The Weekly Food Research and Action Center News Digest highlights what's new on hunger, nutrition and poverty issues at FRAC, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, around the network of national, state and local anti-poverty and anti-hunger organizations, and in the media. The Digest will alert you to trends, reports, news items and resources and, when available, link you directly to them.

1. New York Times Profiles SNAP/Food Stamp Use Across Country; Interactive Data Map Shows Use by County
(The New York Times, November 29, 2009)

One in eight Americans – and one in four children – is now receiving SNAP/Food Stamps, a program that is becoming “as ordinary as the groceries it buys.” The latest figures show that more than 36 million people in this country receive the benefit and use it through “inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese.” Many are seeking out the assistance because of the economy, foreclosed homes and unemployment. Those receiving SNAP/Food Stamps are near or below the federal poverty line, “but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of people struggling with basic needs.” SNAP/Food Stamp participation is growing at a rate of 20,000 people a day, and 239 counties in the U.S. have at least a quarter of their population receiving the assistance, according to data collected by The New York Times. In areas hit by the housing crisis, growth in the program has been especially fast, although these areas were once-prosperous places. Even with this record growth rate, USDA wants to grow the program faster, since only two-thirds of those eligible are receiving SNAP/Food Stamps. “I think the response of the program has been tremendous,” said Kevin Concannon, a USDA under secretary who oversees the program. “[B]ut we’re mindful that there are another 15, 16 million who could benefit. This is the most urgent time for our feeding programs in our lifetime, with the exception of the Depression.” For many, SNAP/Food Stamps are the only aid they are eligible for, making the program the “safety net’s safety net.” Growth in the federal cash welfare program has stayed “virtually flat” nationally. Only about half of jobless individuals receive unemployment benefits, and those that do only receive half their income. SNAP/Food Stamps are also an indicator of where the economy is sickest; in Northwest Ohio counties, where car parts are made, SNAP/Food Stamp participation is up between 60 and 84 percent. Southwest Florida, which experienced high foreclosure rates in the housing bust, has seen rates more than double. SNAP/Food Stamps are achieving a new prominence in the suburbs, since this is the first recession in which a majority of the poor live in the suburbs. The accompanying interactive map shows SNAP/Food Stamp usage across the country and contains information for each county, based on county population estimates, and state. The map also shows SNAP/Food Stamp usage among children, whites and blacks, and contains information on the change in the number of people receiving SNAP/Food Stamps between 2007 and 2009.
Food Stamp Usage Across the Country interactive map: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/28/us/20091128-foodstamps.html

2. Further Action Needed to Fight Poverty, Unemployment and Hunger
(Center for American Progress, November 25, 2009)

During the Thanksgiving holiday this year, many will reflect on the economic changes that have devastated millions, note Melissa Boteach, Half in Ten manager at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Jim Weill, President of the Food Research and Action Center. Many are wondering if their unemployment benefits will hold out until they find a job. Others continue to face home foreclosures. Some who formerly gave to food pantries are now receiving food from the pantries or are on SNAP/Food Stamps. While the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has grown the economy, “we must take further action to tackle the inter-related problems of unemployment, poverty and hunger.” The President and Congress can take “immediate actions to spur job creation and provide relief” to those less likely to benefit from stimulus funds. “These same measures can lay a solid foundation for the realization of these ambitious, but achievable targets of ending child hunger and cutting poverty in half in the coming decade.” Some of these actions are:

Strengthen SNAP/Food Stamps and child nutrition programs, expand the Afterschool Meal Program to all 50 states, and invest in the Summer Nutrition Programs by providing funding for start-up, outreach, and transportation grants.
Improve the area eligibility test so more communities can operate out-of-school child food programs.
Fund initiatives to serve breakfast in the classroom and ease the application process for families and schools.
Extend unemployment benefits and health insurance benefits for those out of work through the end of 2010.
Increase administrative funding for food stamps.
Provide additional aid to states.
Invest directly in public-sector job creation and in national service to tackle youth unemployment and strengthen nonprofits’ capacity to meet growing need as poverty and hunger rates skyrocket.

