion in benefits on the table each year, money that could juice the economy by $8.7 billion in related activity.

Forces here and in the nation’s capital are now working hard to change the way people participate in the federal food-stamps program, known nationally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Improving California’s participation could provide a potent injection for a sick economy, a booster shot that California could mainline straight into its corroded veins. At the same time, this elixir would also help people in need, people such as Turner, and provide a jackpot return on the investment.

At the moment, California faces some embarrassing statistics. Despite need, the state ranks next to last nationally in food-stamp participation. Less than half of those eligible in California enroll, compared to a national average of 75 percent. Read the entire article

GOP plan guts food program

In this June 2, 2011, editorial in The Register Citizen, Rosa DeLauro lays out  the grim effects of a plan put forward in the U.S. House of Representatives:

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, helps to feed more than 44 million Americans a day, 21 million of them kids. Put another way, one out of every seven Americans, and one out of every five children, is getting help. It is our country’s most important anti-hunger program.

Yet, under the budget put forward by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, this vital effort is at risk

Among the many drastic cuts included, the Republicans’ 2012 budget would slash SNAP by $127 billion — almost 20 percent — over the next 10 years. This could mean up to 10 million men, women, and children would be cut from the rolls and have to go hungry. The Republicans plan to convert SNAP into yet another underfunded block grant to the states, which could mean even larger cuts for American families.

Republicans argue that they are making these cuts because the cost of SNAP has increased in recent years. That is true due to simple math. SNAP helps feed those in economic need, and as the economy has stumbled, their numbers have grown.
According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, food stamp aid lifted more than 4.5 million Americans over the poverty line in 2009, including more than 2 million children and 200,000 seniors...Read more

Soaring Costs Force Some Renters To Choose Between Shelter and Food

In the Huffington Post, Yepoka Yeebo writes about an alarming trend - higher rents are eating up income that used to go to food:

Around 10 million American households -- or one in every four families that rent their homes -- could have to choose between paying rent, buying groceries or keeping current with bills, according to a report released Tuesday.

The number of households spending more than 50 percent of their income on rent and bills jumped by 2.6 million over the last decade, according to a Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies report. Economists generally consider "affordable" rent to cost about 30 percent of a tenant's income.

When housng costs hit certain levels, many Americans are forced to choose between rent and food. "In real terms, it means more people have less money to spend on household necessities such as food, health care, or savings," Eric Belsky, director of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, said in the report. Households which spend 50 percent or more of their income on rent also spend almost 40 percent less on food and over 50 percent less on health care than households with more affordable rent. Read more

NY Times' Mark Bittman Fasts to Protest Proposed Budget Cuts to Hunger Programs

New York Times food writer and author of the weekly Minimalist column is really going mimimal. He's joined a group protesting proposed Congressional budget cuts to hunger relief programs. Here is his Op-Ed about the fast:

I stopped eating on Monday and joined around 4,000 other people in a fast to call attention to Congressional budget proposals that would make huge cuts in programs for the poor and hungry.

By doing so, I surprised myself; after all, I eat for a living. But the decision was easy after I spoke last week with David Beckmann, a reverend who is this year’s World Food Prize laureate. Our conversation turned, as so many about food do these days, to the poor.

Who are — once again — under attack, this time in the House budget bill, H.R. 1. The budget proposes cuts in the WIC program (which supports women, infants and children), in international food and health aid (18 million people would be immediately cut off from a much-needed food stream, and 4 million would lose access to malaria medicine) and in programs that aid farmers in underdeveloped countries. Food stamps are also being attacked, in the twisted “Welfare Reform 2011” bill. (There are other egregious maneuvers in H.R. 1, but I’m sticking to those related to food.)

These supposedly deficit-reducing cuts — they’d barely make a dent — will quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than are doing so now. And: The bill would increase defense spending... Read the entire article

Food stamps: More Americans keep signing up

The Christian Science Monitor reports that food stamp participation continued to rise in December - the latest in a series of record-breaking months for the food stamp program:

As a logical consequence of the prolonged economic downturn it appears that participation in the federal food stamp program is continuing to rise.

In fact, household participation has been climbing so steadily that it has far surpassed the last peak set as a result of the immediate fallout following hurricane Katrina.

The latest data released by the Department of Agriculture shows that in October, an additional 289,737 new recipients were added to the food stamps program, an increase of 14.67% on a year-over-year basis, while household participation increased 16.98%.

Individual participation as a ratio of the overall civilian non-institutional population has increased 13.72% over the same period.

