Where are all the hungry people in the U.S.?

By Jane Chastain

When my son was little, he often brought home these little plastic banks
shaped like loaves of bread from Sunday School. We would sit them on the
dining table as a reminder, and dutifully drop in money to help fight
hunger.

We were duped. What chumps! Now I realize all we were doing was funding
a massive leftist lobbying campaign. Bread for the World, and its research
arm, Bread for the World Institute, is a charity that feeds no one.
Instead, Bread feeds off the good intentions of the members of countless
churches and other religious organizations.

Last week, Bread for the Word Institute released its 12th annual report
on the state of world hunger. Bread asserts that if our representatives in
Congress would kick in an additional $6 billion in funding for food and
assistance programs, hunger in the United States could be cut in half in two
to three years.

Where are all the hungry people in this country? Skinny women grace the
pages of the nation’s fashion magazines, but they aren’t poor. They’re
pulling down $300 or more an hour. As a result, there is some under
consumption among teen-age girls who imitate these models, but that’s about
it.

If you go down to skid row, you’ll find some people who are so strung out
on drugs they can’t get their hands to their mouths. However, they don’t
feel hungry. They don’t feel much of anything.

Hunger is a temporary state. Most of us feel hungry several times a day
but are we malnourished? There is a big difference. It’s important not to
confuse those words. Also, it is important to understand that those
classified as “at risk” of hunger or “food insecure” are not without food.

The Department of Agriculture does surveys in which it asks people
questions like “Do you ever worry about not having enough food?” A lot of
middle-class and wealthy people are worry warts and would fall into that
category. Also, don’t accept surveys from those in the business of handing
out free food with no accountability. They always will have an abundance of
people showing up. Those on the receiving end can afford to sell their food
stamps and buy designer sneakers, drugs, cigarettes or whatever.

Most of us equate chronic hunger, which leads to malnourishment, with
poverty, but here in the United States, hunger virtually is nonexistent.
According to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, poor children are
facing significant problems with nutrition but it has to do with
over-consumption of food. The biggest health problem among those classified
as poor is obesity.

The government actually takes blood samples of those classified as poor
and compares these with other population groups. The average consumption of
vitamins and minerals is virtually the same for poor and middle-class
children. In fact, the intake of protein among poor children, which is
the most expensive nutrient, is 150 percent of recommended levels.

Bread for the World’s website says it is “seeking justice for the world’s
hungry people.” If you read its slick 150-page report, what it really is
seeking is to expand the failed welfare programs of the past and the
creation of an entitlement state. Bread for the World fought the welfare
reform act of 1996, which imposed some work requirements. It was a small
but significant step, which has cut welfare caseloads by 60 percent.
Nevertheless, due to the welfare lobby we are spending more on welfare today
than we were seven years ago.

Bread for the World doesn’t distribute those little plastic banks
anymore. Instead of pocket change, it is going for larger donations that
come in as a result of letters written with help from the churches.

Among the impressive list of sponsors and co-sponsors: The Episcopal
Relief and Development Committee, The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod World
Relief, Presbyterian Hunger Program, United Methodist Committee on Relief,
Baptist World Aid, Catholic Relief Services, Church of the Nazarene, United
Church of Christ: Justice and Witness Ministries and the Mennonite Central
Committee. Mixed in are countless organizations who are on the receiving
end of large amounts of U.S. tax dollars.

Call me suspicious, but could this distortion of the facts about hunger,
poverty and the true size of our welfare programs be another thinly veiled
attempt to get these organizations even bigger grants? I smell a conflict
of interest.

Jane Chastain

Jane Chastain is a Colorado-based writer and former broadcaster. Read more of Jane Chastain's articles here.