People who help feed hungry Americans are haunted by the stories of the people they serve

People who help feed hungry Americans are haunted by the stories of the people they serve.

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For Ross Fraser, it's a single mother in Orlando who made $66,000last year as a real estate agent but is on track to make $18,000 thisyear. The agent was embarrassed when she called to see whether shequalified for help, but said she just couldn't feed her two kidswithout it.

For Leigh Fuller, it's a single mother in Amarillo, Texas, with sixkids and a medical job that doesn't pay her enough to give her childrendinner more than four nights a week.

Fraser is spokesman for the nation's largest hunger relief group, America's Second Harvest, which works with about 85% of the nation's food banks and helps feed about 25 million people. He has the high-altitude view of what's happening as higher gasoline and grocery prices, mortgage woes and a weakening job market push families who already live at the margins over the edge. Demand, he says, is spiking at food programs all over the country.

Fuller has a ground-level view at the High Plains Food Bank, which supplies food pantries and other groups across the Texas Panhandle. The "Kids Cafe" program there served roughly 77,000 dinners to hungry children in all of 2006. This year, it has already served more than 100,000.

Making matters worse is that food supplies are down, often sharply. One reason: Higher food prices mean the government isn't buying and giving away as much surplus food from farmers as it does when prices are down. That puts food pantries and soup kitchens in a vise, and many have had to cut back on the food they hand out.

In a land of obesity and all-you-can-eat buffets, it's hard for many Americans to imagine a world where having to pay a few dollars more to fill up a gas tank to get to work means having to cut back on food, but food banks see this all the time. How to help? Hunger relief groups appreciate food donations but say it's more effective for donors to give money, because food banks buy food by the truckload and can make dollars go further than individuals can.

Most of us will enjoy Thanksgiving at a table set with more food than we possibly can and should eat, a wonderful reminder of this nation's great bounty and a good reason to give thanks. One fulfilling way to mark the holiday is to find a local food bank and help share that bounty.