15% Hungry

"My mom's been spending a lot of time with her boyfriend in Mexico.  She hasn't been paying the bills, and last week they turned off the electricity.  I can't tell you the last time she put food on the  kitchen shelves."  The big sister stroked her long brown hair nervously as she spoke.  I could tell that she felt caught between loyalty about her mother, and the reality of the hunger that she and her little sister faced every day.  For the first time I realized that the two girls were thin not just because of genetics, but because of hunger. 

I had been called to this problem when the youngest sister had written an essay for my class.  After I read it, I called in the two of them. My student was more than willing for me to talk to her big sister.  Anything was better than going hungry. I called one of the counselors shortly afterward to try to help the family.

Three days later, I asked my student how things were going.  The girl beamed.  The school counselor had called the mother, and things had changed for the better at home.  The lights were back on, there was food on the shelves, and mom was around more.

This story had a happy ending, but it wasn't the only time I saw sheer parental neglect of children while I was a teacher.  Once a man left his seventeen year old twin boys living in an apartment by themselves, while he took a job on the other side of the state. To his credit, he gave them a check at the beginning of each month with which to buy food and pay rent. When the boys ran out of food the last week of the month, they would only eat the breakfast and lunch they had at school At night, they went hungry.  You can imagine how much they ate when they got their check and could buy food again.  But that gorging only left them short of food sooner at the end of the next month. The boys, who were quiet and proud, didn't tell anyone about what the food situation was at home.  And this cycle continued until one day one of the boys fainted in class. 

The fainting spells happened several times before the boy was taken to a doctor.  To the surprise of everyone, they discovered that the boy was fainting from insulin shock.  He didn't know it, but he was diabetic, and the irregular eating pattern was playing havoc with his system. They tested his twin brother, and to everyone's surprise, discovered that he was diabetic, too.  When the schood district found out what was happening at home, they stepped in to be sure the boys had regular groceries coming in weekly. And since the father was not living in town, there wasn't much they could do immediately to fix that problem. 

These stories came to my mind yesterday as I listened on NPR to Alfred Lubano from the Philidelphia Inquirer talk about the USDA's recent measurement that 15% of American's suffered from hunger in 2008.  The findings were especially troublesome on two fronts.  FIrst that so many working poor simply can not always afford to put food on the table, and second, that "supermarket deserts" exist in so many cities where finding any kind of healthy food isn't available for miles.

It's not just that eating fresh fruit and vegetables are more expensive than the $1 burger at McDonald's.  The nutritional value of the junk foods that are over the counter at the local convenience store is nil, and to many families, that's all they can get.  So the obese starving person is a real problem. People who can't get something decent to eat because they don't have a car to drive miles to a grocery store, load up instead on empty calories.  This their insides are full of junk, and this goes on every day.

As for children, the picture is extremely dismal.  Since the cost cutting of the Reagan administration, school lunches have beome horrible indeed.  A recent look at my son's lunch showed a highly alluring, but empty nutritional plate filled with cholesterol and useless fat.  We are fortunate he can carry his lunch some days. But what about the millions of children whose parents can not get groceries?  They are stuck eating junky school lunches day after day.  We are lucky that our oldest son is offered the salad bar, but how many schools offer that option?

We are in a nation where this kind of hunger should be unacceptable.  And while people pile up at the food shelf hoping for a handout to help them through the next month, one has to wonder how the face of the needy is changing.  As the price of fuel creeps up, more and more people will empty those local food shelves.  Hopefully this nation's leadershp will begin to address hunger in a nation that shouldn't have it at all.

Fast, Easy, Cheap, Wonderful

Okay, here's a great desert that one of our church women made for Sunday coffee hour.

1 box chocolate cake mix

1 can pumpkin

Combine, add a little water to thin batter.  Bake as directed on box. Sprinkle with chocolate or butterscotch chips just as you take it out.

Mmmmm, no pumpkin flavor, no cholesterol. Mmmmm.