Hunger

A year or so ago I read Hunger: An Unnatural History, by author and professor Sharman Apt Russell. I picked it up at the library after reading a review of the book in an international development magazine. It was one of those books, after reading the first chapter or so, that I wished I had purchased so I could mark it up with notes and keep it in reach. Russell takes a broad and at times unexpected view of the subject, examining hunger through the lens of history, anthropology, sociology and psychology. She also explores the chemical and physiological processes at play when we miss a meal or go days or weeks without food. The book is well-written with plenty of interesting anecdotes and stories. I recommend it.

As one would expect, much of the book addresses the impact of chronic and severe hunger prevalent in many of the world's poorest countries. She also gives attention to issues of poverty and hunger as we typically witness them here in the United States.

In America, short term hunger is a choice between paying for food at the end of the month and paying for rent or heat or medicine. It is Sunday waiting for Monday and the school breakfast and lunch program. It is eating dry cereal for three days.

It is also, for many, swallowing one’s pride and visiting a food pantry or soup kitchen.

Russell goes on to mention the following commonly cited statistics, which, by the way, we must always remember refer to real people living and barely getting by within our community:

In America, over 30 million people – one in ten Americans – live in what is called food-insecure households. Twelve million of these are children. One in four people in line at a soup kitchen is a child. Most families that worry about food are headed by a single mother.

It is believed, as mentioned by Russell, that in most households, when food is scarce, it is the adults who first skip a meal or make do with less. Nevertheless, children are impacted, whether nutritionally or by living among adults trying to cope with the type of chronic stress that comes from living with uncertainty, fear and anger. Russell recognizes the urgency felt when the well-being of children is at stake:

When an adult is hungry, it happens in the present tense. When a child [is hungry], there is another dimension. It also happens in the future. For a child is potential, in the act of becoming.

Many may not believe that hunger is a reality for families in Holland. Others may believe that hunger, when it does exist, is only experienced by those who have made poor decisions and as a result do not deserve assistance from the community. I invite such persons to pay a visit to the Community Kitchen or to either of our other locations when our food pantries are open. There you will meet families who are indeed facing the threat of hunger, and who, for the most part, are trying their best to make it through a very difficult time. At the Community Kitchen you will meet people whose only meal of the day is the one they eat at the Kitchen. At our food pantry locations, you’ll meet parents whose incomes barely cover rent and utilities. The thriftiest among us couldn’t find a way to stretch their budgets to pay for their most basic needs. Assisting such persons and families with food that meets their immediate nutritional needs, along with offering a range of other services designed to help them achieve greater economic security in the future, seems like not only the right thing to do but a critically important thing to do.

Russell recounts the following story about an exchange she had with the director of a food bank that runs a "backpack program," which sends at-risk children home from school each Friday afternoon with a backpack full of food:

The director … shows me a drawing. The lines and splotches of brown and black don’t mean much to me. Apparently the teacher in the class had the same problem, so she asked the little boy to explain. “This is a man,” the child said, and the teacher dutifully wrote the words down, “who is angry because he just wants food.”

Can we all agree that no child’s imagination should have to be shaped by their experience of hunger and its myriad effects?

Mark Kornelis