Food Bank News’ ranking of the largest ten food banks holds some surprises, especially at the very top. [For our latest information on the full scope of the food banking sector, please see our 2021 Directory of the Top 300 Food Banks.] Ranked by revenue, the two biggest food banks…
Posts published in “Data”
The standard answer to the question of how many food banks there are is 200, but actually there are many more. Food Bank News counts at least 371. [For our latest information on the full scope of the food banking sector, please see our 2021 Directory of the Top 300…
A survey of food banks and pantries released earlier this month underscores the difficulty of beating hunger using current methods. The good news is that 90% of the nearly 300 food banks and pantries surveyed said they believed hunger was solvable, according to WhyHunger, which published the survey on October…
Obesity in America is getting worse, and is particularly severe among low-income populations, underscoring the importance of emphasizing nutrition in charitable food programs. The latest statistics related to obesity, released last week by Trust for America’s Health, show that nine U.S. states had adult obesity rates above 35% in 2018,…
Anyone who’s ever contemplated an all-you-can-eat buffet can easily imagine the epic amounts of food that get wasted every day at every level of the food system — at restaurants, grocery stores, schools, cafeterias, and homes. And that’s not counting the food wasted by farms, manufacturers, and distributors before it…
Have you ever been hungry? Of course you have! While we all share the physical sensation of being hungry, not everyone suffers from an inability to satisfy it because of a lack of funds or access. Being hungry without having the resources to quell it is the definition of food…
Nearly ten years ago, on July 24, 2009, the federal government raised the minimum wage from $6.55 to $7.25. Since then, there has been no increase, though other entities have picked up where the federal government has left off. Many states and municipalities have moved on their own to raise…
Poverty has proven hard to beat in America, declining slightly in the most recent estimates, but still barreling along at between 11% and 15% of the total population, as it has for decades. The official poverty rate of 12.3% in 2017 inched down from 12.7% in 2016 and 13.5% in…
If you’re looking for a nice round number to describe the amount of money the federal government spends to help people get food, then $100 billion would do the trick. The USDA spent more than $98 billion in 2017 on 15 domestic food and nutrition assistance programs, down from nearly…