3. Recession Statistics Show Extent of Struggling American Middle Class
(Huffington Post, December 3, 2009)

More than a generation ago, the American middle class began facing a crisis, writes Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, which was created to oversee the banking bailouts. Wages of the average full-time employee have stayed flat since the 70’s, in spite of increased productivity. During the 1960’s boom, median family income increased 33 percent (amount adjusted for inflation). However, the increase has been an “almost imperceptible 1.6 percent” during the 2000’s boom. “While Wall Street executives and others who owned lots of stock celebrated how good the recovery was for them, middle class families were left empty-handed.” For the middle class, expenses rose during the early 2000’s. In the 2000’s, mortgages cost families twice as much as they did a generation before, and families paid twice as much for health insurance. In order to cope, families were forced to take on added expenses – a second car, child care – so that both parents could work, and all the while higher taxes increased the squeeze. Paying more today for food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other “flexible” purchases, “today’s families have spent all their income, have spent all their savings, and have gone into debt to pay for college, to cover serious medical problems, and just to stay afloat a little while longer.” Today:

one in eight Americans receives SNAP/Food Stamps;
one in five Americans is unemployed or underemployed;
one in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure;
one in nine families can't make their minimum credit card payments;
more than 120,000 families file for bankruptcy each month.

"The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street." The "once solid foundation" of America's middle class is on shaky ground, Warren concludes. Many families have done the right things, but have no security. A college degree and a good job doesn't guarantee financial safety. "Tens of millions of once-secure middle class families now live paycheck to paycheck, watching as their debts pile up and worrying about whether a pink slip or a bad diagnosis will send them hurtling over an economic cliff."

4. Across U.S., Little More Than Half of Eligible People Receive SNAP/Food Stamps
(UPI.com, November 24, 2009)

Nationally, 66 percent of Americans eligible for SNAP/Food Stamps received the benefit in 2007, according to the most recent data available and recently released by USDA. In some states, fewer than half of eligible people are participating in SNAP/Food Stamps, with one state at 47 percent (the lowest percentage). States with the highest participation percentages in 2005, 2006 and 2007: Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, Oregon, Tennessee and West Virginia. “Programs like SNAP are essential to good nutrition and well-being, especially in tough economic times, and participation not only helps these households with food at home, but also provides their children, through direct certification, with access to nutritious meals at school,” said Kevin Concannon, USDA’s under secretary for food, nutrition and consumer services.

5. Economists Conclude Stimulus Package is Working
(The New York Times, November 21, 2009)

Usually “dispassionate” analysts, responding to hard data and real-life experience, are concluding that the federal stimulus package is working, cushioning the free-falling economy and helping it grow again, although it’s messy and only a quarter of the funds have been distributed. In the third quarter, the economy expanded by a 3.5 percent seasonally adjusted annual rate. States and cities used their money to save teaching jobs and keep police employed, part of President Obama’s goal of saving or creating 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 – a goal that’s “roughly on track.” The stimulus “was worth doing – it’s made a difference,” said Nigel Gault, chief economist at IHS Global Insight. Economists see state government aid as the most effective stimulus. The SNAP/Food Stamp increase returns $1.74 to the economy for every dollar spent; unemployment checks are also high, at $1.61 per every dollar. And every dollar of state infrastructure spending returns $1.57 to the economy, according to Moody’s Economy.com; general aid to states returns $1.41. Martin Feldstein, a conservative Harvard economist who served in the Reagan administration, noted “There should have been more direct federal spending that would have added to aggregate demand.” “[T]here was a considerable amount of hand-wringing [among democrats in the White House and Congress] that it was too small, and I sympathized with that argument,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s. However, “the stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do – it is contributing to ending the recession,” he added. Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, agreed. “The economy was weaker than we thought at the time, so maybe in retrospect we could have used a little bit more…front-loaded,” he said. “In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P. would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent. And there are a little over 1.1 million more jobs out there as of October than would have been out there without the stimulus.”

