Our community, like so many others in our country is home to people who struggle with hunger. Since federal nutrition programs don’t reach everyone in need, food banks help fill the gap. Each year, Feeding America releases a study called Map the Meal Gap to help us better understand how many people in our service area are going hungry each and every day.  Here is some of the data about the eight counties served by Second Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Tennessee.

According to Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap 2021:

• 15.9% of all Northeast Tennesseans (81,010 individuals) are considered food insecure
• 18.8% of children in Northeast Tennessee (18,430 individuals under age 18) are considered food insecure

Food insecurity describes a household’s inability to provide enough food for every person to live an active, healthy life. Food insecurity is one way we can measure and assess the risk of hunger.

In Fiscal Year 2020, Second Harvest distributed 12.1 million pounds of food throughout various food bank programs to address the issue of food insecurity within our region.