Lean Pickings: Arm One Man and Starve the Other
One of my strongest food-related memories from growing up was a dinner I shared with my family as a preteen. I had a strong aversion to tomatoes, and my father had made one of his mother's recipes: cold macaroni and cheese with tuna and whole cherry tomatoes. When I was small, I used to deal with foods I didn't like by swallowing them whole with a whole lot of water - lima beans were no issue, and brussel sprouts were doable, with a little partitioning. But tomatoes were too big for my tiny throat, and too squishy to cut in half without tasting when I put them in my mouth. My father grew impatient as I ate the macaroni and cheese without the tomatoes, demanding that I eat one. Forcing one into my mouth, I felt how big it was against my throat and tears welled up in my eyes as I bit down. The taste was vile, as I expected, and I promptly threw up. My parents shouted at me, I was spanked, told to brush my teeth and go to bed. I was grounded. It really sticks with me, though, what my father's first reaction to my physical illness was.
"There are children starving in Africa!"
It's funny how we're quick to point fingers at our global neighbors to use them as an example. When we do so, however, we cut ourselves off from seeing the truth of what's happening in our own backyard. If you went back in time and told my 9-year-old self that children in America were starving, I wouldn't believe you. Ten years later, I know a lot better.
A Place at the Table tells the stories of several families suffering from food poverty through the eyes of various members of American communities - a young girl named Rosie living in Colorado details how hunger effects every aspect of her life, making it impossible to focus in class. Barbie Izquierdo, a single mother living in Philidelphia, laments how getting a job actually disqualified her from financial aid because her income was too great -- leaving her with the same amount of money for food that she had while on food stamps with even less time to spend with her children, one of whom suffers from severe health complications due to hunger.
The issue with American food assistance problems is that, rather than attempt to heal the population of hunger and poverty by providing more federal assistance, they make poverty statistics "improve" by redefining what constitutes as poverty. This way, the "poverty line" remains the same, but the same amount of people continue to suffer. More and more money goes to the army, sending American citizens into warzones to brutalize other countries that our leaders have decided are inferior, selling the old line about American exceptionalism line while gleefully adding to military spending and pinching pennies on government assistance programs.
According to this article by Anthony Gucciardi, about one week's worth of American military spending would be enough to solve hunger worldwide. Even then, it makes you wonder: do the people who talk about "ending world hunger" think about actually ending the state of hunger, or just the minimum amount of hunger alleviation that would be deemed acceptable? That is to say, are they concerned with actually making sure that the starving are getting the proper nutrition, or are these estimates based on the government definition of what constitutes as "fed"?
Worldhunger.org insists that we produce enough food to support the human population, despite population booms -- so why is starvation still going strong worldwide?
"There are children starving in Africa!"
It's funny how we're quick to point fingers at our global neighbors to use them as an example. When we do so, however, we cut ourselves off from seeing the truth of what's happening in our own backyard. If you went back in time and told my 9-year-old self that children in America were starving, I wouldn't believe you. Ten years later, I know a lot better.
A Place at the Table tells the stories of several families suffering from food poverty through the eyes of various members of American communities - a young girl named Rosie living in Colorado details how hunger effects every aspect of her life, making it impossible to focus in class. Barbie Izquierdo, a single mother living in Philidelphia, laments how getting a job actually disqualified her from financial aid because her income was too great -- leaving her with the same amount of money for food that she had while on food stamps with even less time to spend with her children, one of whom suffers from severe health complications due to hunger.
The issue with American food assistance problems is that, rather than attempt to heal the population of hunger and poverty by providing more federal assistance, they make poverty statistics "improve" by redefining what constitutes as poverty. This way, the "poverty line" remains the same, but the same amount of people continue to suffer. More and more money goes to the army, sending American citizens into warzones to brutalize other countries that our leaders have decided are inferior, selling the old line about American exceptionalism line while gleefully adding to military spending and pinching pennies on government assistance programs.
According to this article by Anthony Gucciardi, about one week's worth of American military spending would be enough to solve hunger worldwide. Even then, it makes you wonder: do the people who talk about "ending world hunger" think about actually ending the state of hunger, or just the minimum amount of hunger alleviation that would be deemed acceptable? That is to say, are they concerned with actually making sure that the starving are getting the proper nutrition, or are these estimates based on the government definition of what constitutes as "fed"?
