HUNGER AND STARVATION IN AMERICA?

Thu 3 Dec 2009
By: Bernd Debusmann

Call it a paradox of plenty. In the world’s wealthiest country, home to more obese people than anywhere else on earth, almost 50 million Americans struggled to feed themselves and their children in 2008. That’s one in six of the population. Millions went hungry, at least some of the time. Things are bound to get worse.

This the bleak picture drawn from an annual survey on “household food security” compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and released in mid-November. It showed the highest level of food insecurity since the government started the survey, in 1995, and provided a graphic illustration of the effect of sharply rising unemployment.

This year’s picture will be even bleaker - the unemployment rate more than doubled from the beginning of 2008 to now, at 10.2 percent the highest in a quarter century. It is still climbing, and for many the distance between losing a job and lack of food security is very short.

In keeping with the American predilection for euphemisms, the word “hunger” does not appear in the report which classes food security into several categories, from “marginal” and “low” to “very low.”

Marginal food security means, in the lexicon of the USDA, “anxiety over food shortages or shortage of food in the house.” The second category, low, means “reduced quality, variety or desirability of diet,” but not necessarily less food.

The most severe category, “very low,” used to be labeled “food insecurity with hunger” and is defined as “disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.” That applied to around 17 million people, up from 12 million in 2007. Black and Hispanic families and single-parent households are the most affected.

It is not the kind of hunger — think African famines, skeletal babies with distended bellies — that brought world leaders to a U.N. food summit in Rome this month to boost aid from rich countries for agricultural development in the Third World. The U.S. is a land of plenty, so much so that a study by the University of Arizona a few years ago found that the average household wastes about 14 percent of their food purchases.

Food is so abundant that overeating is more of a problem, numerically and in terms of public health, than under-nutrition. The Food Research and Action Center, a Washington-based advocacy group, makes the point that “poverty can make people more vulnerable to hunger as well as obesity,” one of the reasons being that food high in calories is cheaper than healthy food. For many Americans, hunger and obesity are two sides of the same poverty coin.

(International health statistics put the United States at the top of the obesity league. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight and a third of these are obese.)

INEQUALITY OF THIRD WORLD PROPORTIONS

Vicki Escarra, head of Feeding America, a hunger relief charity that runs 200 food banks in the U.S., has likened the growing difficulties of those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder to conditions in the Third World. She is right in more ways than one.

The USDA report reflects inequality of Third World proportions. While the Great Recession has culled the ranks of American millionaires — by 22 percent according to a September study by the Boston Consulting Group — the gap between rich and poor is not shrinking.

Last year, according to a report by the census bureau, the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans made 11.4 times more than those living on the poverty line. The year before, the ratio was 11.2. At the far end of the economic scale, America’s six largest bank holdings have set aside $112 billion in salaries and bonuses during the first nine months of the year. By year’s end, bonuses might exceed the almost $164 billion paid in 2007, before the credit bubble banks had helped to inflate burst and millions of Americans lost their jobs and savings.

Banks and other financial institutions were rescued by a $700 billion infusion of taxpayer money and news of the bonuses coincided with reports that U.S. wages were at a 19-year low. Which helps explain growing anger among a public long famous for lacking the resentment of the rich that is common in other parts of the world.

After all, a bedrock belief in America held that this is the land of unlimited opportunities where every citizen has an equal chance to succeed and become rich. That requires an assumption that the system is fair. How many Americans still believe that? Last summer, a pair of political scientists, Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs, published a study whose findings included that just 28 percent thought the present distribution of wealth is fair.

More evidence that the gap between myth and reality is shrinking comes from the American Human Development project, a research group which found that “social mobility is now less fluid in the United States than in other affluent nations…a poor child born in Germany, France, Canada or one of the Nordic countries has a better chance to join the middle class in adulthood than an American child born into similar circumstances.”
A better chance to avoid food insecurity, too.

You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com

90 COMMENTS SO FAR

December 2nd, 2009 8:13 pm GMT - Posted by living the american dream
I am living the American dream, I am the child of immgirants (non minority) and have lived around 200% of thew poverty level most of my life. Due to government aid in the form of loans i have been able to secure myself a future through education, and I am currently in medical school.

