Feeding America and National Foundation to End Senior Hunger published a report in 2011 and reveals that the number of food insecure seniors above the age of 60 has more than doubled to 4.8 million from 2001 to 2011.

The Hunger Almanac is published by Feeding America, the country’s largest charitable hunger-relief organization, distributes food to food banks. It lists key facts and updates about the state of hunger in America.

The USDA’s Economic Research Service is a treasure house of authoritative statistics. It does an annual survey of “food insecurity” in the U.S. to track trends and economic and geographic characteristics of households experiencing hunger.

Read a Feb. 13, 2013, Philadelphia Inquirer story about President Obama’s pledge to end childhood hunger by 2015 and his progress.

Read a Sept. 19, 2009, New York Times story, “So Much Food. So Much Hunger,” about the persistence of hunger in the world — affecting a billion people, the United Nations estimates — even though the world produces enough food to feed everyone.

Read a June 27, 2013, page about President Barack Obama’s plan to fight hunger in sub-Saharan Africa.

Read a Nov. 2, 2009, USA Today article about a study showing that half of all American children will live in a household that gets food stamps at some point in their childhood.

Yvonne M. Vissing is a sociology professor at Salem State College in Salem, Mass. She is the author of Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Homeless Children and Families in Small-Town America and can speak about the spiritual lives of homeless children.

The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation that aims to promote a high performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society’s most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, minority Americans, young children and elderly adults. Contact Mary Mahon or Bethanne Fox.