Worldhunger.org insists that we produce enough food to support the human population, despite population booms -- so why is starvation still going strong worldwide?
The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day according to the most recent estimate that we could find (FAO 2002, p.9). The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food.
- worldhunger.org
The average person requires about 2000 calories in a day to be properly fed -- for reference's sake, that's 2 kilocalories per day. While calories can obviously come from various sources - some healthy and some not - with the price of organic food what it is, caloric intake in this example will have to suffice. Multiply that measly 2 kilocalories by 365 (or the number of days in a year), and that's 730 kilocalories to feed a single human being annually. Those sound like pretty small numbers, though, don't they? Well, the figures get even more grotesque from here.
Divide 2720 (the number of kilocalories that the world produces per person per day) by 730 (the amount that the average person needs to consume in a year to be healthy) and you get 3.73 - almost 4. According to these statistics, the amount of calories produced by the food industry per day could feed the entire human population for four whole years.
Divide 2720 (the number of kilocalories that the world produces per person per day) by 730 (the amount that the average person needs to consume in a year to be healthy) and you get 3.73 - almost 4. According to these statistics, the amount of calories produced by the food industry per day could feed the entire human population for four whole years.
In the above illustrations, each block represents 2 kilocalories. The blue block represents the number of kilocalories that the average person consumes in one day. The green blocks equal about 520 kilocalories: a little under 1/5th of the amount of calories produced by the global agricultural industry per person per day.
And still, people like Barbie Izquierdo suffer, juggling studying, childcare, and a job without the assistance of foodstamps. According to the official SNAP website, the average family of three can receive about $366 per month in food stamps: $133 per person in a month, about $4.43 per person per day. Now, when I was a kid, I always wanted to buy Bubbletape -- a long strip of coiled bubblegum that could be ripped off with a beveled edge, sort of like a tape dispenser. One unit of Bubbletape costs about $1.79. With the amount alotted by food stamps, a person could buy two rolls of Bubbletape a day. The amount of calories contained in a roll of Bubbletape for a day's worth of foodstamps is 20. 20 calories out of 2000. For reference to our earlier equation, that's 0.02 kilocalories. The amount necessary to meet a caloric intake of 2000 calories is 100 times that amount.
Now, no person on food stamps is going to try to survive on Bubbletape, but even the alternatives aren't much better. Say you could get a box of macaroni and cheese, around $1.50 per box -- that's about 385 calories per serving. You'd still need over 5 servings to meet the 2000 calorie recommended minimum. The food situation in America is hopeless, yet government officials celebrate and pat themselves on the back when they raise the amount of money allocated to food stamps by mere cents. That's nowhere near enough to make a significant change. SNAP must be held accountable, as well; for all that upper class conservatives like to complain about how the government rewards "laziness", the startling fact is that in a way, the supplemental nutrition assistance program [SNAP] does.
Though SNAP requires some applicants to apply for work or job training (allowing 36 months to pick up a job, and only allowing the applicant to use food stamps for 3 of those months until they manage to get the job), they will cut off benefits for anyone who cannot find work within that time period. While that sounds reasonable enough, the snap program actually discourages those who receive food stamps from saving up their money. Unless one of the members of the family benefiting from food stamps is disabled or either at or above the age of 60, the maximum amount of countable assets that a family can accrue amounts to $2,000. If a struggling family manages to save up more than that, according to SNAP, they are no longer eligible for the few crumpled bills they once used to pay for nutrition. Now, judging by the "supplemental" in the title, the foodstamps provided by SNAP aren't meant to be the powerhouse of a poor family's food budget, but for many, they are.
If those holding government office are going to simultaneously criticize the poor for "mooching" off of government handouts while suggesting that they get jobs, the program needs to be seriously reworked. Rather than immediately cutting off benefits for a family who has surpassed the $2,000 maximum in countable assets, the same 3 out of 36 month grace period should be allowed as the one given to those who enter into the program looking for a job. This way, the family can learn to manage their income, but if they need that extra pocket full of stamps, they won't starve because they overestimated how much money they had in the bank. In addition, those who employ adults who are transitioning out of the need for SNAP benefits could possibly receive a small bonus for keeping those employees on. To go the extra mile, all perishable foods from large grocery stores should be donated to local food pantries if they are nearing their expiration date and haven't sold yet -- this could make for a rare opportunity for poor families to eat something nutritious. To waste untouched food in a country where people are dying for more is heinous. Hell, the government could even reward restaurants who donate their leftovers to pantries or soup kitchens if it helped create incentive.
