It's difficult to pin down the exact numbers, but most nutrition experts agree that on any one day, about 13 million children go hungry across the US.
For older children, the situation improves during the school year when many receive free or reduced-price lunches.
But when the schools close, like they did in the Washington region and up and down the East Coast recently because of heavy snow, these children -- instead of cheering over the free day off -- must put up with emptier stomachs than usual, child advocates say.
Even more worrisome to people who help feed such children are the long summer months of school vacation.
"The food banks see an increase of families with children during the summer months," Lynn Parker, director of nutrition policy at the Food Research and Action Center in Washington said in an interview.
A massive private effort by humanitarian and religious organizations across the country feeds about 23 million people a year, including 9 million children, many from an ever growing category of people in the US called the working poor.
Second Harvest, which coordinates the programs, says that's a 9 percent increase since 1997.
Other groups, like the US Conference of Mayors, report a 17 percent increase in just one year in requests for emergency food assistance.
Whatever the figures, the federal government takes up much of the slack by supporting e and reduced price school breakfasts and lunches at schools. And critics say it's just not enough.
US President George W. Bush's proposed budget for 2005 raises the amount slightly to US$12 billion for 29 million children in the school programs.
But child advocates, while admitting the budget cuts do not undercut current food programmes, say the figure fails to provide better nutrition in the form of fruits and vegetables instead of traditional high starch diets consumed by the less affluent.
"Cafeterias would be able to buy fresh vegetables and fruits instead of having to serve cheap but empty-calorie food like macaroni and cheese," said Erik Peterson, spokesman for the American School Food Service Association.
Other child advocates say Bush's proposed US$12 billion will not accommodate the rising need stemming from unemployment and economic recession in the past years, or to cover the rising food need for children during the summer months.
"There hasn't been such a demand since 1998 because families are struggling to find jobs and the recession hasn't been taken into account," said Deborah Ortiz, director of family income at the Children's Defense Fund. "We are very disappointed with the President's budget plan."
"He's talking about a funding increase for going to the moon [and Mars]," she added. A stronger federal budget for food for children would help diversify their diets and provide more vegetables and fruit and other healthy foods, Ortiz said.
But political conservatives disagree. They say that the nutritional programs are not necessary.
"Child hunger is not nearly as bad as the Washington food advocacy groups make it out to be," said Kirk Johnson, welfare research analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. "Anyone who says there are more than 1 million children hungry in the US, their numbers are not accurate."
He points to the fact that instead of going hungry, about 15.3 percent of US children are considered obese.
"Statistics show that poor people are even more likely to be overweight," he said.
His statements reflect a popular attitude that poor people on the welfare dole, including the many adults who receive food stamps, abuse the system and perhaps even overeat because of it.
However, food advocate groups say recent research shows that often, hunger is the cause of obesity.
"If people are hungry, they will eat high fat food to fill them up," said Larry Brown, director of the Center on Hunger and Poverty. Especially in the US, fatty fast foods like hamburgers and French Fries are cheaper and more accessible than fresh fruit and vegetables.
That is a fact that the Heritage Foundation's Johnson found hard to believe.
"It's a preference issue, not a money problem. You can get the salad. The question is, would you rather have the salad or the hamburger? I would rather have the hamburger," he said.
Another fact cited by critics of public nutrition programs as proof of the affluence of food aid recipients is the more than 75 percent of American households defined as "poor" by the US Census Bureau that own a car.
But to Brown, director of the Center on Hunger and Poverty, driving in one's own car to the food bank to pick up dinner for the kids is not a contradictory image.
"Hungry people in the United States don't look like hungry people in Africa," said Brown.
As members of the growing "working poor," they often own cars and hold jobs -- but don't earn enough to buy food after paying rent and other expenses.
Carolyn Genia is one such person. In her hometown of Logan, Ohio, she earns US$6.50 an hour, more than US$2 above minimum wage. But the mother of two says there are days she struggles to feed her children.
"There are times my children would go hungry if it wasn't for the local food pantry," she wrote in one of the many "Hunger Stories" Americans regularly post on the Web site of the hunger relief organization Second Harvest.
Brown said the country would need to spend about US$90 billion a year to end hunger in the US.
"That's not going to happen in the current political climate," he said.
As Ukraine leads the global fight for democracy, Taiwan, facing a potential war with China, should draw lessons from Ukraine’s cyberwarfare success. Taiwan has been enhancing its arsenal with advanced weapons from the West in anticipation of a possible full-scale invasion. However, Taipei should also consider Ukraine’s effective digital warfare, notably the “IT [information technology] Army,” a decentralized force instrumental in Kyiv’s cybercampaigns. In February 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marked the onset of a significant cyberwar, where fears of a “digital Pearl Harbor” in Ukraine were unmet, thanks to robust cyberdefenses backed by Western public and private support. This led
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is attempting to create an alternative international world order to the US-dominated model. China has benefited hugely from the current order since former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) opened up its economy five decades ago. Countries can be categorized as continental or maritime, and to a great degree this determines their optimum foreign policy. China is continental, as is Russia. The US initially followed a continental foreign policy, before it settled on a maritime model. The British empire was so successful because a tiny island kingdom built a formidable naval presence. The US-dominated world order, stabilized by
“You are Taiwanese? Do you speak Taiwanese then?” Growing up in Buenos Aires, my school memories were filled with Spanish, a language that dances off the tongue with the same rhythm and elegance as the tango. However, in my house, a different melody would play — one that alluded to my roots, an artisanal, homemade combination of Taiwanese Hokkien and Mandarin. Although it was a beautiful sound, it was not a tempo I could follow. Put simply, the Taiwanese language was too hard for me to grasp. Eventually, my parents gave into my requests and abandoned that unique fusion of Chinese and
On April 24, US President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The law, which was overwhelmingly approved by the US Congress, requires the popular video-sharing app TikTok to divest from its parent company, China-based ByteDance, or face a ban in the US. The legislation highlights a dilemma faced by democratic countries, including Taiwan, that pits free speech against national security interests. The US ultimatum is meant to address national security concerns that, according to China’s National Security Law and National Intelligence Law, obligates Chinese individuals and organizations to support national intelligence work, allowing the