NPR’s Madeleine Brand discusses the 40th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” with historian Robert Dallek.

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Presidential candidate John Edwards hopes his tour of places in poverty will bring the issue home to more people. But polls suggest that not even low-income voters favor Edwards as a result.

Minnesota Public Radio

Too many children are hungry in a state that helps feed the world.

If you think childhood hunger is something seen only in places like Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region or drought-stricken Kenya, think again. At Hennepin County Medical Center, as the Minnesota lead investigator for the Children’s Sentinel Assessment Nutrition Program (C-SNAP), I and a national network of pediatricians, child development experts, and public health professionals have evaluated the health of more than 26,000 low-income babies and toddlers in six states, including Minnesota.

What have we learned? That hunger – or food insecurity, the term used by current government agencies and researchers to mean lack of access to enough food for an active and healthy life- is surprisingly common. Household food insecurity in Minnesota has ranged from 21% to 56% over the last eight years in the Hennepin county pediatrics clinics. But it’s not obvious. Hungry children are no more likely to be underweight, normal weight, or overweight than food secure children. In this country, childhood hunger isn’t an eyeball diagnosis.

teens with the lowest intake of fruit and especially vitamin C had weaker lungs compared to the others. Teens who ate less vitamin E, found in vegetable oil and nuts, were more likely to have asthma, Jane Burns and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health found.

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Lawmakers are expected to get down to the nitty-gritty this week of writing a five-year blueprint for the nation’s agriculture and nutrition programs.
USA TODAY

Hunger is a real problem in our country, but the gimmickry of the “food-stamp challenge” recently undertaken by members of Congress adds little to discussions on how best to help the hungry or poor. Nor does any other argument that ignores the many different faces of poverty and the fact that money inevitably can flow to different uses.

Ed Lotterman

In early 1982, representatives of local churches and social service agencies discussed the possibility of establishing a temporary emergency food program for the needy.

“We thought five to 10 years,’’ recalls Shirley Conway of St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

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Program brings a taste of the Motherland to local immigrants in need

Ethnic African food dishes such as fufu, eddoes and parboiled rice can be scooped up at a local African food shelf, debuting later this summer in the metro area. The food is free of cost and is available to seniors and single mothers struggling to meet basic needs as well as other African immigrants and refugees who make less than minimum wage.

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The House Subcommittee on Nutrition completed a markup yesterday that proposes to increase spending under the Nutrition Title of the 2007 Farm Bill by an estimated $5 billion over five years. This funding is contingent upon offsets, but if provided would strengthen The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), the Food Stamp Program and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP).

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A handful of Minnesota lawmakers recently accepted a challenge from Minnesota Partners to End Hunger to live on a $3.00 per day food stamp diet.

For several days, they ate only what an average allotment of food stamps could buy in order to raise awareness about food stamp funding in the federal farm bill.

MPR’s Cathy Wurzer talked with Rep. Jeremy Kalin, DFL-Lindstrom, about his experience.

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