Read more

One in Three Working Families Considered "Low Income"

The Wall Street Journal reported December 21, 2010:

Nearly one in three working families earned less than 200% of poverty line last year, as a bad economy pushed 250,000 families below that threshold, according to a new analysis of Census Bureau data.

The recession’s effects extended beyond the millions who lost jobs, according to a report released Tuesday by the Working Poor Families Project, which researches and advocates for working families. Among those who were working, more than 10 million families earned less than 200% of the poverty level, which the researchers considered “low income.” The low-income threshold for a family of four with two children last year was $43,512.

“Working families are taking it hard during the great recession,” said Brandon Roberts, one of the report’s authors. “We’ve got a whole lot of middle-income families, middle-class families that have now fallen back into low-income working families.”

Read the full story here.

Number of Americans relying on food stamps still on the rise - now at nearly 43 million

The Wall Street Journal notes the continuing rise of Americans relying on food stamps:

Some 42.9 million people collected food stamps last month, up 1.2% from the prior month and 16.2% higher than the same time a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Nationwide 14% of the population relied on food stamps as of September but in some states the percentage was much higher. In Washington, D.C., Mississippi and Tennessee – the states with the largest share of citizens receiving benefits – more than a fifth of the population in each was collecting food stamps.

In California, almost 3.5 million people count on food stamps - an uptick of 17.7% over September, 2009. Go here to read the entire article and see the individual stats for each state.

14% of Americans Now Rely on Food Stamps

The Wall Street Journal reports that, as of August, 42,389,619 Americans rely on Food Stamps - up 17% from a year ago:

A huge number of American households are still relying on government assistance to buy food as the recession continues to batter families.

Food stamp recipients ticked up in August, children consumed millions of free lunches and nearly five million low-income mothers tapped into a government nutrition program for women and young children.

Some 42,389,619 Americans received food stamps in August, a 17% rise from the same time a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which tracks the data. That number is up 58.5% from August 2007, before the recession began.

Read the entire article here.

We Did It! 300,000 Pounds of Tyson Chicken is on the Way!

Many thanks to everyone who left and comment on the Tyson Hunger Relief website and helped spread the word. For each comment, Tyson put another 100 pounds of chicken on the truck headed for the San Francisco Food Bank.

We've reached our goal, and the chicken is on its way!

Thanks also to Tyson, for their generous support of our Hunger Challenge - for the third year in a row - and for all their hunger relief efforts across the country.

Founding Hunger Challenger Genie Gratto on this Year's Challenge

Genie Gratto of The Inadvertent Gardener was one of the founding bloggers of the Hunger Challenge. In this post on BlogHer, she checks out what others are writing about their 2010 Hunger Challenge experiences:

Hungry for a Cause: The Hunger Challenge Gets Under Way for Third Year

Thanks for all your support, Genie!

Founding Hunger Challenger Faith Kramer Takes on Year #3

Founding Hunger Challenge blogger Faith Kramer of Blog Appetit has a wealth of observations, recipes and tips for eating on a budget. Here's an excerpt from her first 2010 Hunger Challenge post:

This is the third year that I've participated. You can see everything I posted on the 2008 challenge here, including shopping lists, daily menus, meal planning tips and more. In 2008, we only had $3 a person a day to work with, so filling up my family of four and keeping the food nutritious was even more challenging. (The extra dollar a day really makes a difference, but it is just a temporary change and is due to expire.) I think the Hunger Challenge Chili was my favorite recipe from that year. I also feel that what I wrote in my wrap up/recommendations for change post still sums my experience and what I learned and what I would like to see change to make it easier for Food Bank clients and those on food stamps to feed themselves and their families as well as possible.

You can read about my 2009 experience here. In 2009 we were able to use $4 a day per person. Like the year before, I also planned out a weekly meal plan, gave shopping trips, shared about my experiences and developed recipes. Probably my favorite from 2009 was the Hunger Challenge Cassoulet (a bean and sausage stew). I summed up my reactions here. READ MORE

CA Assemblywoman Fiona Ma Joins the Hunger Challenge!

Showing her commitment to supporting the issue of hunger in California, Assemblywoman Fiona Ma has stepped up to take the Hunger Challenge.

“I've been a food bank volunteer for the past 10 years," Ma says, "And the lines are longer and the clients are younger. In keeping with my commitment to a hands-on approach, I will take this Hunger Challenge to see for myself how difficult it is to survive on limited assistance in these trying times.”

Any other politicians out there who are willing to live for a week on a food stamp budget?