Put another way, 1 in every 8 Americans uses a food bank to make ends meet, the survey said.

More than one-third of those surveyed said they would not have been able to pay for basics like rent, utilities and medical care without relying on food banks to offset the cost of their meals — and more than a third said at least one person in their household was working.

“It is not just the unemployed that are going hungry,” said Vicki B. Escarra, chief executive of Feeding America.

Wal-Mart began taking on hunger as a cause in 2005, when it distributed 9.9 million pounds of food to food banks; last year, it provided 116.1 million pounds of food. The company also has donated the services of its staff to help food banks improve lighting and refrigeration and develop ways to increase the amount of fresh food on their shelves.

“We’ve learned a lot about this problem and the kinds of things we can do to help,” Ms. McKenna said. “We’ve learned, for instance, that there is a huge gap in terms of the protein and fresh produce that food banks can deliver, so we’ve learned how to fast-freeze things like meat and dairy. You can’t put 100 pounds of bananas on a truck that isn’t refrigerated and expect them to be edible for long.”

Almost one-third of the food Wal-Mart is donating this year will be fresh, and one of the first cash gifts out of the new grant will go to increasing the number of refrigerated trucks delivering food to food banks. “These are the types of resources we don’t get much from other sources,” Ms. Escarra said.