The meaning of hunger in U.S. surveys: I think a lot about words, and how the ones we use affect our perceptions. A case in point is the difference between hunger and food insecurity, which the U.S. Food Policy blog discussed this week. Parke Wilde attempts to “dispense with the mumbo jumbo” and finds  ”the fraction of American households whose respondents reported that they were hungry but didn’t eat because they couldn’t afford food” remained stagnant from 2002 to 2005, despite enormous growth in the economy as a whole. At CKP, we encourage people to use the official term, food insecurity, but does that distract or disconnect us from the physical experience of hunger?

 Food Waste and Meat Consumption: New Dream blogger Kim compares the U.S. to Poland in order to discuss some of our society’s strange food contradictions, like malnourishment alongside food waste. 

Panelists at Drexel discuss hunger: It seems more and more cities and counties are turning their attention toward hunger. This piece reports that Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter has formed a Mayor’s Task Force on Hunger, and the Evening Sun reports that the Campus Kitchen at Gettysburg is getting involved with a county-wide initiative on food insecurity. compost

Turning Waste Into Gourmet Food: There’s no Campus Kitchen in San Francisco (not yet, anyway), so they’re coming up with other ways to deal with food waste. This article reports on how the city’s composting program is making leftovers into food for locavores.

Pixies for the People: A new WIC line: As we noted in a previous week’s digest, the federal WIC program doesn’t currently cover fruits and vegetables in most states, but a new program in California is providing free produce to mothers and their children who receive WIC.

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