A nation of gluttons? Hardly. Millions of Americans can’t afford proper nourishment
Just because it's cheap, doesn't mean it isn't costing you. Image by Getty Images via Daylife
The U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) released its latest world hunger report, and the findings are pretty dismal: Due to higher food prices and a broken world economy, roughly a billion people in the world are now considered “undernourished.”
More bluntly — but just as accurately — they’re starving:
Another 40 million people have been pushed into hunger this year primarily due to higher food prices, according to preliminary estimates published by FAO today. This brings the overall number of undernourished people in the world to 963 million, compared to 923 million in 2007 and the ongoing financial and economic crisis could tip even more people into hunger and poverty, FAO warned.
“If lower prices and the credit crunch associated with the economic crisis force farmers to plant less food, another round of dramatic food prices could be unleashed next year,” [FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem said]. “The 1996 World Food Summit target, to reduce the number of hungry by half by 2015, requires a strong political commitment and investment in poor countries of at least $30 billion per year for agriculture and social protection of the poor.”
via FAONewsroom: Number of hungry people rises to 963 million.
As the summary notes, the overwhelming majority of the world’s hungry live in developing countries. A full 65 percent live in just seven countries: Bangladesh, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. Close to two-thirds live in Asia.
But what about closer to home? Unfortunately, the report doesn’t examine “undernourishment” in the United States, presumably because the numbers weren’t deemed significant enough. But that’s hardly surprising since we’re a nation of obese gluttons, right?
Obese, sometimes, but hardly well-nourished. As Sasha Abramsky asserts in his new book, Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and How to Fix It, and in this article in the Guardian, “tens of millions” of people across America don’t have enough money to buy the food they need to survive in the wake of this recession. A full 25 million rely on food pantries, while “another 13 million aren’t linked to a food distribution network, and 14 million children are at risk of going hungry on any given day.”
That’s a lot of people, and one wonders how hungry people in America and other developed countries failed to make the U.N.s report. Perhaps the paradox of obesity has something to do with it. “It’s not exactly news to note that America is an increasingly obese country,” Abramsky writes…
Yet, that obesity generally has more to do with poverty than abundance, more to do with poor people eating the wrong sorts of food because things like hotdogs and corn chips and soda fill you up and give you a shot of energy without costing an arm and a leg.
via America’s hunger crisis | Sasha Abramsky | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
The truth, it seems, lies not in the content of one’s caricature, but in the calorie content of what’s affordable. And these days, people are affording less and less:
[T]he latest estimates are that about 32 million Americans (more than one in 10) are now receiving government food stamps. Texas alone has approximately three million people on food stamps.
Nationally, however, the food stamp programme routinely misses about one-in-three of those who are poor enough to qualify – and in states like California that number’s closer to one-in-two. People are afraid to apply, embarrassed to apply, can’t take time off from work to go to aid offices during the week or don’t know about the programme – a problem likely to worsen as funding for state outreach programmes takes a hit because of state budget crises. That means there are at least 10 million more people now poor enough for aid who don’t receive it.
And many of those who do access food stamps qualify for a humiliatingly small bare minimum in food aid – in many cases only $16 a month – because they still have some assets. In fact, the maximum a person on food stamps can receive is about $50 per week, slightly more than $2 per meal.
Some will be quick to point out that much of the developing world lives on less than $2 per day. Granted. But, put in context, $2 goes a lot further in the developing world than in developed countries. Two dollars will, of course, buy you two items on many McDonald’s value meals — which, really, is a hell of deal, one I’m not ashamed to admit having taken advantage of a few times between freelance checks. (Meanwhile, $2 at Whole Foods might buy you a few tomatoes, or a single scoop of something healthy from the lunch bar.) But despite the quantities available for the poor at fast food joints, we’re only back to our original, paradox with regard to obesity — and the myriad health problems associated with it.
Fatal organ failure is fatal organ failure, whether it’s the kidneys of starving person in Ethiopia or a heart attack in Mississippi — America’s fattest state, three years running, and, not coincidentally, also America’s poorest, as measured by median household income.
It just goes to show that one way or another, poverty finds ways to kill people regardless of creed or color.
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There was a great study that was featured on NPR, which talked about how being poor is actually more expensive. I live in a low-income apartment complex, mostly because my family is one-income family of 5, and I see the people around me, who are genuinely poor. They are fat, and bored, and angry. They can afford to get churros from the cart, but not whole-grain wheat chips from Trader Joe’s or Nob Hill. They don’t have the extra time to make something healthier either, so they are stuck. There are fat, rich people, but lots of wealthy people are in fairly good shape, because they can spend time exercising, and eat right. And of course children are going to end up more or less like their parents, because they are born into it. A great unheralded tragedy.
Totally. And you could take everything you just wrote and apply it directly to life in much of small town and rural America as well — in Indiana, for instance, where I’m living these days. Substitute “churro” with “Chicken McNugget” and that pretty much nails it.
In response to another comment. See in context »It would be great if Costco, Wal-Mart and other “big box” stores could be convinced to work toward improving their customers’ health. Why couldn’t the most promoted foods be the most nutritious? Foods could also be grouped together as simple, healthy, cheap menus.
It’s not only money: Many people don’t have the knowledge, time or psychic energy to pull together good meals, as mentioned in the comment above.
I think it’s really time everybody stopped whining and finger-pointing about obese Americans–many of them children and some obese through no fault of their own–and stepped in to solve the problem. While we’re throwing zillions of dollars around, why not toss some toward this? A Food Corps maybe? Some sort of combined government/volunteer effort?
Big as my beef is with Wal-Mart, it has actually enacted a precedent of sorts for what you’re talking about with its discount prescription drug program — still in a sort of pilot phase last I heard, but a good example of how powerful corporations can actually step in and do some good once and a while.
I see no reason why Wal-Mart couldn’t take the lead in this respect as well. God knows they’re doing fine financially. And they could use the good PR, at least in my book.
In response to another comment. See in context »I am not sure how this works and i am probably on the wrong site but my MOM and sister recently passed and i have no-one to talk too. I am having a very big problem and i am in an abusive (mental and physical) relationship. While my boyfriend/fiance-not really a good idea but no choice right now-he just refuses to leave. Enough of that-my problem is i went over to the neighbors to use the phone-and he offered me pain medicine-i offered money and he wouldn’t take it. I have snuck over there whenever i got a chance (2 more times) because i needed them. The last time i went over there he tried to grab my breasts and i told him don’t touch me and don’t tell John-my boyfrind i was over here because he would hurt me and him to. Over the last couple days he has been talking to bill outside and Bill likes him. I told him immed. bill could never know. Just a little bit ago he called I don’t know how he got my number-I am afraid he got it on the internet and knows too much about me. I freaked and said why are you calling me? Bill could be here? He said-no-his car is gone. I said you can’t call here anyway and please don’t tell Bill you talked to me and he said he would think about it but he really wanted me to come over. I said you can’t-i have a ring on my finger and I am not available. He kept trying to talk me into coming over and l said no-I am going to bed and Bill will be home anytime. Within 5 mjnutes he left his apt. I am afraid-every time i go outside he always stares at me and gives me the creeps too much and he is pretty much telling me if i don’t do what he wants he is going to tell bill I have been over there-but I swear I never let him touch me. He knows i am scared to death of bill finding out so since i won’t go over there I am afraid he will tell bill-plus i have been stalked before but never so quickly. Bill is very jealous and if he finds out i was in that man’s house he will think the worst-can anyone help? Give me some advice? Thanks.