Hungry in Minnesota

June 7, 2005, was Hunger Awareness Day in the United States. I thought about what it means to be hungry in a land of plenty—a land of excess in many respects. I thought about how we have become desensitized to hunger and homelessness. And I wanted to know what can be done about it.

There’s a new television show on FX called “30 Days” where the host, Morgan Spurlock, (director of the documentary “Super Size Me”) takes on a new life for thirty days as an experiment, which is, of course, documented on tape.

A recent episode had Morgan and his girlfriend living in Ohio for thirty days with nothing but the shirts on their backs, working for minimum wage. They found an affordable apartment, albeit bug-infested and lacking heat. Their landlord was willing to collect their security deposit over three months instead of up front. They secured minimum wage jobs and launched into their new life. After two visits to the emergency room for two different health problems, missing work for a day, and an unexpected bill for an electricity deposit, they found themselves in debt with no real plan to get out.

When things had reached crisis level toward the end of their thirty days, Morgan exclaims to the camera at one point, “If only we didn’t have to eat, I think we might be able to do it!”

That’s the tough choice many families face—eat or be eaten by debt, homelessness, health problems, etc.

The federal government does a pretty good job of trying to track food insecurity and hunger in the U.S. through an annual survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

What is the distinction between hunger and food insecurity? For the USDA study, food insecurity is defined as “limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways.” Hunger is defined as “involuntary hunger that results from not being able to afford enough food.”

There are levels of severity for hunger as well, ranging from less severe, worried about food running out, to more severe where meals are skipped for an entire day or children are forced to skip meals.

In the latest data released from the Economic Research Service report for 2003, they there were approximately 136,000 Minnesota households that were food insecure and 42,000 households went hungry in a twelve month period.

An estimated 7,000 to 11,500 households go hungry in Minnesota on a given day.

Policymakers repeatedly remind us that they have to make “tough choices” regarding local/state/federal spending and budget cuts. No choice can be as tough as those faced by families who, on a daily basis, are forced to engage in the calculus of deciding which of their basic needs will be met today: hunger, shelter, medicine, childcare, etc.