I really love learning. I love when something is so powerful and important that it doesn’t leave you, but rather makes constant visits to your thoughts and encounters and opinions. I experienced a new one of those this weekend with a wonderfully made documentary called, “A Place at the Table”. This is a documentary about the issue of hunger in our country.
A few weeks ago, I was also exposed to the viral video about wealth inequality in America. Both of these films stir up such intense emotions within me. Both of these films are huge mixtures of heartbreak, confusion, and enraging feelings. Both of these films show similar, pressing issues that need to be addressed in our country. Issues that are terribly interwoven and feed into one another.
It is unacceptable when:
-Obesity and hunger are connected—when an individual or a family is struggling so greatly to reach each meal that they are forced to search out the cheapest calories they can find.
-This hunger is causing more than just obesity. There exist an extravagant number of other medical-related problems such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and developmental growth issues.
-These medical problems pour into the individual’s ability to work well, to be alert and present at school, to properly nourish both body and mind, and also create a cycle of poverty that so often confines people to these situations. “This generation will live sicker and die younger than their parent’s generation.”
-A family cannot qualify for food stamps because the single mother makes $2 over the set limit. As they quoted within the film, “Who defines starving?”.
-Food deserts exist. People are stuck miles away from any form of fresh fruits or vegetables and cannot get a hold of these nutrients without travelling unreasonable amounts.
-So many citizens are forced to rely upon charitable food donations to eat. Charity is wonderful and addresses the needs of so many that may not otherwise be met—but charity itself cannot end hunger.
-Schools are struggling to work with the funding they are given to provide free and reduced lunches to the children who are in need, but are having to settle for filling those meals with sugar, salt, and processed foods because of cost restrictions.
-Government funding is shifted to provide approximately a dollar more per child to invest in these healthy lunches, but that money is taken out of the food stamps program in order to do so, thus continuing the cycle—a bit more food at school, a bit less at home.
-Healthy, nutritious foods are significantly more expensive than processed, “food-like” substances.
-Hunger is even something that exists within the lives of individuals to begin with.
There is a quote within “A Place at the Table” that simply states that if another country was causing this to happen to our children, we would be at war. And that is so true, isn’t it? It is so hard to wrap your mind around the fact that something as simple and necessary as the right to food (and healthy food at that!) is so difficult for fifty million people in this country.
I am heartbroken and enraged by these realities. I also find a great deal of hope in the work that is being done to eradicate the issue of hunger in our country. It is powerful when people stand up to affect change and to encourage public policy changes through their stories and experiences and their commitment to make something different that so desperately needs to be different. I hope that these changes can continue to be made through sharing and through learning—and through the result of something so important sticking with us in our thoughts and encounters and opinions so strongly that we use them to create lasting change.
Check out the trailer to “A Place at the Table”, as well as the video for “Wealth Inequality in America” below.
Radishes & Rutabagas 
Sarah, your passion for others is contagious. Your care and love for those around you is so admirable. Love you.