Hungry Americans
This article is on the rising incidence of hunger being experienced by American families, especially children. This issue was commented on by the president as “unsettling”. The Obama administration is progressing with steps in congress to help raise the benefits of food stamps and to help feed more children during the summer when subsidized food isn’t available at schools. This time of year with the holidays approaching is usually the time in which the media really hypes up childhood and family hunger. Other than Thanksgiving and the Christmas season food drives and donations to help this cause aren’t really popular, and if this issue is continuing to progress with close to one in four children being hungry more needs to be done to prevent this. As a Food Network addict, most times during the year there are commercials for some type of fund-raising to prevent childhood hunger. In a country that if you turn on the television you will undoubtedly see a commercial for some type of weight-loss product, and on the news most of the time there are reports of the rising rate of morbid obesity it is hard to believe that there is a hunger problem. I read in another article that Obama is the first president to pledge to try to get rid of childhood hunger. Perhaps because Obama has young children he is more sympathetic towards the younger demographic. The issue of hunger should be erased from the richest country in the world, there isn’t much of an excuse for it. In times such as now with the poor economy the issue is also food shortages, more people than ever now are on federal food assistance programs, so because there are more people on the programs there is less food to go around. Studies show that people on these federal food assistance programs are more often families that have one parent with a full-time job and that their wages are not enough to support a family. A complaint amongst families on federal food assistance programs also complained that on their budget with food stamps it is hard to feed a family with nutritionally balanced meals because healthy food costs more than unhealthy food. With the government’s push towards healthy living in the United States they should take into consideration their food assistance programs and help families to be able to afford nutritionally balanced meals.
