In an country that throws away tons of food each day, one in six people are "food deprived." One in five children go to bed hungry each day. That's 20%, or about 16 million kids.
I can't even imagine what it's like to know you can't feed your children, especially when nearly a third of the food we produce each year winds up getting thrown away or lost somewhere in the food chain. I used to work in a food bank in Fairbanks, Alaska, and we were lucky that in addition to donations by the schools and ordinary citizens (people would just walk in carrying a case of canned goods), all the grocery stores in town contributed their excess produce, dented cans and close-to-expiration-date milk and eggs to our cupboards. Sometimes locals would bring in salmon or moose meat. At Thanksgiving, working with the Salvation Army, we were able to give out boxes for 120 meals -- each including at least a turkey, stuffing, sweet potatos, cranberry sauce, vegetables and the fixings for pumpkin pie. All of this food had been donated by the citizens of Fairbanks, and when we were done we had enough left over to do the same thing at Christmas.
One of the local movie theaters in Fairbanks sponsored an annual "Cans Film Festival" where admission was a can of food. We collected 3,500 pounds of food. I even got to appear on television that time, where I told the host, "We're lucky here. They held a Cannes Film Festival in Europe and not a single person brought a can of food." "Oh, that's terrible," the host exclaimed, aghast. I felt really horrible about her not getting the joke (her coworkers explained it to her after we were off the air), but the reaction I got around town was either "That was so funny!" or "Those poor people!" Thankfully my boss fell in the former category.
Just to remind our evangelical brothers, here's the part of the New Testament (although they seem to favor the Old Testament) they seem to have forgotten:
"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."
Here's evangelical thinking: "F*ck you, I've got mine!"
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