Nowadays, the United States of America is known as one of the wealthiest countries in the world; however, according to the website, NO KID HUNGER, there are over 13 million children who are suffering from hunger and can not get enough food daily. The reasons which cause children’s hunger is poverty, lack of opportunities to have nutritious food, and lack of awareness of food which they consumed. In order to decrease kids’ hunger, the parents need to know how they should deal with the hunger. It is important to acknowledge the cause of children’s hunger because hunger is the issue which is deeply related to how the parents react to hunger.
First of all, the biggest reason for children’s hunger is money. Of course, parents need to work to earn money for their children, but some of them can not afford enough money, even though they work hard, their income is still low. In the article, ‘Food Stamps-Two perspectives – Montgomery officials Try Eating for $5 a Day’, Bill Turque writes that ‘A family of four earning less than $2,400 a month is eligible for help [of SNAP]’ (Turque 316). He suggests that spending $25 in five days for groceries, the implication of this sentence is that if the parents earn less than $2,400 for ‘a family of four’ (Geraghty 318), it might become a cause of their children’s hunger.
Because if they do not have enough money, they need to save to spend money and need to buy cheap food that might not contain enough nutrients for kids. Besides, Jim Geraghty, ‘Food Stamps-Two perspectives – Lawmakers’ Headline-Grabbing Food Stamp Diet’, writes that ‘With low incomes, [spending more than $5 per day] may not be much more than that, but at least they have the option’ (Geraghty 318). In his article, Geraghty describes that even though with low incomes, there is the option to help their burden such as the SNAP program so that they can avoid their children’s hunger due to low income.
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Even the choice of where the parents live influences their children’s hunger. For example, ‘lack access to adequate fresh food’ (Wehunt 217), Jennifer Wehunt writes in her article ‘The Food Desert’, which increase the risk of hunger. Wehunt describes the people’s lives in the food desert defined ‘as a concentrated area short on access to fresh meat and produce, but flush with the packaged and fried yield of convenience stores and fast-food outlets.’ (Wehunt 216). If the parents are living in this area, their kids mostly have few opportunities to have ‘raw meat and fresh vegetables’ (Wehunt 217). In fact, unfortunately, those kids who live in the food desert get the disease caused by unhealthy ‘Diet [because it] has a direct link to obesity, diabetes’ (Wehunt 217).
To decrease hunger of kids, apparently, parents need to choose to move to the other area or have a way to access grocery stores. However, according to her article, the area of the food desert has made the opportunity such as ‘Chicago Grocer Expo project’ (Wehunt 222) to reduce the hunger of kids so that choosing it and participating is also the other choice to make children’s hunger better. Wehunt also describes that ‘The project would bring not only fresh food to the neighborhood, but also 250 permanent jobs.’ (Wehunt 222), so that even in the area of the food desert, there are several ways to change it better. It is proof that hunger also has a chance to make it better just like the reform of the food desert.
Also, the identification of hunger for each people is significant to encourage the reduction of hunger. In the article, ‘The Disappearance of Hunger in America’, written by Patricia Allen, ‘The statistical elimination of the term hunger does violence to hungry people and to efforts to end hunger in America.’ (Allen 225), Allen writes. Of course, some people deny that and people who suffer from hunger still exist, however, it is all their choice that how people face the issue of hunger. Especially, for people who have the child, it might be a turning point to think about what the hunger is and what cause of it.
By considering it, the parents care about what they eat and how the food they eat affects them so that they will be able to make a choice to avoid hunger. For example, as Wehunt mentioned before, parents might try to consume local fresh food for their kids, ‘all persons obtaining at all times a culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through local non-emergency sources’ (Allen 227) so that there is no critical possibility cause the hunger of kids, and also, they can contribute local economy to raise awareness of hunger. Besides, changing the consciousness of hunger in the appropriate direction expands opportunities to choose other parents or people’s choice to solve the issue of hunger in the US.
To sum up, depending on what the parents’ choice how they act, the hunger of children fluctuates either positively or worse so that parents need to be careful to deal with making their choice and responsible behavior. After making their own appropriate decision, for example, they consider the balance of nutrition when they buy food containing minimum nutrients with reasonable for the price, even their income is low. Alternatively, they will be able to live in a place called ‘the food desert’ (Wehunt 216) because they know how to deal with hunger, and they can contribute to the local so that it is possible that they will become the one to lead the local community.
Moreover, by changing the consciousness of hunger leads attention of other people who do not usually consider the hunger of children. By collecting attention from them, their different perspective on the issue of hunger will lead to new remedial measures for how people are going to deal with the hunger of kids in the future. Not only to improve their children’s hunger but also to help the hunger of other children improve. As the vicious cycle of hunger produces a negative chain of hunger, the circulation of hope for improvement of hunger will also bring a definite trigger to make hunger reduce.
