The Department of Veterans Affairs will screen all veterans who visit its health-care facilities for hunger, asking them whether they've struggled to afford food in the past three months. Veterans advocates have long warned that certain groups of vets suffer extreme rates of hunger. Those include Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, 27% of whom have struggled to put food on the table. While multiple studies have found that, overall, veterans’ rates of both poverty and food insecurity are lower than those in the general population, there are pockets of vets who experience hunger often. People with disabilities and mental illnesses are far more likely to be food insecure. And advocates say some vets are often unwilling to seek help. An estimated 39,000 veterans were homeless in 2016, which can make it difficult to access food. Most strikingly, a 2015 paper found that veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffer from food insecurity at more than double the national rate of 12%.
Source: Washington Post, 10/9/17, Veterans' Hunger
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