This week representatives from food banks throughout the state of New Jersey asked the state legislature for help in assisting the thousands of people in need of not only a Thanksgiving dinner, but food aid year round.

[Espy1] "We were very worried - it was keeping me up at night - because we were so seriously short of turkeys. A little more than a week ago we only had twenty and we were serving 2,600 families."

Patricia Espy is the Execututive Director of the Center for Food Action in New Jersey, says she's seen a fifteen percent increase in the number of people seeking assistance from last year.

[Espy2] "When I first started seventeen years ago a lot of that was single moms and kids, but more and more we're seeing two parent households with both parents working and they're still not coming up to the federal poverty level, which is about $18,600 for a family of four."

New Jersey allocated just $338,000 for emergency food this year. According to the Food Research and Action Center more than 33 million Americans suffer from food insecurity.