On Monday the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that 49 million Americans, about one in six, suffer from what is bureaucratically known as "food insecurity" and colloquially known as frequent or chronic hunger.

Single mothers with children are having the hardest time putting food on the table. The number of households in which children were occasionally or frequently hungry has risen by two-thirds in the past year alone to more than a half-million.

Even in New Hampshire, which has suffered less from the recession than average, participation in food stamps and other supplemental nutrition programs rose by 23 percent between 2008 and 2009. By one estimate, the number of homeless school-age children has grown from 1,000 to 3,000. So it should come as no surprise that demands on local food pantries, emergency food programs and shelters is up between 12 and 25 percent, and that's before high heating costs burn up even more money that would otherwise be spent on food.

The extent of hunger in a land of plenty, and plenty of obesity, is maddening. Maria Manus Painchaud, whose late father Mark Manus founded what was to become the Capital Region Food Program in 1974, says the situation is worse that at any time in the program's history.

The food program's donation cartons were recently placed prominently in area stores, banks and other businesses. Times are tough, but please do what you can, not just during this run-up to the holiday season but throughout the year. And encourage your children and friends to contribute to or organize a food drive.

Whether the aid comes from a soup kitchen, church food pantry, food program or The New Hampshire Food Bank, which provides food at nominal cost to 405 social service agencies across the state, the recipients served are the same. But this recession has also worked as a socio-economic leveler. Married middle-class moms and unemployed professionals can be found in line with the chronically underemployed and hard-core poor.

To help alleviate food shortages in the post-holiday months, the Capital Region Food Program is encouraging people to hold food drives even if they don't coincide with the organization's 10 annual distribution dates. One of the beauties of the program is that its large network of volunteers and corporate sponsors allow it to operate with no overhead. Volunteers donate the gas money it takes to delivery the food to agencies and the holiday baskets to recipients. Every dollar donated is spent on food. So if the food is collected, it will be delivered to those who need it.

The Capital Region Food Program augments but cannot substitute for the state's food bank, which must operate freezers and run a fleet of delivery trucks. The food bank says that demand for Thanksgiving turkeys alone is up by 25 percent over last year to 20,000.

Because the food bank and food programs purchase in bulk and get a discount from wholesalers, a donation of cash puts a bit more food on someone's table than a bag of groceries. But food drives and donated goods allow both a personal touch and the opportunity to teach the young the value of giving. Without them hunger would be far more widespread. So give what makes you feel good to the organization of your choice, but please give.