I have never had food stamps. both my parents worked to enable us to eat. While being poor enough to get financial aid for school and have occasionally had to cut costs in my life to eat, I can honestly say that I have never been not able to afford food, unless it was because I was paying for stuff I didn’t need. I have found the answer to my hunger was to just work more hours.

Now that I see an end in sight to my working 75 hours a week for peanuts I resent the idea of the government providing handouts to people who wont work to eat, life sometimes isn’t fair but no one who is willing to work at minimum wage even will go hungry, the will just have to work harder.

December 2nd, 2009 1:04 pm GMT - Posted by Darrell
People will always find some excuse not to share what they have with someone who has less. Jesus said to the rich young man, “Give what you have to the poor and come follow me,” and that man went sadly away. If you won’t surrender wealth in exchange for God Himself, the prayer cry “God Bless America” from you who are blessed is a spit in the face to the Great I AM, the One True God, the giver of all things.

December 2nd, 2009 12:27 pm GMT - Posted by Brian LeBlanc
The real problem lies at the feet of societies institutions. What we value as a people is reflected in society through private and government programs. The institution of public education is a big influence in this country on our youth. And yet we can’t capture and hold the interest of the student.

We can feed all the hungry people we want and watch them multiply to create larger populations that will not be able to fend for themselves. Just look at the US population. There are more opportunities for traditional education here than anywhere. And yet we are getting worse over time. The only real answer is to give serious thought to tweaking our public institutions. Right now we ask students to sit down, shut up and listen in class. You have nothing to contribute for the most part. How do you engage a child in an unnatural state.

We value empathy in our families and yet we don’t ask our institutions to reflect that value. How do you teach a kid to love his fellow student from a book? I think our real failure is to make empathy the highest priority in our public schools. Instead we require reading, writing, and arithmetic. We don’t give our kids the opportunity to interact with peers in school.

Interaction that will give them the experience of helping others and finding value in themselves. A truly empathetic student always performs better than a thug. There has been much research on cross age peer teaching within our schools. Research done by huge think tanks paid for by the Dept. of Education. This approach taps in to the core motivation of the student, peer pressure. Make the students teach each other and let the teachers become the facilitators.

This changes the priority from a dead focus on facts in books to a living focus on students and facts. It will create a highly collaborative society. This is only one small idea in a sea of opportunity. We need to radically change our institutions if we are to continue to grow our populations of the world in harmony. Feeding the hungry is only a band aid. Teaching the teachable has lasting impact. And reevaluating what is taught and how it is taught is the core issue in my humble opinion.

December 2nd, 2009 2:38 am GMT - Posted by Clemens
I really can not understand how much some people are into that issue when recommending things like:
>>Sell your computer and stop paying for the internet.<<

In my ears it sounds like “shut up!” and a big ignorance to this people, like some readers here would be just happy if these people left without any voice or opportunity.

Selling the used computer will bring how much? 100-200$ ? And canceling internet won’t save much as well.

It is not like canceling the WSJ subscription you haven’t read for several month, or the country-club, yacht-club memberships which are luxury.

I guess America is not so different to the places i have been so far. And quite everywhere having access to cheap information via internet, be able to search for jobs there, read news is valuable really much if a person wanna stay part of the society. The ability to communicate, and get to the job every morning are vital for keeping some social standard and job. Or could anyone imagine getting a reasonable job without having an address, and number where to be contacted?

Sure, there are things like (cable) TV, cigarettes, alcohol which are really not good.
But usually drug abuse is just the result of many circumstances. People without hope, or opportunities trying to get calm over and over again by these stuff, or to blur out their own miserable reality by consumption. …

December 1st, 2009 10:56 pm GMT - Posted by Starving Student
I am an independent self supporting college student. I work 36 hours a week and go to school full time. I my job as a security guard (which I work at during the night as I have classes in the day) pays me $7.50 an hour. My monthly salary usually about $700.

