Now that we've all gotten our knickers into a twist over the issue of port security, I'd like to talk about another form of security: food security. Or, rather, food insecurity.

You haven't heard of food insecurity? It's a bureaucratic euphemism for the Condition Formerly Known as Hunger. And it's spreading [1], as more working Americans turn to soup kitchens to feed themselves and their families.

How is it that more of us are going hungry even as more of us are getting fatter? Once upon a time, only the wealthy could afford to be fat. Now, thanks to the low cost of high calories in our culture, you don't have to be a fatcat to be, well, fat. But even as our nutritionally bankrupt eating habits have made it possible to be both impoverished and obese, more and more of us are relying on food banks to make up for our own domestic deficits.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, 38 million Americans are living in “hungry or food insecure” households, an increase of 5 million since 2000. The nation's largest food distribution charity, America's Second Harvest, currently helps more than 25 million people, an increase of 8 percent since Second Harvest last conducted a survey of its food banks in 2000.

“The fact that so many working people still have to go to a soup kitchen or a food bank to make ends meet shows there's something structurally wrong with the economy,” Doug O'Brien, vice president for public policy and research at Second Harvest, told the Christian Science Monitor. “If you work, you should be able to provide enough for your family. That's part of the social contract we have with our citizens.”

So what's going on, here? Rising energy costs are being passed on to consumers even as wages remain stagnant, or even drop, in some cases. It's a double whammy that leaves millions of hard-working people in a double bind: do we pay the bills, or buy the groceries?

“Food banks are like the canary in the mine shafts. They see trends in underreported populations long before they show up in other statistics,” says O'Brien. In other words, you may not have noticed it, yet, but our landscape is changing. Land o'Plenty? Well, maybe not so much.