Name: The persistence of hunger in America
Uploaded: 2026-03-09T23:02:14.000Z
Duration: 8 min 31 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

For some 30 years, the Department of Agriculture has released an annual report on the number of Americans living with food insecurity.

Participle clauses

The Trump administration ended that report, calling it redundant and overly politicized.

But getting rid of the data hasn't erased the problem of hunger or the desire to fix it.

There's a traffic jam of shopping carts here at the Community Food Share near Boulder, Colorado.

Any changes to Your household information?

33 year old Shannon Patrick waited patiently.

The way my 12 year old is growing, probably a week.

Working full time as a behavioral technician helping kids with autism.

But despite her profession and her education, Shannon barely gets by on her $2,000 a month salary.

Tech on rent, student loans, clothes for the kids, and there's very little left for food.

I thought that if I got my bachelor's degree, if I got my master's degree, that so many doors I wouldn't have to rely on the government, but

Like most dealing with food insecurity, she'd rather not talk about it, but

she agreed for us because she wanted to show others they're not alone.

It's just like this feeling that society puts on you that you're less than or you're dirty because you have to get this assistance.

And I feel almost guilty that, like, I have these children and I should be able to take care of them, but

Almost 48 million Americans don't get enough to eat.

Shockingly, about 14 million of those are kids.

The reality is that that simply is not manifestly true.

That hunger happens here oft times, in spite of a lot of hard work.

Nigel Claire Babineau Fontenot is the CEO of Feeding America.

That's the nation's largest hunger relief organization.

Just two years into her tenure, the pandemic hit.

During COVID one of the areas that Congress had the most bipartisan engagement on was hunger.

Food insecurity rates went down to one of the lowest rates we've ever had.

And most people have no idea that it's true, but it is.

If nothing else, she says, Covid proved that hunger can indeed be fixed.

We caught up with Claire at one of the hundreds of pantries and food banks under the Feeding America umbrella here at Southern Louisiana's Second Harvest Food Bank.

Out of kitchens like this one, Feeding America distributed nearly 6, 6 billion meals last year.

And see in the shot of the camera, a lot of food.

And that probably leads to a misconception that there's enough food.

Some of the saddest things I've ever seen with food bankers is when they have to turn people away.

Claire was the first of her family to go to college.

I went into my refrigerator in my little teeny weeny apartment, and I realized that I.

It's interesting how something can happen that long ago and how it can feel like it's happening right now.

I can remember barely talking above a whisper.

And then I remember this lady, she walked up to me, and

The power of that single act of kindness followed Claire the rest of her life.

She went on to become a tax attorney, rising to executive vice president and global treasurer for Walmart.

But in 2015, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It was a tap on the shoulder, she says, to reprioritize her life.

So she quit Walmart and made a leap she thought her parents would understand more than anyone.

Mary Alice and Warren Babineaux are both gone now, but

in their hometown of Appaloosas, Louisiana, the family was known for helping shelter, feed, and

love almost any child they knew was in trouble.

So much so Claire ended up with 177 siblings.

On any given Sunday, the Babineaux took up nearly an entire pew here at the church.

Some of them were biological, some adopted, some fostered.

But Claire won't tell you which is which.

I don't answer that question, mostly because in the not answering, I get to say this.

My parents truly believed in feeding the neighborhood.

One day a young man came to the home directly from the hospital with his hospital gown.

He said, Mrs. Babineau said, if I'm hungry, come to the house and I will get food.