6. Texas SNAP/Food Stamp Caseworkers Should Get “Texan of the Year” Award
(Dallas Morning News, November 25, 2009)

The Dallas Morning News “Texan of the Year” award should go to the men and women of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, who determine eligibility and enroll eligible Texans in the SNAP/Food Stamp program, this op-ed notes. Since 1999, caseloads have doubled, although the state has cut staff from the 10,000 workers in 1999; now there are fewer than 8,000 workers. “Being a caseworker has always been a tough job, but in the last several years, the job has gotten even tougher because of state budget cuts,” writes F. Scott McCown, executive director of the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities. Caseworkers are on the job an average of 6 days a week, working 50 hours of overtime a month, and haven’t had time off in a year and a half. The caseworkers “struggle each day to deliver help.” They also “go to extraordinary lengths during disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, when they delivered food stamps to hundreds of thousands of evacuees within days.” One caseworker spoke on how she feels doing the job. “I have felt so torn for the past year. I feel a responsibility to my clients to ensure they are taken care of, but also I am a parent. My family is my life. We are overworked, frazzled, tangled, frustrated, angry and guilt-ridden. I know that I have worked too hard…to give up on my clients, on myself.” Thanksgiving prompts many to make charitable donations to food banks to help feed the hungry, which are important. However, “we feed far more people through the government than through our charity.” Yet in Texas, tens of thousands are kept waiting for food because the SNAP/Food Stamp system is under-funded. “[W]e should give thanks that more than 1 million families had food on the table this Thanksgiving because of our dedicated state caseworkers,” McCown concludes.

7. Solution to Texas’ Hunger Problem Goes Requires Year-Round Efforts
(Dallas Morning News, November 23, 2009)

The percentage of Texas households deemed “food insecure” was 16.3 percent according to federal statistics released last week, 4 points higher than the national average of 12.2 percent. In these food insecure Texas households, “people regularly skip meals, eat cheaper and less nutritious foods, depend on government aid like food stamps or seek help from food pantries,” notes this op-ed. “Texans should be shocked that a state as prosperous as Texas is doing so poorly,” said Todd Staples, a Republican and the state’s agriculture commissioner. A decade ago, before the recession when the economy was booming, the state still had 15.2 percent of households in the food insecure category. While “it’s honorable” for people to volunteer at food banks or write checks to charities providing food, hunger in Texas occurs after the holidays too. A recent hunger summit in Waco, led by the Texas Hunger Coalition, outlined some hopeful methods of combating hunger in the state. The Initiative’s coalition of federal, state and local agencies agreed to campaign for effective summer food programs for children, and will, next month, ask churches, youth organizations and school districts to begin the process of providing meals and snacks to 2.5 million children who are left without school meals once summer arrives.

8. University of Vermont’s Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week Includes SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge
(Food Stamp Challenge Experience, November 12, 2009)

The SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge was part of the University of Vermont’s Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, as students, faculty and staff were challenged to eat for four days (November 16-19) on $5 each day. A blog was set up for them to record and reflect on the experience. The SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge was started in 2007 when four members of Congress, wanting to “raise visibility and understanding around the challenges that millions of low-income Americans face in obtaining a healthy diet under current food stamp benefit levels,” pledged to live on $3 a day for food for one week.

9. West Virginia AARP Helps Connect Seniors to SNAP/Food Stamps
(West Virginia Gazette, November 18, 2009)

SNAP/Food Stamps are one of the benefit programs that seniors in West Virginia can learn more about by using AARP’s Benefits QuickLINK program. Seniors are encouraged to call 877-677-0677, which will put them in touch with trained volunteers who can connect them to services including SNAP/Food Stamps, Medicare, utility bill assistance, property tax relief and rebates.

10. Money-Saving Mom Finds it Difficult to Eat Healthy on SNAP/Food Stamp Budget
(9 News Denver, November 12, 2009)

Susanna Dolato writes a blog – www.cheaplikemeblog.com – which outlines the money saving strategies she uses for her family of three. On a recent shopping trip she tried to purchase a week’s worth of groceries on a SNAP/Food Stamp budget. That means she was shopping for her family with $75, based on the average amount the state pays in SNAP/Food Stamp benefits per person. Normally, her budgeting would put her weekly food budget at $111. After passing up organic foods, selecting a cheaper spaghetti sauce that has more sugar, replacing boxed cereal with oatmeal, and deciding to make bread herself, she arrived at the cash register with $68 in groceries. She noted that she had to leave some of the healthier items back in the aisles. “If we’re feeding three people for seven days, it’s going to be pretty slim,” she said. She also said it would be more time consuming to have to do that all the time, that she would continue to have to make sacrifices, and that it wouldn’t be easy. And although anyone can make things from scratch, “a lot of us don’t have all the time in the world,” she said. Colorado was ranked 48th among states in SNAP/Food Stamp participation by eligible people, according to FRAC, and has been ranked last in application processing timeliness. The state’s SNAP/Food Stamp application requires 26 pages of paperwork, and applicants must then wait for it all to be processed.

