The good news: According to the US Department of Agriculture, Americans will never go hungry again. The bad news: A surprisingly large number of Americans will still suffer from “very low food security.” That used to be called “hunger,” but the USDA decided that didn’t quite have the ring to it that “insecure” does.

The USDA released its annual report, which shows that 35 million people reported that they had trouble putting food on their children during at least some point last year. But they weren’t hungry, see. Their food security was just very low.

The name change hasn’t gone over well. From the Washington Post:

“The proposal to remove the word ‘hunger’ from our official reports is a huge disservice to the millions of Americans who struggle daily to feed themselves and their families,” said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, an anti-hunger advocacy group. “We … cannot hide the reality of hunger among our citizens.”

(Ahem—remember the Healthy Forests Initiative, which chopped down forests? And the Clear Skies Initiative, which stopped enforcement of companies that pollute? It’s just a little game the Bush Administration likes to play.)

In actual good news for Oregon, our rate of low food security has dropped in the last ten years. From 1996-98, the rate was 14.2 percent—from 2003 to 2005, that figure was 11.9 percent, according to the Oregon Hunger Relief Task Force.

In 1996-98, Oregon had the highest rate in the country for people who were veeeeery hungry (very low food security) at 6 percent. The latest numbers are 3.9 percent. And that’s great, unless you’re one of the 142,000 Oregonians still in that category.