I can't tell you how excited I am about our recent newsletter--the Spirit of Grace. The focus is on hunger and poverty issues in our community. We included a very cool color map of our surrounding area denoting the areas of greatest food insecurity--it isn't what I expected. Hunger exists in surprising places.
I was at a lecture on Friday on the Radical Politics of Hunger--a great presentation on the Blank Panther Party's Free Breakfast for Children program in Milwaukee back in the 1960s. This program ended up being co-opted by the U.S. government and turned into the free breakfast school programs many know today. But the surprise was the high the percentage of food insecure homes in our country--some 12%! These are homes that cannot necessarily count on eating three meals a day. It is a stunning statistic in our oh so wealthy country.
I've just found this link that has a lot of info on food insecurity and poverty in America. Check it out. The World Hunger Year website even has programs for middle and high school students to learn about these issues. Hmmm...not a bad complement to all those youth cooking classes. What does it say about our country that so many are hungry and malnourished? How whack is it that we admire those who can eat whatever they want and choose not to in the name of thinness and some beauty ideal, while others die of obesity related illness and still others go to bed hungry? Good grief.