Hunger In America

Recently in students for peace and justice, a school club I'm a part of, we watched a documentary called "A Place At The Table". It stated that in America, there are 50 million people who have food insecurity. That means they don’t know where any of their next meals could be coming from. Out of that 50 million, 17 million of them are kids. The fact that America is considered the richest country in the world, yet hunger is still such a prevalent problem is ridiculous.

Mississippi is ranked number one in the most obese states, with a whopping 35.4% of obese residents in 2013. Ironically, one of the most obese but also most food insecure states is Louisiana. This is because food insecurity typically occurs in low-income neighborhoods, so the only food those people can buy (partly because food stamps are pretty insufficient) is inexpensive and not very healthy. I think the government deserves most of the blame for this awful and paradoxical situation that America's in.

Why is our country spending so much money when it comes to tax breaks for the rich and ridiculous military funding, but not nearly enough on the social programs needed to help stop hunger? The U.S hunger dilemma was nearly solved at the end of the ‘70s, until we drastically cut those crucial programs, and look where that got us.

I strongly believe that our government needs to stop trying to fix other countries’ problems as long as we still don’t have a handle on our own. The directors of "A Place At The Table" said that the causes of malnutrition and hunger in America “can be reversed easily – by citizen activism as well as government policy.” Food is something all humans need to sustain life, and the world we live in today is way to progressive for food to not even be a basic human right for everyone yet.