USDA: They're not hungry ...

... they just lack "food security."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/15/AR2006111501621.html

Some Americans Lack Food, but USDA Won't Call Them Hungry

By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 16, 2006; Page A01

The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security."

Every year, the Agriculture Department issues a report that measures Americans' access to food, and it has consistently used the word "hunger" to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. But not this year.

Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey." Nord, a USDA sociologist, said, "We don't have a measure of that condition."

 

Wow. Spin at its worst.

 

And D_B is not a virgin. He's just experiencing 'very low female interaction security.'

 

I know this sounds like bureaucratic gobbledegook, but when you read the story, it appears they are seeking to get very specific about the problem. If I don't eat lunch until 3:30 in the afternoon, I am hungry.

I remember 40 years ago at a Fire Department picnic talking to a woman who said when she was a kid, they would eat like kings for the first two weeks of a month but by the end of the month, she would be stealing food so her brothers and sisters would have something to eat.

 

I understand what they're trying to do -- but in trying to better describe the condition, they're also sterilizing it.

Reminds me of a Carlin rant from many years ago. Goes something like this -- Soldiers in World War I suffered from shellshock... later it became combat fatigue... in Vietnam, it became Post-traumatic stress disorder. You know what, if it was still called shellshock, the guys coming back from Vietnam would get the help they really need...