Childhood hunger.

Interest in the extent of hunger in the United States has fluctuated over the years. There was little public discussion of the subject during the post-Depression era until the mid-1960s, when unscientific but dramatic media exposés of the extent of hunger in the country helped launch the “war on poverty.” By 1979, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Nutrition proclaimed “the virtual defeat of hunger and malnutrition in the United States.”1 Yet, by the mid-1980s, following a recession and reductions in federal food assistance programs, the Physicians’ Task Force on Hunger in America reported that 20 million Americans were “hungry.”2 Current attempts to reform welfare, a focus of this journal issue, and to effect cost savings in food and income support programs for the poor will most likely result in increased attention to the issue of hunger in America, particularly the prevalence and consequences of hunger among children.