Hunger

This is from today's New York Times, writing about an US Agriculture Department report that just came out:

In its annual report on hunger, the department said that 17 million American households, or 14.6 percent of the total, “had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year.” That was an increase from 13 million households, or 11.1 percent, the previous year...

Overall, one-third of all the families that are affected by hunger, or 6.7 million households, were classified as having very low food security, meaning that members of the household had too little to eat or saw their eating habits disrupted during 2008. That was 2 million households more than in 2007.

14% is one in seven households.

According to the blog Political Animal these households represent 49 million people. Since the current population of the US is 304 million people, this means 16% of the population does not have reliable access to adequate food.

16% is getting close to one in six people.