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.
Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) led a bipartisan delegation to Taiwan in late February. During their various meetings with Taiwan’s leaders, this delegation never missed an opportunity to emphasize the strength of their cross-party consensus on issues relating to Taiwan and China. Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi are leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Their instruction upon taking the reins of the committee was to preserve China issues as a last bastion of bipartisanship in an otherwise deeply divided Washington. They have largely upheld their pledge. But in doing so, they have performed the
It is well known that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) ambition is to rejuvenate the Chinese nation by unification of Taiwan, either peacefully or by force. The peaceful option has virtually gone out of the window with the last presidential elections in Taiwan. Taiwanese, especially the youth, are resolved not to be part of China. With time, this resolve has grown politically stronger. It leaves China with reunification by force as the default option. Everyone tells me how and when mighty China would invade and overpower tiny Taiwan. However, I have rarely been told that Taiwan could be defended to
It should have been Maestro’s night. It is hard to envision a film more Oscar-friendly than Bradley Cooper’s exploration of the life and loves of famed conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. It was a prestige biopic, a longtime route to acting trophies and more (see Darkest Hour, Lincoln, and Milk). The film was a music biopic, a subgenre with an even richer history of award-winning films such as Ray, Walk the Line and Bohemian Rhapsody. What is more, it was the passion project of cowriter, producer, director and actor Bradley Cooper. That is the kind of multitasking -for-his-art overachievement that Oscar
Chinese villages are being built in the disputed zone between Bhutan and China. Last month, Chinese settlers, holding photographs of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), moved into their new homes on land that was not Xi’s to give. These residents are part of the Chinese government’s resettlement program, relocating Tibetan families into the territory China claims. China shares land borders with 15 countries and sea borders with eight, and is involved in many disputes. Land disputes include the ones with Bhutan (Doklam plateau), India (Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin) and Nepal (near Dolakha and Solukhumbu districts). Maritime disputes in the South China