SURVEY: 5,000 GO HUNGRY STUDY TRACKS EATING HABITS OF LOW-INCOME A.V. ADULTS.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - An estimated 5,000 low-income Antelope Valley adults sometimes go hungry for lack of money to buy food, a UCLA survey released yesterday reported.

Another 20,000 frequently cannot afford to put sufficient food on the table - a condition described as ``food insecurity'' by the Center for Healthy Policy Research at the University of California at Los Angeles.

``Traditionally, people have had the impression that food insecurity is kind of an urban issue, particularly in the South Central area,'' said Wei Yen, a senior research scientist with the UCLA center. ``The policy brief seems to suggest that this kind of problem is not unique to higher-population, central-urban areas. It is throughout the county.''

Based on 2001 telephone surveys of 55,000 Californians, the center's conclusion is that some 214,000 Los Angeles County adults sometimes go hungry. Another 560,000 - or 29.8 percent of the 9.9 million-inhabitant county's estimated 2.6 million low-income adults - are reported as food- insecure.''

People who are food-insecure reported sometimes running out of food and lacking money to buy more, having too little money to eat balanced meals, or cutting or skipping meals for lack of money, researchers said.

In the Antelope Valley, more than 38 percent - second highest in the county - of the region's more than 60,000 low-income adults were categorized as food-insecure. In 2002, the 60,000 low-income adults were out of a total population of more than 325,000 south of the Kern County line.

Grace Resource Center's executive director, Steve Baker, whose nonprofit Lancaster food bank provides hot meals or groceries to 8,000 people a month, said he believes UCLA's appraisal of hunger in the Antelope Valley is accurate.

``We have lots of families in trouble - lots of kids,'' Baker said. ``We need more people to understand there really is a struggle here. We've got kids going to school hungry. If it wasn't for (school) free-meal programs, we'd have a problem.''

Grace Resource Center is one of about 15 Antelope Valley organizations, mostly churches, that supply food to needy local residents. Baker said Grace Resource's clientele has increased in the last couple of years, from 6,000 to 8,000 people a month, despite an improving local economy.

``Our people would be the last ones to see it improving,'' Baker said.

The highest proportion of low-income adults categorized as food-insecure in Los Angeles County was in the neighborhoods south of downtown Los Angeles, at 43.5 percent.

The highest proportion of low-income adults who reported going hungry at least once in 2001 for lack of money was in the South Bay - 11.0 percent of 391,000 low-income adults. After that came eastern Los Angeles County, communities in the southern county, and then the Antelope Valley at 8.3 percent of low-income adults.

Lowest in the proportion of low-income adults who sometimes go hungry was the San Gabriel Valley, at 5.5 percent of the 430,000 low-income adults.

Low-income households are defined as those whose income is less than twice the federal poverty level. For a family of four, low-income means less than $36,200 a year.

The survey did not attempt to pinpoint reasons why communities had differing rates of hunger and food insecurity.

But the survey indicated food insecurity is higher among African-Americans, Latinos and Asians, higher among unemployed people who are actively looking for work, higher among low-income adults with children, higher among people who don't speak English, and lower among elderly people, who might have low incomes but own their homes or have stocks or other wealth.

``The data, the samples we have for the Antelope Valley is kind of small to start with,'' Yen said. ``It's a little bit difficult for us to go deep in explanations of why it is such a high rate. It may have something to do with employment and also probably something to do with outreach efforts in that area.''

The 2001 survey was the first in California to attempt to quantify hunger and food insecurity, Yen said. Although the survey was done by telephone, Yen said its results were statistically adjusted to compensate for people who lack telephones - about 3 to 4 percent of Californians.

A new survey on hunger was done in 2003, and its results will be released later this year.

``That will definitely tell us whether it's going up or down,'' Yen said.