Down to Basics: Recession and the Dinner Table

On Monday came word that will be old news to 17 million households: parents are scrimping on food and children across the country went hungry in 2008.

According to a government report -- the same one that has been conducted each year since 1995 -- millions more people went hungry in 2008 than had in 2007. And Vicki Escarra, president of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization with a national network of more than 200 food banks, told The New York Times that the Agriculture Department had probably understated the problem.

With unemployment and other economic indicators continuing to worsen in 2009, she said, “there are likely many more people struggling with hunger than this report states.”

Moreover, for those with incomes at the federal poverty line, as well as homes headed by single parents, blacks or Latinos, the so-called "food insecurity" rates were worse still. Regionally, food insecurity was most prevalent in the South.