(article, Culinate staff)
As local news outlets around the country have noted lately, the number of Americans relying on food stamps to stave off starvation has hit an all-time high, with more than 45 million Americans enrolled in the federal food-stamp program. (That's approximately 15 percent of the total U.S. population, or 1 in 7 Americans.) The Economist did a good job parsing the numbers back in July, but the question remains: Will the current financial mess in D.C. mean cutbacks to the food-stamp program just as more and more people need it?