VivirLatino

Once upon a time when I was a teen, food stamps were actually like stamps, well actually more like coupons on Monopoly money colored paper and I remember being ashamed when my then boyfriend’s mom sent me to the corner bodega to buy something with them. While sadly the stigma still exists with using food stamp benefits, even if they no are accessed via an atm like card but for more and more familias, food stamps are a need not a want if they want to keep their family fed.

“We soon will have the most food stamps recipients in the history of our country,” said Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a D.C.-based anti-hunger policy organization. “If the economic forecasts come true, we’re likely to see the most hunger that we’ve seen since the 1981 recession and maybe since the 1960s, when these programs were established.”

The Agriculture Department is set to release the new numbers as early as this week. Agency officials declined to confirm the figures but outlined them in a briefing last month for advocates and administrators of state food stamp programs. Breaking the symbolically important 30 million mark comes on the heels of government data showing that 11.9 million people went hungry in the United States at some point last year. That included nearly 700,000 children, up more than 50 percent from the year before.

Via / The Washington Post