UNPRECEDENTED NEW STUDY PAINTS A DETAILED PORTRAIT OF FOOD INSECURITY IN NEW JERSEY

[amyrose2712]

UNPRECEDENTED NEW STUDY PAINTS A DETAILED PORTRAIT
OF FOOD INSECURITY IN NEW JERSEY

12.6% of New Jersey residents suffer from food insecurity
Hillside, March 24, 2011 – The Community FoodBank of New Jersey and Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, today released a landmark study, “Map the Meal Gap,” providing the first detailed look at the food budget needed by families struggling with hunger here in New Jersey each year – an estimated $445M.
“In all of my years of food banking, I have never seen the situation as bad as it has been these last couple of years”, says Kathleen DiChiara, Founder and CEO of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey.
The study takes a look at ‘meals’ in a whole new way, using county-level data on food costs from The Nielsen Company to break down the food budget shortfall of our residents into an approximation of the meals missing from the tables of people at risk of hunger in New Jersey each year. This study was conducted in the Community FoodBank of New Jersey’s service area, covering 18 of the 21 counties of the Garden State.
‘“Map the Meal Gap” was also able to compare food costs across counties and the weighted cost per meal.
Map the Meal Gap provides the following data for the Community FoodBank of New Jersey’s service area in an interactive

http://www.njfoodbank.org/media/press-releases/map-the-meal-gap.pdf

http://www.njfoodbank.org/news/map-the-meal-gap.html

http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-studies/map-the-meal-gap.aspx