MOSCOW – Residents packed Moscow City Hall and turned it into a think-tank Thursday night in an effort to identify solutions for Latah County’s increasing pressures from food insecurity.
According to Map the Meal Gap, a food-insecurity study based on data from 2015, 17.8 percent of all residents in Latah County, and 17.4 percent of all children in the county, are considered food insecure – a term describing those without reliable access to affordable, nutritious food.
There needs to be a better term than “food insecure” for “without reliable access.”
We have reliable access to food at Safeway, Roseauers, WinCo, Walmart, and the CoOp.
If they mean that they cannot afford the food, or choose to spend their income on things other than food, that’s a different issue than having no access.
I traveled in Communist Europe in the 1970s. There were bare shelves in the grocery stores. Now that’s non-reliable access.