Hunger different than 'insecurity'.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Pat Farr For The Register-Guard

The United States Department of Agriculture released its annual update on food security in the United States last week reporting that more than 35 million Americans, including more than 12 million children, are living on the brink of hunger.

While this number is an 8 percent decrease over the previous year, it is unacceptable that in a country filled with so much abundance, we still have millions of people who do not have access to food.

Additionally, food banks across the United States, including FOOD for Lane County, continue to serve more people and move more food each year to low-income families and individuals who are making choices between food and rent, utilities and medical care.

It's important to note the difference between "food insecurity" and chronic hunger. Food insecurity refers to a person or household being unsure where their next meal will come from. It can be based on a large number of factors that affect how people afford food. Food insecurity can be difficult to understand if you're not in that situation.

Hunger is different. It's something we all have experienced from time to time, and we know what it feels like. When your stomach is empty, you know it. Most of us have felt hungry when we missed a meal or ate late by choice or because of daily circumstances. Perhaps other priorities or a lack of time moved eating now down the list of priorities. We are able to catch up later.

Much more disturbing is the large number of people here in Lane County who are hungry and are not sure when they might next eat a regular meal.

This type of hunger feels the same to our stomachs, but not to our minds. If we know we will eat later, it's easier to accept the gnawing we feel. When we go to sleep at night and get up the next day with that feeling, it becomes much more frightening.

It's hard to fathom getting up and going through our daily work or school with that feeling. It becomes impossible to concentrate on school, work or any other activity.

I spoke with a young woman who, while walking around downtown Eugene, saw people enjoying food in restaurants and at the sidewalk cafes.

She recognized the comfort, the warmth and the choices people had. She couldn't put into words the sensation of frustration and helplessness that she felt at not having those choices, watching folks eat and throw away food that she rarely had a chance to eat.

This time of year in particular, it is easier to see and recognize the faces of hunger - people we see every day - in our own community.

While we can look at national statistics and sometimes perhaps even find comfort that fewer people seem hungry, it's much more important to look around and see the people we work with, people who serve us, the kids our kids go to school with, who face hunger on a daily basis. For far too many us, the desperation of not only having few choices, but often having no meal at all, is overwhelming.

As a parent, my heart breaks thinking about how some parents must feel when they are not able to give their children a meal.

FOOD for Lane County provides emergency food assistance to more than 80,000 of our neighbors (including one out of every three kids in Lane County) through 100 local partner agencies.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, it deeply saddens me to know that so many people will not be gathered around a table to share a meal with family and friends.

Pat Farr is executive director of FOOD for Lane County. To learn more about helping to end hunger locally, visit www.foodforlanecounty.org or call 343-2822.