After paying rent on my tiny cupboard of a studio apartment, in downtown LA, (which I live in for its relative affordability to most of LA’s terrible rent and its close proximity to the subway that I use to get to school and work) I have about enough money left for little more than cheap bread, rice and water.

I cannot afford to eat vegetables very often. Fruit is a luxury. I only eat meat when someone gives me some.

I work hard. I am not a drunk or a drug addict. I am not lazy. I am a college student and dont have time, credentials or experience enough to get a better job. No one gives me money. Im not living off mommy and daddy like so many college students in this country can afford to do.

I dont have the money to eat as well as I should be able to. Its just that simple people. Some Americans are working hard and struggling. Some of us cant seem to get a break in this lousy economy no matter what we do.

I used to go down to the mission and eat free breakfast with the homeless. I was embarrassed and ashamed. I had no other option. It was either eat with the homeless or dont eat at all.

December 1st, 2009 10:12 pm GMT - Posted by Richard
RESENTFULOFLIES writes: “…the rest are our liability, and should be shamed and not appeased.”

And the bankers and financial “wizards” who, due to their unbridled greed and barefaced selfishness, crashed the economy deserve what? According to you, they deserve the public to hand them $12 trillion in cash and loan guarantees. They deserve looking after, nurturing, and, when they scream and cry, having dropped their rattle, for us to dig deep into our pockets and hand them unimaginable sums that no one - not even the poor! - receive.

They also have a right to buy politicians and make the system work for them, rather than for us - right?

The fact is the United States has to pillage from poor nations to feed its economic growth. No nation has infinite natural resources - growth is finite! The reality is the super rich and people like you, “resentfuloflies”, are impoverishing others in order to enrich yourself. Hypocrite is a word that comes to mind.

December 1st, 2009 8:57 pm GMT - Posted by Benny Acosta
ResentfulofLies

You came here with basically nothing and so you had appreciation for the little things that you had. Those who come up in our culture are not taught to be appreciative.

We grew up in a country where everything is being sold to you from the day you take your first breath. If you pay attention you will notice that everything is a commercial. Everyone wants you to buy what they offer.

And in many cases if you do not have a minimum of material possessions you will not be allowed to participate in many areas of life. You need a cell phone or at least a house phone. You need a car or some means to pay for transit. You need a place to sleep. You need to eat. And you need to provide yourself at least a minimum of comfort.

ALL of these messages are repeated to you daily. When you live this way from your earliest memories, and no one teaches restraint, responsibility, and accountability, what can one expect?

The poor in this country are poor because they are taught to be poor. They are taught to spend (consumerism). They are taught to care only for themselves. They are taught that there is no such thing as enough. They are taught that they are not worthy of respect if they don’t have material possession.

You were rich when you got here. You had a spirit. You believed in yourself. And you were taught that common sense is valuable. Poverty begins in the heart.

December 1st, 2009 11:04 am GMT - Posted by ResentfulofLies
I am not sure what the article author’s ultimate goal is, but what he writes is an outright lie. There are no poor peope in this country, unless he counts a few junkies or mental institution dropouts who are no longer capable to maintain a normal living. They are adifferent story.The rest are our liability, and should be shamed and not appeased. I know because my family came to this country wth $93 in our pocket and a little toddler to be taken care of. We were scared, young, inexperienced, but willing to work and observe what others do to make living. So we did. We are not wealthy, but we had enough common sense to buy a house that we can actually afford, adjust our budget to our incomes, etc.

December 1st, 2009 8:30 am GMT - Posted by Winthorpe
Well, I’ll never go hungry. Im good looking, smart and rich, and I work in Banking.

My family are respectable pillars of the community, and we go to church every sunday.

I attended a prestigious private college, and I know all the right people.

The American Dream is a reality, I assure you.

Winthorpe A King III

December 1st, 2009 6:50 am GMT - Posted by Steve
This is serious! Fat people worried about not having enough junk food in the fridge for the evening! And yes, it’s all because of those evil successful people who pay for it all.

Oh noo! where can I give more money than I’m already taxed to help these gastropods get even fatter?