Georgia 'Food Insecurity' among Worst

(Atlanta Business Chronicle)-- The Peach State is among the worst states for "food insecurity," ranking 46th in the nation in a new report by the Food Research and Action Center.

The term food insecurity means that access to adequate food is limited by a lack of money and other resources.

In Georgia, 14.2 percent of households were food insecure and 5.4 percent had very low food security, the report said. That means the food intake of some household members was reduced, and their normal eating patterns were disrupted because of the household's food insecurity.

The latest rankings, which come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ranked Mississippi the worst and North Dakota the best. The USDA monitors the extent and severity of food insecurity in U.S. households through an annual, nationally representative survey. This latest report presents statistics on households' food security, food expenditures and use of food and nutrition assistance programs in 2008.

USDA found that 17 million households in the U.S., or 14.6 percent, were food insecure. The prevalence of food insecurity was up from 11.1 percent in 2007, and was the highest observed since the surveys were launched in 1995.

Regionally, food insecurity was most prevalent in the South, intermediate in the Midwest and West and least prevalent in the Northeast.