A report released Tuesday by the Food Bank for New York City has found that approximately four million New Yorkers—one in two—are having trouble paying for groceries, a 26 percent increase since the last survey in February. The Hunger Experience 2008 Update also found that college degrees are increasingly useless protection against indigence; one out of every three (36 percent) NYC college graduates had difficulty affording needed food this year, up from 11 percent in 2003. Lucy Cabrera, the food bank's president, says, "The results of this report are devastating. These numbers should be a wake-up call for all New Yorkers." The Food Bank NYC sources and distributes food to the estimated 1.3 million New Yorkers who rely on emergency food. Today you've got until noon to help the Food Bank by bidding on one of their cool celebrity decorated lunchboxes. (Just please don't outbid us on Mike D's Jacob the Jeweler box.) more ›

The third annual Lunchbox Auction to raise money for the Food Bank for New York City kicked off last night with a celebrity fundraiser at Milk Studios in the Meatpacking District. Also benefiting The Lunchbox Fund of South Africa, the auction features over 77 lunchboxes custom designed by celebrities (and/or their handlers). Among the more eye catching boxes were avant-garde Chicago chef Grant Achatz's abstract deconstruction of a lunchbox, Tony Bennett's painting of a happy pooch (see below), and Michael Stipe's three lunchboxes with bronze cassettes and a camera embedded in molds of chocolate, salt and jello. more ›