Never go hungry again

I believe it was Scarlett O'Hara who said that. Well, now that the Bush Agriculture Department has deemed "hungry" a dirty word, no one will ever go hungry again. They will have "very low food security" instead:

The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security."

Every year, the Agriculture Department issues a report that measures Americans' access to food, and it has consistently used the word "hunger" to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. But not this year.

Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey." Nord, a USDA sociologist, said, "We don't have a measure of that condition."

The USDA said that 12 percent of Americans -- 35 million people -- could not put food on the table at least part of last year. Eleven million of them reported going hungry at times. Beginning this year, the USDA has determined "very low food security" to be a more scientifically palatable description for that group.

It's really amazing what a wonderful world we live in. No hunger. No global warming. No pollution. Oooops. I forgot. The terrorists are coming to get us in our sleep. I guess it's not that great a place after all.