11. South Dakota Sees “Incredible” Increase in SNAP/Food Stamp Participation
(South Dacola blog, November 21, 2009)

From September 2008 to September 2009, South Dakota’s SNAP/Food Stamp participation grew “an incredible” 34 percent. While enrollment follows the ups and downs of the economy, “no one envisioned such a huge one-year increase,” notes this blog post. Still, there are thousands of low-income families who are eligible for SNAP/Food Stamps but are not receiving them. “The state should campaign” for these 15,000 to 20,000 additional people to sign up. The blog post also suggests that readers let Social Services workers know they’re appreciated, as “[t]hey are working hard.”

12. Michigan Struggles to Keep Up with Demand for Food, Other Assistance
(Detroit Free Press, November 22, 2009)

Record numbers of Michigan residents are crowding assistance offices as the state’s 15 percent unemployment rate forces more and more people to seek help. More than one out of every five residents is receiving assistance. Caseworkers juggle up to 900 cases, battle delays dealt by a new computer system, and often have to deal with angry clients. SNAP/Food Stamp and Medicaid numbers have skyrocketed. 1.6 million Michiganders – comprising 790,000 households - are on SNAP/Food Stamps. 1.8 million count on Medicaid for health insurance. Together in the past year, the combined number of new SNAP/Food Stamp and Medicaid recipients closes in on half a million – a total of 450,000. The numbers are driven by the unemployed; traditional welfare cases (single parents with children) are up 10 percent – 216,683 individuals – over the past year. Unemployed residents are stressed to the breaking point, and seven caseworkers recently told a House committee that frustrated clients have physically threatened or verbally abused them. While there are 620 more workers in assistance offices than there were a year ago, 700 more caseworkers are needed to handle the load which keeps increasing. That would cost the state an additional $45 million – money that Terry Salacina, director of Department of Human Services (DHS) field offices, says the state doesn’t have. The average number of cases per caseworker statewide is 680 – with some having as many as 800 or 900 in some areas. Anything more than 475 is excessive, said Salacina. Tricia Baysdell, who makes $8 an hour as a hotel housekeeper, is one resident who’s struggling like many others. With her 9-year old son, she recently waited five hours at a DHS office to apply for SNAP/Food Stamps and Medicaid, but had to leave before being seen in order to pick up her children at school. Her husband just lost his job at an auto supplier, where he made $70,000 a year, but can’t receive unemployment; having been diagnosed with chronic leukemia, he is unable to work. “It’s just frustrating,” said Tricia Baysdell. She returned to the DHS office a few days later, when it was less crowded, and was able to apply for assistance, and received apologies from the staff.

13. White House Launches Anti-Hunger Volunteer Campaign
(Chronicle of Philanthropy, November 24, 2009)

The White House, USDA and the Corporation for National and Community Service have collaborated to launch a new anti-hunger volunteer campaign titled “United We Serve, Feed a Neighbor.” Through the campaign, Americans are being asked to develop anti-hunger programs in their neighborhoods, volunteer or donate to food banks, prepare and deliver senior citizen meals, and plant shared gardens. Information on the campaign, including nonprofit volunteer opportunities and tool kits for organizing, is available at Serve.gov. The initiative was launched in the wake of USDA’s recent report that showed 49 million people – 14.6 percent of Americans – lacked food at some point during 2008. These figures are the highest since the agency started reporting on hunger in 1995. “It was a wakeup call,” said Tom Vilsack, agriculture secretary. “It was a sobering report.” Vilsack predicts that next year’s numbers will “paint an even more unsettling picture.”

