1. The human right to an adequate diet is not legally recognized in the United States.

2. 40,000 children in the world die of causes related to hunger and poverty every day.

3. Approximately 25% of the homeless in the USA are children.

4. Over half of all families living in poverty in the United States are maintained by women only.

5. Unemployment rates for Native, African, and Latino/a Americans are considerably higher than those for most other US citizens.

6. Average weekly earnings for Native, African, and Latino/a Americans are considerably lower than those for most other US citizens.

7. The Food Stamp program serves more than 25 million people in the United States.

8. One in six elderly citizens in the USA is either hungry or has an inadequate diet.

9. One in four children comes to school undernourished in the United States.

10. More than 3/4 of the world’s starving people are women and their dependent children.

11. During the past two decades at least, the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States has grown wider.

12. School Breakfast Programs serve 7 million children daily while School Lunch Programs serve over 26 million each day in the United States.

13. Prices in supermarkets are generally higher in low income than in middle income neighborhoods.

14. There is enough food in the world to feed everyone, but there are still millions who are hungry.

15. There was a potato famine in Ireland in the middle of the 19th century that caused several million Irish to emigrate to the United States.

16. During the Depression in the 1930s in the USA, there was a “dust bowl” in the midwest and most crops could not be grown for several years.

Sources: US Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (yearly); World Bank, World Development Report, NY: Oxford University Press, (yearly); UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children (yearly); Bread for the World (1998); US Hunger and Poverty Report, 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1000, Silver Spring, MD, 20910; The New Internationalist, No 310 (March 1999).