The commercial showed a young, clean-cut guy in a pharmacy smock who told us that today, many people in this country face a choice between spending their limited income on food or on the drugs they need. He went on to tell how his pharmacy in his chain drug store was helping with this problem by providing generic drugs as an option to help with this growing problem. I was so struck by this commercial that it has changed the direction of my thinking in just a few short days. That an advertising company would use the "food (to survive) or needed drugs (to survive) as a campaign to drum up business for an already successful, profitable chain of stores is not only absurd, it is shocking. It's actually hard to find words to talk about this because we toss around words like ABSURD and SHOCKING so easily. But the truth of it is, we are living in the richest, most priviledged country -- not only on the planet, but in all of history. And a choice between hunger and needed medication should never never never never be a choice, an issue, a quesiton, or a reality in this country. Never never never. We have so much food that we give it away to more than 1/3 of the planet. We have so much food we have trouble storing it all. We have so much food that two thirds of us are either plump, chubby, fat, or morbidly obese. We have so much food that we give our house pets better food than most children in the third world are eating. We have so much food that there are diets that exist just on the principle of leaving half the food on your plate in cafes and resteraunts because portions are all soooo big that no normal person should eat them. We have so much food, that we could give away all the necessities of basic nutrition to every man, woman, and child in the country and still have plenty to give away to our third world neighbors. And that is the point. We have so much food that we could give away all the necessities of basic nutrition to every man, woman, and child in the country. We have so much food -- actual abundance and plenty -- that any person, from the homeless guy on the corner, to the hungry kid falling asleep in class because they didn't have dinner, to the homebound elderly, to the students trying to attend college with no grants and no guaranteed low interest loans -- any person in this country should be able to walk up to a loading dock and hold out their hand and be given enough cheese, peanut butter, stableized milk, day-old bread, canned corn or beans in pull top cans, apples or orange juice to feed themselves for 3 days. We (the United States of America) have all those things in warehouses. Milk is now shelf-stable for 3-4 months at a time. Peanut farmers, corn farmers, bakeries, orchards -- all produce more than we will ever eat. We have plenty of food! And still, we have people going hungry. And it's not like we don't already have a distribution structure in place. In this country, there is a fire station within walking distance of every urban and suburban neighborhood, and in rural America, their are city halls, post offices, or schools. None of the items listed above require refridgeration except in the hotest climates, and most can withstand extreme cold. But the details of distribution are not really a problem -- just another challenge for those good at such things. And there are plenty of those people out there. If we can manage the distribution of mail, we can manage the distribution of food. And actually GIVING AWAY so much stuff is not really the problem either. Capitalism can easily survive the free distribution of necessities. Those with money and means will still buy hot fresh bakery bread and Vermont White Cheddar instead of lining up for nurtitional necessities. The middle class will still buy enough chicken, sandwich meat, sugared cereals, yoghurt cups, hot dogs and cookies to keep stores and manufacturers in the tall grass of record profit. What's really important is that if basic items are in abundance and are available -- no questions asked -- no bureaucracy -- no limited time offers or limited quantities -- then it becomes the norm. What a revolutionary concept! Theft and abuse of the system won't be possible. Why steal something you can get as much of as you want? If you take more than you need, so what? As long as it's stable, you'll use it eventually, or it won't go to any more waste than it already is now. If there is a problem, it's only in the change of mindset required to make necessities absolutely available to anyone and everyone -- without making anybody feel ashamed or embarrased by need. The ability to need without shame -- and to ask for help when we need it -- has only been a problem because we allowed it to be. And I, personally, have had enough of that. What kind of a country would we be if there were NO HUNGRY PEOPLE? If everybody had access to basic nutrition? Not in "programs" or "welfare" -- but just as a matter of fact? What if every day when the children leave school, somebody asks them if they need to stop for groceries? What if anybody can drive up to the firehouse and ask for a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter? What if every college, now populated by kids working 2 and 3 jobs to pay for high tuition and textbooks had a "Free-lunch and Study Commisary" that served up macaroni and cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, or cornbread and beans? What if Meals on Wheels, with its great database of needy homebound people became Meals & Grocs on Wheels? What if every police station had a kitchen anex where the neediest and most vulnerable members of society came regularly for a hot baked potato with all the trimmings or a big bowl of stew? What if we got over the idea of profit as the only worthwhile motivation and made the question of "food or necessary drugs" just an absurd and foolishly conceived advertising campaign? Such phrases are an embarrassment and should be a source of shame in this country. RESPONSES SINCE POSTING THIS ESSAY 1. The first response I got to writing about hunger was that I was treading on dangerous ground by writing about anything political on a retail site. Customers might be offended. MY REPLY: I suppose that I would rather loose a couple of customers than not speak my mind. Additionally -- as far as I can tell, these few words don't take any politial side. Hunger should never be a political issue in the US. 2. The next most common response I got was in the neighborhood of "who's going to pay for this?" MY REPLY: We've already paid for it. Our government (us -- the USA) already has stockpiles of food. The US pays farmers for crops already. We are the inventors of the MRE (the military's "Meals Ready to Eat".) We've already paid for the food and ongoing purchases are already funded. What's more, the distributors I pointed out -- fire departments, schools teachers, police officers, letter carriers -- all those people are already on the payroll. Unless you add paperwork and people to staple it together, distribute it, stamp it, read it, file it and scan it into computers -- we've already got all the people in place. 