Hungry.

I was hungry last night.

In order to understand hunger firsthand, I decided to go to bed hungry.  I included what I ate earlier in the day, mostly to hold myself accountable.  Otherwise I would have been tempted to eat extra food to tide me over, which of course would be cheating.

The experiment

9:30 a.m.  Breakfast (One egg, one English muffin)

11:30 a.m.  Lunch (Bowl of soup)

4:00 p.m.  Snack (Ok so I did let myself have an afternoon snack – a bag of popcorn.  But this marks the end of food for the night.)

5:45 p.m.  Bought a cup of coffee.  Cheating?  But on a normal evening, if I were at home, I would have made it myself.  Coffee is pretty cheap, right?  But if I had a dollar to  spare, I would probably just buy a double cheeseburger from McDonald’s Value Menu....

9:50 p.m.  Wow.  I’m really hungry.  I don’t feel like doing homework anymore.  Getting pretty crabby.

10:30 p.m.  Stomach growling.

11:45 p.m.  Drank a lot of water from the drinking fountain, which helped.

12:30 a.m.  Back home and drank three more glasses of water.  

1:00 a.m.  Time for bed.  I can’t help but notice the irony that I’m hungry on Fat Tuesday! 

1:30 a.m.  In bed, but still up.  Not sure if it’s because of the hunger or the coffee I drank to (in part) stave off that hunger.  Hmm.

The aftermath

While this experience did remind me of what one in eight Americans face daily, what I ate earlier in the day matters, too.  Suffice it to say that my organic, grain-fed egg, my 100% whole wheat English muffin, my organic coffee and my fitting in nearly every food group in two meals are far different from the diets of the poor.  Unfortunately, there’s a large distinction between full and nourished.  (But more on that in a later post.)

Thanks for putting up with my complaining – I wanted to capture the experience of hunger, and I hope I did that without trivializing it because for some, this is a chronic problem.  I was counting down the hours until I was “allowed” to eat, but many don't know when they will eat again.  Perhaps it is the man who knows that in February, he must pay the electric bill today and wait until payday to buy groceries.  Perhaps it is a single father whose shoulder injury makes it hard to work.  Perhaps it is the teen who doesn’t have a home, let alone a kitchen to cook in.  Perhaps it is a parent with a little left in the cupboard who leaves it so her child can take a lunch to school tomorrow.  Perhaps it is the retiree waiting for his next Social Security check to come.

I was hungry last night.

But many others were hungry last night, too.

QUIZ YOURSELF and see how much you know about hunger in the United States 

SKIP DINNER and see what one in eight Americans feels on a regular basis

"The Canary in the Coal Mine"

Food pantries and food banks across the country are noticing a startling trend - their lines are growing longer with new faces.  They are the faces of individuals and families with stable jobs and middle-class incomes, who cautiously and humbly come to accept services they never thought they would need.  An article published yesterday by the New York Times reported on food insecurity encroaching on suburbia.

  

“If one of our richest counties has people signing up for food stamps who have never signed up before, that indicates the depth of this problem with the lack of food,” said Kathleen DiChiara, executive director of Community FoodBank of New Jersey “It’s the canary in the coal mine.”

This undoubtedly has implications for food donations; moderate-income households who used to donate food are now receiving it.  Nevertheless, I can't help but wonder how those truly living in poverty feel about the person standing behind them in line taking their bag of food back to a cozy house on a tree-lined cul-de-sac.  But perhaps this is the wake-up call that is needed to catalyze larger efforts to eliminate poverty, rather than alleviate it.  Dr. Anderson of Ohio University agreed.  "The middle class is dropping down into the working poor group.  That’s causing the problems, and we’re realizing that something needs to happen with these people.”

Thank you to Dr. Scanlan for pointing me to this article.

Less for gas = More for food?

For some, gas prices overshadowed grocery bills last summer.

Despite the high price of food, the global economic downturn has caused U.S. gas prices to decrease.  I wondered whether those in poverty are better off because of this.             

Dr. Cynthia Anderson, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Ohio University, said:

I think that when the gas prices were high, what happened is [the economically vulnerable] couldn’t afford to go places . . . They might not have been able to drive in for their job, they might have lost their job because they couldn’t come in regularly, so they couldn’t pay for gas.  Now that gases prices are coming back down, maybe now they can resume some of their normal traveling. I don’t think it will give them any more disposable income, though.

