US stocks might be rallying to a 13 month high and retail sales have bounced on the back of resurgent car sales but look behind the numbers and you will see the US is a long way off from recovery. According to a new report from the United States Department of Agriculture, America is struggling to feed its population.

The report says that 17 million US households were going without food at some time during the year. Indeed, 6.7 million households were so short on food that the eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and their food intake reduced, at least some time during the year, because they couldn’t afford enough food. That's 49 million Americans or one in seven and it's at a 14 year high.

Alarmingly, researchers are now saying that half of all US children and 90% of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood.

Stephen Quinn, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Wal-Mart Stores, recently told a conference that families are "literally lining up at midnight" at Wal-Mart stores waiting to buy food when paychecks or government checks land in their accounts.

The rest of America must be looking at the stock market as some sort of sick joke. With unemployment now likely to stay in double digit territory for some time, people are likely to keep going hungry. Parts of the most developed economy are starting to look like the Third World.