Hunger in America

Food insecurity means not always knowing where your next meal is coming from. Researchers and policymakers use the term for a household’s limited or uncertain access to enough food. It exists on a spectrum: worrying about running out on one end, going without meals entirely on the other. For one family, it might mean a parent skipping dinner so a child can eat. For another, stretching a week’s groceries to the end of the month.

The term matters because it is more accurate than hunger alone. Hunger is a physical sensation. Food insecurity is a condition, shaped by income, geography, policy, and circumstance. A family can be food insecure without anyone going to bed hungry every night. The anxiety of not knowing whether there will be enough is itself a form of deprivation.

In America, food insecurity does not strike at random. It falls hardest on communities underserved by employers who pay wages that do not cover basic needs, by housing markets that consume an ever-larger share of income, and by nutrition programs that too often fail to reach the people who need them most.

This is why MAZON focuses on policy. Emergency food does essential work, but it cannot solve food insecurity. Only the systems that determine wages, housing costs, and access to federal nutrition programs can do that. MAZON works to change those systems.