14. Breakfast in the Classroom a Success in One Rhode Island School; District Plans Expansion
(Providence Journal, November 16, 2009)

Children now eat breakfast during the first 10 minutes of class at Robertson Elementary School in Rhode Island, a move that’s been a big hit with students and increased the number of children receiving free breakfast from 29 to 85 percent. Before the change, many students arrived at school too late to eat breakfast in the cafeteria. “The benefits children receive from eating a nutritious breakfast are well documented,” said Central Falls school superintendent Frances Gallo. “Research shown that eating breakfast increases concentration and attendance, decreases disciplinary problems, yields better test scores and more.” Central Falls offers free breakfast to all of its 3,188 students, and is located in an area of high poverty. Many students arrive at school in the morning without having had anything to eat. Later this year, Breakfast in the Classroom will expand to all the district’s schools, making Central Falls the first Rhode Island school district to go system-wide with the program. Aramark, Central Falls’ food service provider, delivers bags each morning with a combination of cereal bars, whole-wheat English muffins, wheat bagels, or whole-grain waffles, as well as milk, juice and fruit or yogurt. The provider picks up the trash after breakfast. Robertson Elementary fourth graders like the program, especially since there’s more space in the classroom for them to eat, and it’s not as noisy as the cafeteria.

15. Ohio Legislation Requires Nutrition Guidelines for Food Sold in Schools
(Cincinnati Enquirer, November 17, 2009)

Legislation introduced in both the Ohio House and Senate, titled the “Healthy Choices for Healthy Children” bill, would require that a la carte and vending machine food sold in schools meet federal nutrition guidelines. It would also require schools to provide 30 minutes of daily moderate to rigorous physical activity (recess not included), provide free breakfast to all students qualifying for free or reduced-price breakfast, and educate parents about their children’s body mass index (BMI) and associated health risks. “This legislation will help Ohio not only catch up but become a leader in school-based interventions against obesity,” said Lisa Simpson, director of the Child Policy Research Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Ohio is “behind many other states” in addressing childhood obesity, she noted. According to a report released over the summer, the state is ranked 15th nationally for the number of children 10-17 years old who are obese. Authors of the legislation note that nutrition guidelines govern vending machine food and food sold in school stores in 27 states, and 20 states now require student BMI screenings and other weight assessment measures.

16. WIC Program Makes Crucial Changes; Social Security Backlog Grows During Recession
(Federal Times, November 27, 2009)

The economic stimulus bill signed in February provided $100 million to the WIC Program for information technology upgrades, which will replace the outdated paper-based benefit system. The new system will use computers to instantly access eligibility and background information. In addition, the program received another $400 million to handle increased demand for assistance and to cover growing food costs. The program is working on adopting the EBT card system, as is used in the SNAP/Food Stamp Program; the EBT card system makes it much easier to guard against fraudulent use of benefits, and removes some of the stigma recipients feel when they have to present coupons for WIC-approved foods in the grocery checkout line. Jean Daniel of WIC said the program is unsure when these upgrades will be completed.

The Social Security program is struggling with a backlog of 780,000 disability claims, as the recession added 400,000 more claims than predicted last year; the agency predicts 700,000 more claims will be filed in 2009 than in 2008. The backlog persists in spite of the fact that 8,600 new employees were hired and trained in the last fiscal year.” We were just not set up to handle an extra 1 million [claims]. We were struggling a bit with staffing as it was, and it’s taken a while to hire and train new employees,” said Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue during a recent House subcommittee hearing. Making matters worse: 10 state governments furloughed thousands of state Social Security employees whose benefits and salaries are paid by the federal government. Across the board, assistance programs are feeling the weight of the recession, as the numbers of Americans seeking unemployment benefits, health insurance, school lunches, SNAP/Food Stamps and college loans skyrockets.