Where are we going to get the money to do this, though? Are we going to cut more money from school lunch programs? Environmental programs? The food industry certainly isn't going to do much to help, since it artificially invented the issues in the first place.
No, the defense budget needs to be cut back. We don't need nearly as much power as we pay for and our country has no more right than any other to police the world, especially not while we point the finger at "uncivilized" countries while our own citizens die in the streets or end up hooked up to IVs due to malnourishment. If we tripled the amount of money that we - as a nation - spent on food assistance, it would still not equal 1/7th of the defense budget. We can afford to carve off a few billion dollars here and there. It sounds like a lot to me, as someone who considers $10 a lot of money, but if we can afford to spend $29 billion dollars over what the Pentagon thinks is rational on the military budget, then there's no reason why we can't throw some of that cash at food assistance. If American soldiers are really fighting for this country, then I hardly think they would object. If anything, I think they would be horrified to know that the shield that our country offers them from enemy fire is little more than a meat shield: largely made up of the bodies of the desperate and malnourished citizens that they have sworn to protect.
I, for one, am tired of listening to people bicker about the lot maintenance of our neighbors without taking a walk in their own unkempt gardens. Only once we pull on our working gloves, shear back the overgrowth of frenzied military spending, and allow the light of government assistance to shine on the populace who need it: only when we've repaired all of the damage we've caused by limiting their ability to provide for themselves and grow as people, only then can we dust off our hands and offer advice to our neighbors.
Only when we've proven that we can take care of our own will our advice be worth anything.
And still, people like Barbie Izquierdo suffer, juggling studying, childcare, and a job without the assistance of foodstamps. According to the official SNAP website, the average family of three can receive about $366 per month in food stamps: $133 per person in a month, about $4.43 per person per day. Now, when I was a kid, I always wanted to buy Bubbletape -- a long strip of coiled bubblegum that could be ripped off with a beveled edge, sort of like a tape dispenser. One unit of Bubbletape costs about $1.79. With the amount alotted by food stamps, a person could buy two rolls of Bubbletape a day. The amount of calories contained in a roll of Bubbletape for a day's worth of foodstamps is 20. 20 calories out of 2000. For reference to our earlier equation, that's 0.02 kilocalories. The amount necessary to meet a caloric intake of 2000 calories is 100 times that amount.
Now, no person on food stamps is going to try to survive on Bubbletape, but even the alternatives aren't much better. Say you could get a box of macaroni and cheese, around $1.50 per box -- that's about 385 calories per serving. You'd still need over 5 servings to meet the 2000 calorie recommended minimum. The food situation in America is hopeless, yet government officials celebrate and pat themselves on the back when they raise the amount of money allocated to food stamps by mere cents. That's nowhere near enough to make a significant change. SNAP must be held accountable, as well; for all that upper class conservatives like to complain about how the government rewards "laziness", the startling fact is that in a way, the supplemental nutrition assistance program [SNAP] does.
Though SNAP requires some applicants to apply for work or job training (allowing 36 months to pick up a job, and only allowing the applicant to use food stamps for 3 of those months until they manage to get the job), they will cut off benefits for anyone who cannot find work within that time period. While that sounds reasonable enough, the snap program actually discourages those who receive food stamps from saving up their money. Unless one of the members of the family benefiting from food stamps is disabled or either at or above the age of 60, the maximum amount of countable assets that a family can accrue amounts to $2,000. If a struggling family manages to save up more than that, according to SNAP, they are no longer eligible for the few crumpled bills they once used to pay for nutrition. Now, judging by the "supplemental" in the title, the foodstamps provided by SNAP aren't meant to be the powerhouse of a poor family's food budget, but for many, they are.
If those holding government office are going to simultaneously criticize the poor for "mooching" off of government handouts while suggesting that they get jobs, the program needs to be seriously reworked. Rather than immediately cutting off benefits for a family who has surpassed the $2,000 maximum in countable assets, the same 3 out of 36 month grace period should be allowed as the one given to those who enter into the program looking for a job. This way, the family can learn to manage their income, but if they need that extra pocket full of stamps, they won't starve because they overestimated how much money they had in the bank. In addition, those who employ adults who are transitioning out of the need for SNAP benefits could possibly receive a small bonus for keeping those employees on. To go the extra mile, all perishable foods from large grocery stores should be donated to local food pantries if they are nearing their expiration date and haven't sold yet -- this could make for a rare opportunity for poor families to eat something nutritious. To waste untouched food in a country where people are dying for more is heinous. Hell, the government could even reward restaurants who donate their leftovers to pantries or soup kitchens if it helped create incentive.
