What's in a name?

How we label our problems plays a big part in how we deal with them.

A while back I read that the USDA decided to quit reporting the state of American well being in terms of hunger, preferring "low food security" as a more precise label.

The U.S. government has vowed that Americans will never be hungry again. But they may experience "very low food security."

Every year, the Agriculture Department issues a report that measures Americans' access to food, and it has consistently used the word "hunger" to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. But not this year.

Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey." Nord, a USDA sociologist, said, "We don't have a measure of that condition."

The USDA said that 12 percent of Americans -- 35 million people -- could not put food on the table at least part of last year. Eleven million of them reported going hungry at times. Beginning this year, the USDA has determined "very low food security" to be a more scientifically palatable description for that group.

Charitably assuming this isn't more spin, how will such a neutral term motivate anyone to tackle the problem? I can relate to hunger, everyone can. But "low food security" is just too abstract to move most people. If the USDA wants to eliminate hunger in the United States, and they say they do, why aren't they making more of an effort to claim a bigger share of the public's attention?

I can't answer those questions charitably. I can say that any effort to stamp out hunger would require money from the Federal pot, and a lot of projects dip into that pot. Either taxes would have to be raised, or some other federal program would have to be cut.

I can't help but note that "low food security" is less likely to incite the People to insist on such action, and I also can't help noticing how much of our federal budget goes to arms and the war, as well as to subsidies to large corporations.

Are we spending too much on guns, and too little on butter?

What if those people with low housing security, whom we call homeless, were called refugees instead? Would the People decide we should pass on some new warships or fighter jets to solve the problem?

Of course, we call torture "harsh interrogation techniques", and kidnapping "rendition" as we travel our fearful path from the attacks of 9/11. It's a harsh new world that demands we recognize and combat the threat of militant Islam, which killed almost 3,000 Americans on that day. The headlines pound these facts home on a daily basis.

But there are no headlines riveting our attention on a deadlier enemy, one that claims 3,000 American lives every two days - cancer. We hear plenty of news of people who "fight" cancer or "lose the battle" with cancer. "Cancer survivor" is a common appellation in the public discourse. I think almost every American knows someone who has, or has had, this disease.

One in three people will have cancer in their lives, but have you ever seen a headline screaming "epidemic"? If we started using that word, what would happen?

Hunger, refugees, epidemic. They are just names.

So why don't our "leaders" use them?