In Iowa the World's Food Capital, there is hunger. [View all]

[Stuart G]

http://westdesmoines.patch.com/articles/disptaches-iowa-the-world-s-food-capital-is-hungry

The face of hunger increasingly belongs to the working poor, like Kim Olsem, who has trouble feeding herself despite holding two jobs.


By Beth Dalbey
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December 20, 2011


If hunger is an invisible problem in Iowa, blame it on people like Kim Olsem, a mother and a fighter, whose two jobs — one working with the elderly, the other working with schoolchildren — don't pay enough to feed her properly.

She is an unlikely face of hunger, one of a growing number of formerly middle-class Iowa residents who have dropped to the ranks of the working poor, those who make enough money to pay for rent, maybe transportation, but not much else. And like others in Iowa and around the country, even the charitable food pantry she counts on is running out of food.

“When I run out of money for my other needs, I come here,” said Olsem, 49, who stood in line at a West Des Moines food pantry just days before Christmas. “Food always comes last. My bills have to come first.

“Food,” she said, “is a luxury sometimes
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Two words ...very sad.