17. Ohio’s Needy Suffering After State Budget Cuts
(Columbus Dispatch, November 22, 2009)

Four months after Ohio cut millions in safety-net programs from the state budget, the dire predictions advocates made in July are now coming true. Treatment centers are turning away thousands of mental health patients each month; this, combined with the economy, causes local leaders to fear that this may have led a doubling in the number of suicides for one six-county area. The state has scaled back or eliminated protective services for abused and neglected elderly; for the fiscal year ending July 30, 2008, there were 16,109 reports of elder neglect or exploitation across the state, although only one in four incidents are reported. The drug assistance program for extremely poor adults with chronic ailments ended October 31, afterschool programs were chopped, and state-funded preschool for poor children has been abolished. Poor families who have lost loved ones have had to dig graves themselves, or forgo embalming services and burial vaults, since government assistance for indigent burials has ended. "I would certainly hope that no one had to bury a loved one without assistance as a result of cuts in our budget and if I become aware of such a circumstance, I'll do whatever I can to make sure that that doesn't happen again," said Governor Ted Strickland. He added that he is working “to improve the situation and …to see that those who are in greatest need have access to the most essential things that are necessary for their continued well-being or in some cases even survival." The recession has caused more and more Ohioans to turn to the state for help, although they’re waiting for several weeks to get assistance. Thousands have been added to the SNAP/Food Stamp program, and one in five residents are now on Medicaid. Last week, the federal government reported that 600,000 households in the state struggle to put food on the table. Yet state cuts have forced counties to lay off thousands of caseworkers. “How can we turn our backs on seniors, the mentally ill and the children during this economic catastrophe?” asked Joel Potts, executive director of the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors’ Association. “This is the time we should be coming together to make sure people aren’t falling through the cracks, but what we’ve done with this budget is make bigger cracks.”
Additional Columbus Dispatch articles focusing on services mentioned in the article:
Who will protect, help the elderly?
Survivors must dig graves for their dead

18. Neighborhood Complaints Shut Down Church Soup Kitchen
(Huffington Post, November 12, 2009)

A court ruling in Phoenix, Arizona has shut down Crossroads United Methodist Church’s weekly pancake breakfast. Neighbors had been complaining that more homeless people were showing up in the community. Church volunteers must relocate their homeless food services to commercial parts of the city if they want to continue feeding the needy. This ruling sets a precedent for all churches zoned in residential Phoenix areas.

19. Photo Exhibit Makes Hunger Visible
(Scranton Times, November 17, 2009)

Begun more than a year ago in Philadelphia by Mariana Chilton, Ph.D., a professor of public health at Drexel University School of Public Health, the photography exhibit “Witnesses to Hunger” makes hunger visible and raises the public’s awareness of the fact that so many poor people don’t have enough to eat. Witnesses to Hunger gave cameras to 40 women, who were invited to take pictures of their day-to-day existence. Dr. Chilton conceived of the project after she was unable, for years, to get politicians, the media and the public interested in solving the problem of hunger in the U.S. “I felt you cannot deny the photographs of the children, you cannot deny the mothers actually beginning to speak out,” said Dr. Chilton. The photographs were recently exhibited at the Center for Architectural Studies at Marywood University, after Sen. Bob Casey and his wife viewed the exhibit in Washington, D.C. Americans are always willing to donate food, said Mrs. Casey, but because hunger is invisible, permanent solutions are hard to come by. “Good Morning America” ran a campaign to provide 10 million meals, she noted, but never showed a poor person during the months of the campaign. Mrs. Casey wants to create similar photography exhibits at universities across Pennsylvania. The current Witnesses to Hunger exhibit includes photographs by Jean Culver, a 27-year-old certified nurse’s aide, currently out of a job and struggling. “I’m just going through so much right now,” she said at the school during the exhibit’s unveiling. “This just touches my heart.” Culver also said that without SNAP/Food Stamps she couldn’t survive, and wants the government to focus more on the poor.

20. Nearly Half of U.S. Adults will be Obese by 2018
(New York Times Prescriptions blog, November 17, 2009)

A study by Kenneth E. Thorpe of Emory University forecasts that 43 percent of U.S. adults – 103 million – will be obese by 2018, if current trends continue. In 2008, 31 percent of adults were obese; obesity is growing faster than any other public health condition in this country’s history, concluded Thorpe. By 2018, obesity’s health care costs could total $344 billion and account for more than one in five health care dollars spent. The country would save nearly $200 billion a year if the obesity rate is held at its current level. Thorpe also projected obesity levels for states in his research, and foresees six states in which more than 50 percent of adults will be obese by 2018: Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. Only one state – Colorado – would have an obesity rate of less than 30 percent of adults. Thorpe said that current health care bills in Congress lack sufficient funding to fight obesity.