COLUMBUS – Could you feed your family if you had to do it on $15 less per family member every week than you do now?
A new report says that’s the challenge facing many Ohio families who are dealing with “food insecurity.”
“What’s really striking is that nearly half of the food-insecure Ohioans that are reflected in this report are not income-eligible for SNAP, or food stamp, benefits, which is our nation’s most critical line of defense against hunger,” says Joree Novotny with the Ohio Association of Foodbanks.
One in six Ohioans, and one out of four children, are food insecure, meaning they do not adequate access to nutritious food, a number essentially unchanged since 2013.
Those are among the findings in a report called “Map the Meal Gap,” which showed that about 14 percent of Americans lacked access at some time to enough food for a healthy life but, in Ohio, the rate was almost 17 percent.
The data released Thursday shows that “food insecure” households have an average food budget shortfall of about $15 per person each week.
Novotny notes that food insecurity occurs in every Ohio county, from major cities to rural, Appalachian regions.
She says, while she thinks more support is needed at the federal level, a budget proposal and Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives would weaken programs for those who are food insecure.