Texas is high on USDA hunger list

DALLAS — As you sit down to turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie this holiday season, consider that more than 12 million households nationwide are worried about where they're going to get their next meal.

And in Texas, families are even more likely to be struggling to put food on the table, according to an annual report of 2005 statistics recently released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Both advocates and government officials say the nation has enough food to go around, but it isn't getting to the people who need it most.

The USDA looks at how many households have a hard time getting enough food, and whether people have to skip or trim meals because they don't have enough money.

Though the percentage of people who have to fret about food has begun to decline — after rising each year since 2001 — it's still troubling to advocates who say the nation doesn't do enough to feed its hungry people.

In a nation that grows more than it needs and exports food to other countries, "it's a shame that we don't know how to deal with people in our own country," said Marco Grimaldo, director of the Bread for the World Institute. The Washington, D.C., group researches hunger and development.

Nationwide, this year's figures show a percentage point decline in people who were "food insecure" — meaning those who had difficulty at some time last year providing enough food for everyone.

Mark Nord, a sociologist with the USDA's Economic Research Service and lead author of the report, said the drop from 11.9 percent to 11 percent does indicate genuine improvement.

That figure was 16 percent in Texas. That's about the total number of households in Dallas and Collin counties combined. Only New Mexico and Mississippi had higher percentages.

The study breaks out another category of people that includes those who are the worst off, what the USDA calls "very low food security." They often run out of food, skip meals and sometimes go hungry because they didn't have enough money to buy food. That group did not improve nationally, and still includes almost 4 of every 100 households in America.

In Texas, more than 5 of every 100 households are in this worst-off category.

Several factors, such as cost of living, availability of food, attitudes toward assistance programs, and income and ethnicity, factor into whether a household can get enough food.