A Place at the Table

30% of American families are food insecure

(that's 50 million Americans...including 1 in 4 children!)

**Note: this post is very jargon-y. There's a list of helpful definitions at the bottom for those of you who aren't familiar. 

Last week I joked about not having anything to eat at my apartment other than uncooked pasta and tortilla chips. The thing is that I never once was hungry or went without food the entire week. Or, thankfully, at any point in my life thus far. 

Unfortunately, many Americans (and really, many humans all over the globe) don't share the same experience as me. 

True hunger is not a joke. It's not that feeling we get after not eating for a few hours. It's much worse than that. Although I have never been truly hungry due to a lack of food, there were a few occasions in the past year when I was hungry because I was sick and unable to absorb nutrients. I remember when I was growing up and we would get the little flyers about the starving children in Africa. Somehow it took me quite a few years to realize that there were hungry people right here in the US, but that they just didn't look like the African children in the pamphlet. 

Did you know there were hungry people in the United States?

1 in 6 Americans are hungry

I've had quite the journey with hunger awareness. It all started in high school. I was invited to participate with Hastings College's "Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week" (HHAW). I don't remember exactly which events I participated in but I'd imagine it was packing meals for Open Table. We made sandwiches for Open Table for different church events as well throughout high school. I served 4 years on the HHAW planning committee as an HC student. Each year we had slightly different focuses, but we talked about both domestic and global hunger. We packed lunch sacks and made sandwiches for Open Table, we made meal packets to be sent with Kids Against Hunger and Orphan Grain Train, we wrote letters to politicians about the food related legislation with Bread for the World, and we had a dinner based on a random assignment of our global socioeconomic status (top 15% gets a steak dinner, middle 35% gets rice and beans and the remaining 50% of people get small portions of rice and water) with the Oxfam Hunger Banquet. Outside of the HHAW week, I was also involved with the Food 4 Thought Backpack Program, taking backpacks filled with food to area elementary schools so that kids could eat over the weekend. 

I grew up in a town of roughly 26,000 people and there are at least 8 organizations that I can think of off the top of my head that serve those in Adams County who are hungry. Eight organizations! If you think that hungry people are just living abroad, you are, regrettably, quite wrong.

Mississippi has the highest rates of food insecurity in the nation (21% of its citizens). It also has the highest rates of obesity. 

And thus my journey continues. I lived in Memphis, TN for a substantial amount of time during college. I worked at a place called Church Health Center. For a variety of reasons, food insecurity included, Memphians struggle with food. There are plenty of areas within the metro area that experience food insecurity. These are the areas that are also struggling most drastically with obesity. That doesn't make sense, you say. How can hungry people also be carrying around extra weight? 

It's because cheap food is low-nutrient, high-calorie, high-fat, high-sugar and high-sodium (think McDonald's $1 menu versus exclusively shopping at Whole Foods). Families do the best they can to make the dollar stretch. Unfortunately this means putting food into their bodies that are not healthy, and ultimately much more expensive due to the co-morbidities associated with obesity (hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease/heart attack, stroke, sleep apnea, asthma, GERD, gallstones, infertility, gout, depression, etc). But at least they are no longer hungry. 

23.5 million Americans live in food deserts. 75% of those food deserts are urban. 

Fast forward to last year. I was invited to be part of the World Hunger Committee through the ELCA. This past weekend, we had an event called "Setting the Table" in which participants learned about CSAs, talked about raising awareness about issues of hunger and about Table Grace Cafe here in Omaha, and we watched the documentary "A Place at the Table." You can hear all about the event here with the gang from Things That Matter land. 

It was an incredibly moving event! I haven't had the chance to be involved much with the committee because of school, but I learned SO much this weekend and made some incredible contacts with people in higher places dealing with global health and hunger issues. All of the facts I've randomly been spouting throughout the blog are from the documentary. It is on Netflix if you have any desire to watch it! 

So here are a few more facts for your enlightenment:

• The US ranks the worst on International Monetary Fund's list of Advanced Economies for food insecurity
• 1 in 2 kids in the US will be on food assistance programs during their schooling years.
• US hunger was virtually eliminated during the 1970s, but funding to governmental programs fighting hunger was diminished to pay for war-time costs. 
• The notion that "hungry people deserve it" wasn't established until the 1980s.
• 17 million children are hungry in the US. 

Hunger has a wide impact beyond just the feeling of nothing in your stomach. It affects children's abilities to learn in school thus affecting their educational outcomes and lowering their potential and marketability as adults. It has drastic health effects, some of which I already discussed. It is costly to the US government...and not just because of food stamps and the free and reduced lunch program. The bulk of the cost actually comes from the adverse health effects of living in a food desert. 

The actual cost of hunger and food insecurity in the US each year is roughly $167 billion.

So what's being done about the issue? There are over 4,000 food banks in the US. Obviously that's not cutting it since there are still people hungry, but they are going a LONG way in stamping out the problem. We talked about two really great Nebraska-bred solutions to hunger at the conference.

• One of my favorite Omaha establishments is Table Grace Cafe. It's mission is to "foster a healthy community by offering great food prepared and served in a graceful manner to anyone who walks through the door." It's a pay-as-you-are-able kind of place...so if you don't have the cash, you do a chore in exchange for some delectable food prepared by Chef Matt. They have both meat and non-meat options, so it will feed your body, mind and soul guaranteed! They also serve brunch on Saturdays with delicious cinnamon rolls, so if you want to go please let me know!
• The Open Shelf Campus Pantry is just in its infancy still, but it's a place at UNL that offers food and hygiene products/toiletries for UNL students. It's housed by my good friends at the Lutheran Center, although it's open to any student. I'd imagine it will become wildly popular shortly. As mentioned in the news story, UNK also has a similar program that is quite popular. 

So, there's hope that hunger could be conquered. But it will take a massive overhaul of the way we view hungry people as a society as well as a drastic change in governmental assistance to those that are hungry. It is not a person's fault if they are hungry. Please don't blame them, advocate for a more filled stomach on their behalf. 

And while you're at it, share your sandwich with them cause they could use the nourishment to their body. And I'd bet a pretty penny that nourishing each of your spirits couldn't hurt either!

Definitions:

CSAs- community shared/supported agriculture; a group of people who pledged to support a local farm(s) with growers and consumers sharing the risks and benefits of food production. Usually CSA recipients get a basket of freshly harvested fruits/veggies/meats/eggs/herbs once per week. 

food deserts- an area, typically urban, where healthy, affordable foods (fruits, veggies, etc) are difficult to obtain

food insecurity- the availability of food and one's access to it--not knowing where your next meal is coming from

Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week (HHAW)- a week at Hastings College dedicated to bring awareness to issues of hunger and homelessness both domestically and abroad

Open Table- A program in Hastings, NE which provides a sack lunch, no questions asked, to anyone who needs one, every day of the week. They also serve a hot meal once per week.