Where are we going to get the money to do this, though? Are we going to cut more money from school lunch programs? Environmental programs? The food industry certainly isn't going to do much to help, since it artificially invented the issues in the first place.
No, the defense budget needs to be cut back. We don't need nearly as much power as we pay for and our country has no more right than any other to police the world, especially not while we point the finger at "uncivilized" countries while our own citizens die in the streets or end up hooked up to IVs due to malnourishment. If we tripled the amount of money that we - as a nation - spent on food assistance, it would still not equal 1/7th of the defense budget. We can afford to carve off a few billion dollars here and there. It sounds like a lot to me, as someone who considers $10 a lot of money, but if we can afford to spend $29 billion dollars over what the Pentagon thinks is rational on the military budget, then there's no reason why we can't throw some of that cash at food assistance. If American soldiers are really fighting for this country, then I hardly think they would object. If anything, I think they would be horrified to know that the shield that our country offers them from enemy fire is little more than a meat shield: largely made up of the bodies of the desperate and malnourished citizens that they have sworn to protect.
I, for one, am tired of listening to people bicker about the lot maintenance of our neighbors without taking a walk in their own unkempt gardens. Only once we pull on our working gloves, shear back the overgrowth of frenzied military spending, and allow the light of government assistance to shine on the populace who need it: only when we've repaired all of the damage we've caused by limiting their ability to provide for themselves and grow as people, only then can we dust off our hands and offer advice to our neighbors.
Only when we've proven that we can take care of our own will our advice be worth anything.
Works Cited
Cavas, Christopher P. "HASC adds $2.8B to DoD's Procurement Request." Army Times. Gannett, 7 May 2012. Web. 8 May 2014. <http://www.armytimes.com/article/20120507/NEWS/205070316/HASC-adds-2-8B-to-DoD-s-procurement-request>.
Elliott, Charles W. "Military Spending and Waging War on Hungry Children." Buddhist Global Relief. WordPress, 28 May 2012. Web. 9 May 2014. <http://buddhistglobalrelief.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/military-spending-and-waging-war-on-hungry-children/>.
Food Inc. Dir. Robert Kenner. Prod. Eric Schlosser. Perf. Michael Pollan. Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2008. Film.
Gucciardi, Anthony. "About One Week of US Military Spending Would Wipe Out World Hunger." Storyleak. Storyleak, 24 June 2013. Web. 9 May 2014. <http://www.storyleak.com/one-week-us-military-spending-wipe-out-world-hunger/>.
A Place at the Table. Dir. Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush. 2012. Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2012. DVD.
"Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)." Food and Nutrition Service. White House, 30 12 2013. Web. 8 May 2014. <http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility>.
"2013 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics." World Hunger. World Hunger Education Service, 2013. Web. 8 May 2014. <http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm>.
Cavas, Christopher P. "HASC adds $2.8B to DoD's Procurement Request." Army Times. Gannett, 7 May 2012. Web. 8 May 2014. <http://www.armytimes.com/article/20120507/NEWS/205070316/HASC-adds-2-8B-to-DoD-s-procurement-request>.
Elliott, Charles W. "Military Spending and Waging War on Hungry Children." Buddhist Global Relief. WordPress, 28 May 2012. Web. 9 May 2014. <http://buddhistglobalrelief.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/military-spending-and-waging-war-on-hungry-children/>.
Food Inc. Dir. Robert Kenner. Prod. Eric Schlosser. Perf. Michael Pollan. Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2008. Film.
Gucciardi, Anthony. "About One Week of US Military Spending Would Wipe Out World Hunger." Storyleak. Storyleak, 24 June 2013. Web. 9 May 2014. <http://www.storyleak.com/one-week-us-military-spending-wipe-out-world-hunger/>.
A Place at the Table. Dir. Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush. 2012. Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2012. DVD.
"Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)." Food and Nutrition Service. White House, 30 12 2013. Web. 8 May 2014. <http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility>.
"2013 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics." World Hunger. World Hunger Education Service, 2013. Web. 8 May 2014. <http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm>.