Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

America's hard times have made their way to the dinner tables, where 1.4 million Texas households face imminent hunger, according to a study released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The study of "food security" – the ability of a family to adequately feed itself – concluded that 49 million Americans, including 17 million children, struggle to satisfy this most basic human need. Those 2008 numbers were up a staggering 36 percent compared with 2007, the department said.

Nationally, an average of 14.6 percent of households had difficulty providing food for family members in 2006-08, up from 11.1 percent in 2005-07. In Texas, which ranked second for food insecurity, following only Mississippi, the 2006-08 rate was 16.3 percent, an increase of 1.5 percentage points from 2005-07. That's no surprise to Jan Pruitt, president and chief executive officer of the North Texas Food Bank.

"Our agencies are saying they see 36 percent more new faces coming in the door," Pruitt said. "And during our first quarter – July, August and September – the food bank saw a nearly 50 percent increase in our distribution. We're averaging a million pounds of food a week."

The food bank set what Pruitt called "audacious goals" this year. While economists say the economy is turning around, demands on the food bank are up sharply.

"I think that will continue for a while," she said. "People who are unemployed are the last to feel the impact of recovery. People are still losing their jobs and are unable to find work or are underemployed.

"That's a group we've served for a long time – people working at jobs that can't pay their bills," Pruitt said. "But we're seeing a lot more professional people now."

Outreach workers who help people sign up for food stamps recently met a man who lost his job when Hewlett-Packard acquired EDS.

"He was an engineer – he made $100,000 a year ago," Pruitt said. "But he lost his job, his house and his savings, and now he's on food stamps."

The people with the greatest food insecurity, though, are those living below the poverty line, particularly households with single mothers and kids.

"And Texas does lead the nation in the number of food-insecure children," Pruitt said.

"Every fifth child in Texas is in a food-insecure household," she said. "Every fourth child in Dallas County lives in poverty. And every third child in the city of Dallas lives in poverty."