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Surveys find outright hunger among Latino immigrants in North Carolina |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Wake Forest University School of Medicine researchers have found high rates of hunger in surveys of immigrant Latino families in eastern and western North Carolina, southwestern Virginia and Forsyth County. "About 40 percent of the respondents in each study reported worrying that food would run out and that food bought would not last," said Quandt, the lead author. That combination, less severe than "hunger," is viewed as "food insecurity" and includes such actions as relying on just a few kinds of food and cutting meal size for children and adults. Besides Forsyth County, the other surveys included two conducted in eastern North Carolina in Harnett, Johnston, Sampson and Wake counties (one also included Duplin County) and the fourth in Alleghany, Ashe, Avery and Watauga counties of western North Carolina and Carroll, Smyth and Grayson counties in Virginia. "In many ways, the experience of Latino immigrants of hunger is the same as non-immigrants -- they are hungry despite working and earning wages," said Quandt, professor of public health sciences. In Forsyth, 15.8 percent of those surveyed reported children had had to go all day without food in the past year and 21.8 percent reported that children were hungry because they couldn't afford more food. And yet the researchers also found that only 12.9 percent of those in Forsyth reported receiving food from a food pantry compared to 25 percent of those in eastern North Carolina. The immigrants in the mountain counties are better off because of the year-round nature of the Christmas tree industry, but specific data on participation in food programs wasn't collected.
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