In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children - more than one in five across the US - were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million children the year before. And the number of children who were sometimes hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

The findings are from a snapshot of food in America that the US Department of Agriculture has issued every year since 1995, based on Census Bureau surveys. It documents Americans who are scrounging for adequate food - people living with some amount of ''food insecurity'' - and those whose food shortages are so severe they are hungry.

The report is the first produced during the tenure of President Barack Obama, who pledged in his campaign for the White House last year to eliminate hunger among children by 2015, a goal no previous president has set. His administration has not produced a fully-fledged plan to meet that objective, but White House and agriculture officials have said they are developing policies. Among the first is a decision to use $US85 million freed up by Congress to experiment with ways to get food to more children during the summer holidays, when subsidised school breakfasts and lunches are unavailable.

The Government's next significant forum for debating how to improve access to food is scheduled for the coming year, when Congress is to renew the country's main law covering food and nutrition for children.

The report suggests the main federal programs intended to help people struggling to get food are only partly fulfilling their purpose. Slightly more than half the people surveyed who reported they had food shortages said that they had, in the previous month, participated in one of the Government's main anti-hunger and nutrition programs: food stamps, subsidised school lunches or the nutrition program for women with babies or young children.