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
What a challenging concept, Taylor. I know I take my fully stocked refrigerator for granted, and I think a bit of fasting (especially during Lent) will help keep my "problems" in perspective. It's hard to imagine what true hunger looks like from my position of food security.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you recommend people do, beyond sympathizing, to help those in need? Especially us college students who are financially challenged?
I enjoyed reading about your fasting experiment. It doesn't sound like you ate very much at all that day, which made me wonder how much those living in poverty eat, on average, per day. That seems a bit difficult to gauge, but is it at least one meal a day...or even less?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I took online quiz...90% without even blinking! I was expecting the quiz to be a bit more difficult, but I was excited to see that you added an element of interactivity to your blog!
Haha yeah, even if you don't know the answers to the questions, you can kind of guess. But still, I thought it was a fun way to introduce some new information, which was probably Feeding America's intention as well. Glad you tried it out!
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting, Jeanna! I responded in a separate post: http://invisiblehunger.blogspot.com/2009/03/housekeeping-poor-college-students-can.html
ReplyDelete