Anna Quindlen Goes Hungry

Feeding America is a nationwide network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs that provides food and services to people each year. Together this network is the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief organization. Recently, more families and individuals begin to struggle with hunger due to the cost of living increasing and income from employers not being sufficient enough to feed and take care of a family. Price and income shifts can radically impact the poor and hungry. When prices rise, consumers often move to cheaper, less-nutritious foods, increasing the risks of micronutrient defects and other forms of malnutrition, which can have long-term unfavorable effects on people’s health, development and productivity.

3.1 How income inequality affect on people live in America. The income gap in America affects people, who live in this country. The issue has a strong impact in America’s society; in particular, the nutritional disparity between rich and poor people. In USA, the food gap becomes the top signal for the class distinction, but it used to be clothing or fashion. The food inequality in America is not only influencing the poverty, it is also cost hundreds of billions of dollar per year because of Non Communicable Diseases (NDCs) (Ferdman, 2014).

Many young girls in poor and developing countries are forced to marry so their families are able to eat (Doki). “More than one-third of all girls are married in 42 countries, according to the U.N. Population Fund, referring to females under the age of 18” (Doki). Many young women are abused and murdered because of the lack of protection (McDonald). How can such an appalling problem take place in our world today, and how can we stop it? Thanks to authors such as Hurston, problems like these can be brought to light, but is it enough?

According to dosomething.org, one in five American children face hunger. In theory, this means that in my class of 20 kids, roughly four of them face hunger. According to a CNBC article, 42 million Americans suffer from hunger across the nation. This food insecurity as the Federal Government so kindly puts it, exists in every county in America. Food insecurity is defined as the lack of access at times to enough food for all household members, according to the USDA.

If we don’t receive the money that we need in the next few months, I would say about 125,000 little girls and boys will die. We’ve been able to avert famine, but we know three things that are happening. We know that people are dying. We know that people are wasting. And we know that children are stunting… they’re smaller, the brains are smaller, the body’s smaller because they’re not getting the food or the nutrition they need.” Beasley addresses the major issues and discusses the fact that, without money, the prevention of famine will remain at a standstill and Yemen will be engulfed by hunger.

This culture intertwines with the social development of this country as people are choosing to follow their own choices. Today, many parents reject vaccines as they are concerned that vaccines can cause autism, a belief that originated with a now-discredited 1998 study. In 2010, a study found that “Nearly 40% of parents of toddlers have skipped or delayed a childhood vaccination”(Breslow). The percentage of these anti-vaccinators were raised due to the promotion of this rejected study. California is the top of these measles cases as it is “one of 20 states that allow parents to skip vaccination based on their personal, philosophical belief”(Harris, Popovich, and Powell).

A wise woman once said, “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty”. A person not born in our times, but with enough wisdom to see the effects of poverty, and what it does to our minds. No matter where you go on the earth you will not see a place that does not have poverty or have a population that goes through it. Poverty affects 13% of people in the world and about 15% of people in America live under the poverty line. 45 million Americans are unable to provide for their families and they are hurting both physically and mentally from it.

They brainwashed into thinking that becoming a child soldier is a good thing, and it comes with many benefits. The children obviously would choose food and shelter over starving to death out on a street. We can not blame the children for making this choice. In the article, “Child Soldiers: Victims or Perpetrators?” the author states that, “In the last ten years over two million children have been killed, over one

[2] Poverty may be defined as either absolute or relative.’ Never the less, it’s ironic how in the 21st century we prize ourself for being progressive when almost half of us - over 3 billion people - can’t even conjure up what life is like beyond ‘the poverty trap’ they are in. We prize ourselves, when one out of every two children is poor. Can you imagine growing up as one of the 640 million kids whom have no adequate shelter, let alone a place to call home? Or the 400 million to whom safe drinking water is simply a figment of their imagination? Or maybe the 270 million who have no means of getting health care?

In 2013, approximately 2.3m or just over 10% of all English households were in this category. (Department of Energy and Climate Change, 2014). Food poverty, as defined as “the inability to afford, or to have access to, food to make up a healthy diet” is another useful concept (Department of Health, 2005). Although the UK is the seventh richest country in the world, some people here struggle to pay for food. One in 6 parents have gone without food themselves in order to be able to feed their families.