The Silver Lining

Outside of the fluctuating oil prices, the newest crises on Wall Street may not have had the same disastrous effect on the working poor as it did on the middle class.  Anderson, who specializes in low-wage occupations, noted, “[We are] seeing a lot of downsizing [in industrial jobs] but the low-wage jobs . . . . I think are pretty stable.”  She explained that these low-wage jobs are in the “the secondary sector of the service industry.”  Most of these employees are in retail or food industry jobs that withstand bear markets, but they earn the federal minimum wage and are unable to secure benefits.

Nevertheless, the troubled economy may benefit the poor through increased coverage of homelessness, unemployment and poverty.  “Now lower-class, working poor and poor people are getting more attention because the middle class is drawing attention to the general issue,” Anderson said.  “[When] middle class people start losing their houses and their jobs and their food sources  . . . then we do wake up and pay more attention.  And that’s unfortunate, because the lower class and the working poor have always been there and have always been struggling with this.”

Scanlan agreed that when the U.S. endures difficult economic times like the Great Depression and the present people start to realize that forces outside of people’s control that affect their lives.  We begin to see that we do need a safety net because “times are tough and there are downturns that hardworking people fall victim to.”

Housekeeping

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Bad News on Wall Street

America’s economic downturn has mixed consequences for impoverished, working poor and food insecure households.  Food prices are more inflated than ever, making it difficult for some to purchase enough to eat.  Oil prices started the trend by increasing fuel costs.  Commodities “marched to historic highs in July,” coinciding with an all-time peak in the price-per-barrel of crude oil.

A recent report on Money Morning notes that “Despite the decrease in gas prices, the inflation of food prices has not yet caught up and remains high,” forecasting prices to remain high at least at the beginning of 2009. 

For some, the rising cost of food has resulted in the “heat or eat” dilemma, meaning that families must choose between paying for utilities or grocery bills, noted Dr. Stephen J. Scanlan, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Ohio University. For some, the decision is, “I need to either keep my lights on or put food on the plate."

Petitioning Obama

Forty senators approached President Obama before his inauguration to advocate for ending childhood hunger.  One politician wrote, "Deteriorating economic conditions and rising food insecurity and child hunger make it imperative that additional steps be taken to increase access to these programs.”

“We are in the perfect storm of high food prices, growing joblessness, and reduced donations and government spending...and at the eye of the storm are those who are poor and middle class.”

The Huffington Post’s analysis

A Persistent Problem

Nick Claussen, Community Relations Coordinator for the Athens County Department of Job and Family Services, noted that the national economy has taken its toll in the Athens area.  “Unemployment has been pretty high in recent years.  The economy is causing factories to shut down,” Claussen said.  “In Athens County, a lot of businesses left during the past four or five years and haven’t been replaced.”  But all of them would agree on one thing, as Claussen said, “A lot of people are working and just can’t get enough to pay.”

VISIT these sites to read local stories on hunger across the country:

• Tennessee 
  
•  Oregon 
• Missouri
• New York/New Jersey 

 

Empty Stomachs in the Land of the Big Mac

 Super Size Me.

The past few years, we have been inundated with obesity reports.  Adults are fat, now children are fat.  Heart disease and diabetes are increasing.  Too many calories, too little movement.  America the plentiful must be doing a good job of keeping its people well fed.

McDonalds: As American as apple pie

Fact: The difference between the cost of living and annual wage of minimum wage worker in Athens County is more than $9,000 (2006 Poverty Report).

Fact: 52.3 percent of the people in the city of Athens are living in poverty (2000 U.S. Census Data)

Fact: Food insecurity in Appalachian Ohio is above 27 percent (2006 Poverty Report).

Reality: Food insecurity (hunger) isn’t a social issue.  It is one in ten Americans (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2007).  It is hours of labor at the food pantry.  It is going to bed hungry.  It is names and faces and families.

So, who is this affecting?  Where are they?  How can we, as a nation, be both overweight and hungry? And, most importantly, what can we do about it?

SPEAK UP if you know the answers to any of these questions.

COME BACK if you’d like to explore them with me.