In the report, Marion County has the highest child food insecurity rate in the 26-county service area, with 38% classified as food insecure. Not far behind is St. Augustine County, which climbed to a rate of 37% in 2024. Shelby County\u2019s rate is 32% and Angelina and Red River counties each saw rates of 31% in 2024, according to Feeding America, which is the largest hunger-relief organization in the United States.<\/p>\n
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Several of East Texas\u2019 largest counties continue to experience significant child food insecurity, including Gregg and Bowie counties at 28% each and Smith County doing just a few percentage points better at 24%.<\/p>\n \u201cFood insecurity isn\u2019t a problem happening somewhere else, it\u2019s affecting families in every community across East Texas,\u201d Emerson said. \u201cHunger remains especially severe in many rural areas, where unemployment, rising living costs, transportation barriers, and health challenges make it even harder for families to put food on the table. These findings remind us that it takes all of us \u2014 neighbors, businesses, community organizations, and policymakers\u2014working together to create a future where everyone has access to nutritious food.\u201d<\/p>\n While child food insecurity increased, the report found a slight improvement among adults. The adult food insecurity rate in East Texas declined from 18.2% to 17.9%, improving from approximately 1 in 5 adults to 1 in 6 adults experiencing food insecurity.<\/p>\n The East Texas Food Bank is one of more than 200-member food banks in Feeding America\u2019s nationwide network. Map the Meal Gap is the only study that provides local-level estimates of food insecurity and food costs for every county and congressional district in the United States. The food bank is the largest hunger-relief nonprofit in East Texas, providing over 34 million meals each year to 200 partner agencies and feeding programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Map the Meal Gap uses publicly available data from the USDA Economic Research Service, U.S. Census Bureau, and Bureau of Labor Statistics to estimate local food insecurity at the county, congressional district, and state levels. The study also estimates local meal costs and food budget shortfalls using food price data from NIQ based on the USDA Thrifty Food Plan, and grocery sales tax data for every county and state in the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n The study is supported by\u00a0Conagra Brands Foundation<\/a>, Enterprise Mobility Foundation and NielsenIQ\/NIQ<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Latest data: More East Texas children facing food insecurity than before Published 5:45 am Wednesday, July 29, 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-390445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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