Reagan Cuts in Nutrition Aid Blamed for Growing Problem : 20 Million Go Hungry in U.S. ‘Epidemic,’ Survey Says

WASHINGTON — At least 20 million Americans now suffer from varying degrees of hunger in a “public health epidemic” that is growing because of Reagan Administration cuts in federal nutrition assistance programs, according to a yearlong, privately funded national medical survey released Tuesday.

The report by the Physician Task Force on Hunger, a group of 22 prominent doctors and academicians, is the most comprehensive attempt to study the extent of hunger and malnutrition in the United States since a controversial White House task force said last year that it was unable to “substantiate allegations of rampant hunger” in the nation.

But the physicians’ group said that hunger is not difficult to find and blamed the alleged increase on “governmental failure” by the Administration. Hunger could be eradicated in six months, it contended, if $5 billion to $7 billion were spent to restore or expand nutrition programs.

‘Political Problem’

“Hunger is a political problem, and our government leaders must end their laissez-faire attitude toward this serious epidemic,” J. Larry Brown, task force chairman and a faculty member at Harvard University School of Public Health, told a news conference. He said hunger has reappeared after being “virtually eliminated” in the 1970s.

Spokesmen for the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services said they had not seen the 147-page survey, entitled “Hunger in America: The Growing Epidemic,” and would not comment on it.

But the report is likely to fuel the national debate over budget priorities as Congress considers the Administration’s proposal to cut $800 million in fiscal 1986 from federal nutrition programs, including school lunch and breakfast, the child care food program and special supplemental feeding for pregnant women, infants and children.

Proposed 16% Cut

Members of the physicians’ group will testify next month before the House Education and Labor Committee, which opened hearings Tuesday into the proposed 16% cut in spending for subsidized meals for school children. Committee staff members estimate that about 7.3 million children and 17,900 schools could be forced out of the program if the cuts are enacted.

“This, we believe, would be a national tragedy--a tragedy for this generation of young people and those who follow,” Gene White, an official with the American School Food Service Assn., told the committee.

Members of the physicians’ group acknowledged that their estimates are imprecise, but Brown said that up to two-thirds of the 20 million people classified as hungry are children. Many Americans, he said, go hungry several days to a week each month when they run out of money or food stamps.

Undersized Infants

Most often, hunger in America is seen as moderate malnutrition or “silent undernutrition,” causing undersized infants and children, lower resistance to infections and chronic diseases and cognitive impairment, said Dr. Aaron Shirley, head of the Mississippi Medical and Surgical Assn.

The physicians said they made conservative assumptions based on data from several dozen national and state surveys and health studies, emergency food program records and hundreds of interviews in eight states.

“Nobody, including us, knows the real number of hungry people in the United States,” said Dr. Victor W. Sidel, president of the American Public Health Assn. and a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

John Raisian, who headed the now-disbanded White House panel, said he had not seen the physicians’ report, but he questioned their analysis and disputed that 20 million Americans are hungry.

‘Crucial Question’

“It depends on how you define hunger,” Raisian, president of Unicon Research Corp. in West Los Angeles, said in an interview. “That’s a crucial question. I agree you can find individuals in sad shape.”

But Dr. Gordon P. Harper of Harvard Medical School emphasized that hunger is widespread in every region. “We have not been anywhere in eight states and 12 months . . . where we had to look hard to find hungry people,” he said.

The report declared repeatedly that hunger “is the result of federal government policies.” Private-sector initiatives and voluntary emergency food programs, it said, “have not been adequate to curb the growth of hunger in the nation or to prevent malnutrition and other forms of ill health associated with hunger.”

The physicians’ group was supported by grants to Harvard University School of Public Health from 12 private foundations.