Grocery stores all over Arkansas are packed right now with people filling carts with the fixings for Thanksgiving dinner.
It is a time of excess for many of us - more food than we should eat, to be served up as special dishes traditionally enjoyed during the holiday.
Yet, according to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, nearly 20 percent of Arkansans are “food insecure.”
That’s diff erent from being hungry. An individual experiences hunger. It is a physiological response to food deprivation.
Food insecurity is experienced at the household level and is more dift cult to define. The opposite - food security - is a bit easier. A family is food secure when every family member has access to enough nutritious food to maintain good health.
A lot of families cannot make that claim all the time.
Certainly, many of those who are food insecure may enjoy a full Thanksgiving dinner. Churches and charities and any number of others work each year to make those dinners available.
But meals for the next week and the week after thatmay not include even meager offerings at some family tables. Food insecurity tends to be episodic, tied directly to the family fi nances.
The USDA defi nes different levels of food insecurity.
Arkansas, notably, is tied at the bottom of the list with Mississippi in the worst of the categories, “very low food security.”
These are people who may not know where their next meal is coming from.
And, despite some beliefs to the contrary, they include many working people with paychecks too small to feed all the members of the family all the time.
Frequently, parents, particularly single parents trying to care for families on one paycheck, if any, do without full meals themselves so their children can eat what is available.
The Department ofAgriculture also reports that Arkansas is the state with the greatest number of seniors experiencing food insecurity.
These are not welcome statistics.
Plus, factoring into the future for about a half million Arkansans is a reduction in food stamps (now called the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP).
To people who have plenty, the size of the reduction that took eff ect Nov. 1 may seem small (for example, $36 less each month for a family of four).
But that’s a lot of money to a mother already trying to work miracles to keep food on the table through the end of the month.
The point here, however, is less about how fewer federal dollars are going to feed the poor and more about greater community help for these families in such need.
Check with any food pantry in any town in Arkansas and the report is likely to be the same. The economy has rebounded for some but not for everyone.
And the food pantries are helping more and more families all the time and therefore need greater support from the rest of us.
There are lots of ways to give that support. That grocery store where you shop may have a bin awaiting donations. Fill your cart with extra food to send to someone who needs it. Some stores have a way to pledge money to food banks at the checkout counter.
Or contact the pantries directly to donate food or money. They can get a better bargain than you can, so monetary donations will serve more people.
They can accept single donations or set up monthly payments so you can help year round. Some may also need volunteers in their warehouses and distribution sites.
If you don’t know the agencies or organizations serving your locality, search online. A good starting place is the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance at www.
arhungeralliance.org. Its six regional food banks warehouse and distribute food to local pantries, soup kitchens and more throughout Arkansas.
Just remember, the need really is year round.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 11/27/2013