We are in Boulder, Colorado visiting our daughter. Three things happened that made me think about hunger in a profoundly different way.
One of my favorite things to do on vacation is to check out the local food scene. We were lucky to happen upon Boulder during a local festival, on a beautiful, sunny day. We were surrounded by food booths and people indulging in barbecue, pizza, and giant turkey legs.
Then I was approached by a young woman wearing a “Save the Children” button, who asked me breathlessly, “Would you like to help hungry children?”
Later that evening, I read an article about Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who engages in “intermittent fasting” in order to increase his focus and productivity.
Well, bully for the billionaire. Eating well is a privilege, and apparently, so is fasting. Dorsey starts each day alternating between his home infrared sauna and an ice bath, then starting his morning with “salt juice” – water mixed with Himalayan sea salt and lemon – before walking five miles to work. Dorsey eats one meal a day, and claims he feels “so much more focused.”
Icons like Dorsey have spawned movements like “We Fast,” touting Monday through Wednesday fasts, or 5:2 diets (with two days a week of 500-600 calorie eating), or 16/8 diets where you skip breakfast and only eat during an 8-hour window. Adherents meticulously check their ketone and glucose levels and believe they have found a way to gain an edge in this competitive world.
Now about those starving children. There are nearly a billion “food insecure” people in the world, and over 40 million in the U.S., including 12 million children (whyhunger.org). The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture defines “food insecurity” as “the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods.” They skip meals and eat less, and when they do, they don’t eat healthy. This is mainly because of poverty, not choice; and they are doubtlessly not checking their ketone levels.
Hungry children suffer from lack of energy, inability to focus, and myriad health problems relating to food deprivation. Coincidentally, I also read an article yesterday about an entire subset of college students who suffer from food insecurity; they described having so little left after paying for necessary college costs, that they were unable to afford enough food. These students living on the margins will not have the same opportunities as their peers.
The problem, like so many, is economics and social justice. As I learned when I wrote a paper about it in college, there is enough food in the world, but distribution fails to reach the neediest. That is still true today – and it’s exacerbated by climate change, which challenges many families’ abilities to remain self-sufficient.
So how do you answer a question like “Would you like to help hungry children?” I managed, “Of course I would,” but demurred an immediate contribution. I learned that while such charities may be legitimate, it might take ten months of the suggested recommended $22 regular donation before any of it reached hungry children, according to www.charitywatch.org, which recommends doing homework on any charity before agreeing to give.
Which loops us back to the privilege of eating indulgently, or choosing not to. We all have our own complicated relationships with food, and struggle to eat healthy and moderately. But I suspect most readers of this column are lucky to have abundant food choices.
I wish I could tell you that I had an epiphany that resolved all these moral dilemmas into a neat little package, tied with a beautiful bow. I don’t. I enjoyed eating on my vacation, and I didn’t give to the solicitor. But I did resolve to give to a terrific local organization, Food Gatherers (www.foodgatherers.org), which attempts to solve the distribution problem on a local level, for those among us who do not choose to go hungry.
Nick Roumel is a principal with Nacht & Roumel, PC, a firm in Ann Arbor specializing in employment and civil right litigation. He also has many years of varied restaurant and catering experience, has taught Greek cooking classes, and writes a food/restaurant column for “Current” magazine in Ann Arbor. Follow him at @nickroumel.
