Summer 2007, Volume 11 Number 3

Table of Contents

STARVED FOR CHANGE by Marti Forman

Lucky Me! My family had food to put on the table each day, but we always bought only enough to give each of the seven of us a single portion.  My chore was to walk to the store and help select the seven pork chops or seven pieces of chicken that would be served that night. We were not poor but we were what we now label “food insecure,” meaning we carefully watched what we purchased so there would be enough. As a young bride, the last week of the month meant the money was gone and so was the food.  The nun’s from the school where my husband taught delivered emergency food boxes to us the last week of each month, giving us tomato soup and peanut butter to coat our empty stomachs and relieve the aching we felt that fourth week of the long, long month. I have had these unpredictable food shortages throughout my life. Timing visits to the in-laws when they were off to church and raiding their bomb shelter food stock was an embarrassing survival tactic we used in the really lean times. So, while I never climbed into dumpsters or panhandled for my next meal, I do remember worrying about where the food would come from in the times when cash was short.  A charge card helped buy baby formula the last week of each month. Because hunger was always a real threat for me, I have never taken adequate, nutritious, tasty food for granted. Today, I work in the hunger industry overseeing a daily hot meal program and a very busy emergency food pantry. No doubt, my job selection is tied to my hunger pangs and haunting memories.

I guess the real reason I am rambling on about my personal experiences with hunger is because I understand from a first hand viewpoint how a good person can get stuck without enough food to eat.  Not because of poor choices, but because some career choices –especially in service work— are traditionally the lower-paying jobs. Many people will never have well-paying jobs, so food will always be a luxury item in their budget. As crazy as it seems, food becomes the dispensable item in a family’s budget.

Today, my refrigerator is full.  CEO of a big-city emergency food pantry and kitchen, I recognize that the hunger that surrounds me on a daily basis at this job could return again and become my own personal nightmare.  No one is really safe from hunger.  Ask Katrina families about how quickly the presence of hunger entered their homes. Hunger is as close as my next economic challenge, natural disaster or medical crisis.

Hunger is at epidemic levels in America today.  In my community, more than 37.5% of families living here earn less than $35,000.  Of those families, nearly 89% admit that finding food is a very serious worry.  I see the toll the stress of hunger takes on America’s families. My office lobby is often filled with the crying of hungry children.  A can of spaghetti can stop the tears but not my shame that I am so powerless to rid this community of the problem. The harder we work, the bigger the problem seems to grow.        

Hunger, in this nation of great waste, is one of our most shameful realities.  How have our policies allowed more food to go in garbage disposals, dumpsters and landfills than what is actually needed to fill America’s hungry bellies?

I watch the grocery store shopper’s eyes, squinting to make out labels, while exchanging one item for another looking for that fraction of a cent savings.  I observe the mother who puts the orange juice into the cart, puts it back on the shelf, and then puts it back into the cart again. I know what’s going on there. I’ve danced that indecisive dance, wanting the “nutrition” but buying the “fill.”  We shouldn’t have to make those decisions in a nation as great as our nation. Our children, our elderly, those with disabilities, the infirm, and the working poor—each should have the opportunity to have enough to eat.

Today, when I finish this article, I am going to write a letter to the editor of our local paper about hunger.  When you fishing reading this article, perhaps you will be compelled to write a letter of your own.  We have to keep hammering away at this until something changes. People are hungry. Are we truly bereft of answers?

Marti Forman is CEO of The Cooperative Feeding Program in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She may be contacted at Mart4man@aol.com. For further information about the program, visit www.FeedingBroward.org

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