Feeding America
Hidden Hunger Tough times have sent North Carolina families to new depths of food hardship
F
airgrove Family Resource Center’s lobby is full of people waiting for food. The problem is its freezers are empty. “Look at this,” Terri Nelson says, gesturing emphatically toward a small box. It contains a meat biscuit, a pizza, frozen blueberry waffles, hamburger, all told, eight food items. It looks like it would feed one person for about five days. But Nelson, the center’s executive director, explains little boxes like this have to go to families of four now. Families who can’t come back for at least one month. It wasn’t always like this. When she first started in 2002, the Thomasville center fed 50-60 people a month. In contrast, this past August the center helped 1,277 people, Nelson says. Couple that with the fact that restrictions have sliced in half what she can get from the area’s food bank and you see the problem. Both here and across North Carolina, more people are hungry but there’s not enough food to feed them. Lexington resident Alice Guntor, a client at Fairgrove, says she’s never had to seek help for food before, but has been unable to find a job and was also robbed
last April. She says she lives in a small trailer, but her son’s medications cost a lot and she can’t afford food after paying for other bills such as rent, the phone and car insurance. She’s lost 25 pounds because “I have had nothing to eat. I’ve had nothing but crackers. I don’t know from one day to next about it.”
We rank lowest The reality of hunger is shocking when it comes to children. All too often, when people think of hunger they picture Third World children with swollen bellies, far, far away. But according to North Carolina children a 2010 Hunger in America study, under the age of 5 one in five North Carolina children goes hungry. under 18 years of age goes hungry. For children under the age of 5, not yet under the radar of school lunch and backpack programs, one in four goes hungry. In fact, the study reports that North Carolina tied with Louisiana for last place in the nation for the highest percentage of hungry children under age 5. A child needs food to develop normally. And, as any experienced school teacher will tell you, hungry kids
ONE IN FOUR
12 NOVEMBER 2011 Carolina Country
By Karen Olson House
Donating food If you are donating food, Nelson (above) reminds that family-sized items are costeffective and feed more people than singleserving items. Needed items include: ■ High-protein canned meats ■ Canned vegetables and fruits ■ Peanut butter ■ Rice and pasta ■ Cereal, including oatmeal ■ Fruit juice ■ Prepared box mixes such as
macaroni and cheese ■ Shelf-stable milk (includes dehydrated
and evaporated milk) ■ Infant formula