3. Such a limited selection of food wouldn't be good nutrition. MY REPLY: IT WOULD BE BETTER NUTRITION THAN GOING WITHOUT. 4. It would make us, the government, or whoever open to lawsuits. What if some of the food went bad? What if someone had a peanut allergy? MY REPLY: Make it a lawsuit-free zone. If a person has allergies -- those are not the responsibility of a school teacher or a fire fighter who is distributing. All we really need to do is make sure the food is within date as it is distributed, and that it comes from a reputable packager. Signing for a bag of groceries MUST release the distributor of all responsibility. If we make sure everything is clearly marked for freshness, source, and ingredients, all risks are the same as they would be if you were buying food at a local grocery. 5. It's just too big a task to take on without a bureau or a governmental department or something. MY RESPONSE: It's already funded. The surplus food is already there. The people/buildings to distribute it are already there. where's the TOO BIG part? If it's managed community by community and school by school, firehouse by firehouse, and letter-carrier by letter-carrier -- the only "national" TOO BIG would be in organizing the big trucks to carry it to all those places. So how about mail trucks? They run all night... How about piggy-backing on Walmart's trucks? Or UPS? Or Fe--dEx's planes? For the right amount of good press and recognition, the big companies would make great partners. How much better press is there than "helping permantly eliminate hunger in the US?" 6. If you set up a "Free Food and Study Commisary" or a "Kitchen Anex" at the local Police Station or Fire House, you can't guarantee that only the really "needy" among us will use those generous facilities. Middle income kids might be eating all the free burritos and beans. Secretaries who have jobs might take advantage of the system and get their stuffed potatoes at the fire house instead of at the drive-up window at Wendy's. MY RESPONSE -- We've forgotten the basic nature of giving witihout requiring proof of need, bowing and scraping gratitude, or simply the art of giving without comparing the need, shame, pride, achievements, situations, and troubles to our owm. We've spent our lives silently comparing our own situations to those of others so we can feel better about our lives. This is what comes from the 20th Century's "keeping up with the Jones", "climbing the corporate ladder", and accumulation of wealth and material belongings. We're all so busy-busy-busy competing and comparing, that we've mislaid our past. We've forgotten how to NOT compete and compare. The assortment of cash-poor kids in college runs the spectrum from those trying pay for a $6500 semester (+houseing, +fees, +books, +medical, food, clothes, utilities, etc) with no parental contribution -- to those who just frittered away their monthly allowance on fast food, beer, and gasoline. And the bottom line still is that broke is broke. Hungry is hungry, and if there's always minimum nutrition available, what's the problem with making that a part of the college experience? Moreover -- having been a single parent, low-income, temporary employee for several early periods in my life, I'm equally sure that there are times in all our lives when the $0.99 it would take to get a potato at the local fast food counter during a 25 minute lunch hour could be the difference in gas to get home, or no gas to get home. Financial solvency is an ebb and flow kind of situation for more people in this country than anybody wants to talk about. Minimum wage for a single parent with 1, 2, 3, 4 or however many children -- is insufficient for "Doc-in-a-Box" no-insurance medical care, food, school shoes, aspirin for the headaches, heat, sheets, $2.00/load laundry, deoderant, shampoo, tooth paste and dentle visits, gas, oil changes and car repairs, electricity, and whatever else you want to classify as "minimum." If those people want a minimum-nutrition meal, then who says they don't need it? Do you want to see tax returns at the door? What qualifies someone to be able to need without shame? 1 job? 2 jobs? No living relatives? A child in intensive care? An uninsured medical emergency? Are we really afraid that fully employed people are going to occasionally drop in and eat the US out of food? Are work crews building the new freeway or hotel going to go as a group and eat all the soup and day-old bread? Are shoe sales clerks going to take all the peanut butter sandwiches? Are fixed income seniors who make enough to pay their electric bills going to swindle us out of all the free apples we've set aside for hungry seniors who can't afford electricity? Just what kind of a tight rope do we really want to set up as a test here? The point is, I don't think we really want a test. "Testing" worthiness is what got welfare into the mess we all know and love. The truth is, we all need a free lunch from time to time. Really. If a kid in trying to get through college and become a contributing member of society -- why not just assume need? They're all young. They're all inexperienced at keeping books and balancing checkbooks. They're all being plastered by credit card applications, with offers to get so far in debt by the time they graduate that they will never escape. Why not just assume need? Why not assume need in the senior communiity? Why not assume need in single parent families? Why not assumne need in families with medical emergencies? Why not assume need in people temporarily out of work or underemployed (that would just 1 job?) Why not assume that everybody has moments of need? Why not assume that there are lonely people who might just come for the chance to talk to another human being? Why not just assume that under the right circumstances, every one of us could be in need of something? Our original premise was that we have enough food to provide every man, woman, and child with basic nutrition. If that's true, then we've already answered this question. If we start off assuming 100% of the population, then every person who DOESN'T eat "on the house" is a nickle in the pot to keep it going through bad years, bad economic periods (remember the depression?), draughts, floods, hurricanes, fires, global warming, global dimming, avian flu, blizzards, crime waves, bee population variences, mad cow, and whatever the next crisis may be. Assme we all might be hungry at one time or another. We're pretty sure Bill Gates won't be stopping in at the Little Rock North Free Kitchen, or the UNLV Free Commissary and Study Room -- so the "100% of everybody" we're assuming is obviously hyperbole. And, if we're so afraid of feeding people with money in their pocket, how about a pot at the exit door where folks can put in whatever coins or bills they have to contribute? If I go, I promise to put in my contribution. And maybe somebody else's, too. . . *****Here's the link to the terrific little cartoon Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry's) uses when he talks about hunger and such*****JUST CLICK THE PICTURE OF BEN!***** 
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