Are food banks really the answer to hunger in America?
Alone, food banks are only part of the answer. In broadest terms, the issue of hunger requires three levels of response. The first is emergency food assistance, the role played by food banks and the agencies they supply. Emergency food assistance addresses a person’s immediate nutritional needs — “What am I going to eat tonight? How am I going to feed my family over the next few weeks?” As long as there are people without enough to eat, emergency food assistance will be necessary. It’s just not practical, much less humane, to ask someone without resources to go hungry until the larger societal issues of poverty and hunger are solved. The second level of response is sustained feeding programs. For the most part, these are government assistance programs for which participants must qualify by means of income or age or other factors. Examples include food stamps, WIC [Women, Infants and Children] and the school breakfast and lunch programs. These sustained feeding programs provide a stead
