Two completely different conversations about food are taking place around the world. One is among the well-fed, who ask themselves, “What should I eat?” The other is among the underfed, who wonder, “How can I keep from starving?”

Christians influence these two conversations significantly, according to Wall Street Journal reporters Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman, authors of Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty(Public Affairs). They believe Christians should better understand that most cases of malnutrition and chronic hunger and nearly all starvation can be prevented if the right reforms are put into place. Rob Moll, an editor at large for Christianity Today, recently interviewed Thurow, now a senior fellow with the Chicago Council of Global Affairs.

Why use moral and theological language in a mainstream book about world hunger?….

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VALENTE: Many Americans are getting back to the garden. These students in Cedar Grove, North Carolina brave intense summer heat as they learn to grow fruits and vegetables in a community garden.

STUDENT: You can just pull it right out, and just rinse ”˜em off and you can eat ”˜em.

KATE FORER: Right here we have sweet potatoes, that are doing fabulously, as you can tell.

VALENTE: Kate Forer, who manages the garden, is also an ordained minister.

FORER: Having the experience of planting a seed and having the faith that it’ll grow into a plant that will eventually sustain me is a spiritual experience. And ultimately I really, really feel like food is a sacred gift from God and that’s something that we tend to forget about in our culture.

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This raises an intriguing question: To what extent should we view the future versions of ourselves as different people from ourselves today?

To be sure, most parents have no trouble restricting a child’s decisions on the grounds that doing so is in the young person’s best interest. Few teenagers are farsighted enough to fully incorporate the interests of their future selves when making decisions. As parents, we hope that someday our grown-up children will be grateful for our current restrictions on their behavior.

But people do not suddenly mature at the age of 18, when society deems us “adults.” There is always an adolescent lurking inside us, feeling the pull of instant gratification and too easily ignoring the long-run effects of our decisions. Taxes on items with short-run benefits and long-run costs tell our current selves to take into account the welfare of our future selves.

IF this is indeed the best argument for “sin” taxes, as I believe it is, we are led to vexing questions of political philosophy: To what extent should we use the power of the state to protect us from ourselves? If we go down that route, where do we stop?

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The president of a Christian anti-hunger lobbying group won the premier award for fighting world hunger.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton awarded the World Food Prize to Bread for the World President David Beckmann at the State Department on Wednesday (June 16).

Beckmann, an economist and ordained Lutheran minister, shared the $250,000 prize with Jo Luck, president of Heifer International.

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What does the U.S. have in common with countries in sub-Saharan Africa?

Both waste large, obscene amounts of food. Better knowledge and technology would reduce food waste, deter environmental damage and, especially in that region of the African continent, reduce the number of people who go hungry each day.

In sub-Saharan Africa, at least 265 million people are hungry, heightening the travesty of the food waste problem. More than a quarter of the food produced in Africa spoils before it is eaten. Farmers battle post-harvest losses caused by severe weather, disease and pests, or poor harvesting and storage techniques. Annual post-harvest losses for cereal grains, roots and tuber crops, fruits, vegetables, meat, milk and fish amount to some 100 million tons, or $48 million worth of food.

To prevent these losses in Africa and elsewhere, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is trying to provide the information and technology to begin turning this tide….

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A decade ago, New York City officials were so reluctant to give out food stamps, they made people register one day and return the next just to get an application. The welfare commissioner said the program caused dependency and the poor were “better off” without it.

Now the city urges the needy to seek aid (in languages from Albanian to Yiddish). Neighborhood groups recruit clients at churches and grocery stores, with materials that all but proclaim a civic duty to apply ”” to “help New York farmers, grocers, and businesses.” There is even a program on Rikers Island to enroll inmates leaving the jail.

“Applying for food stamps is easier than ever,” city posters say.

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Young children who are regularly looked after by their grandparents have an increased risk of being overweight, an extensive British study has suggested.

Analysis of 12,000 three-year olds suggested the risk was 34% higher if grandparents cared for them full time.

Children who went to nursery or had a childminder had no increased risk of weight problems, the International Journal of Obesity reported.

Nearly a quarter of preschool children in the UK are overweight or obese.

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In the State Dining Room at the White House, first lady Michelle Obama rolled out her national initiative to combat childhood obesity Tuesday afternoon with a show of force that included medical, business and government officials, grass-roots activists, celebrity public service announcements, cartoon nutrition experts as well as those most directly affected — the kids themselves.

Dubbed “Let’s Move,” the project kicked off in the morning in the Oval Office, where President Obama signed a formal memorandum that established, for the first time, a national task force — one that draws from the departments of the Interior, Health and Human Services, Agriculture and Education — and is charged with turning the first lady’s ambitious list of proposals into action.

At its core, the first lady’s initiative centers on clearer nutrition information, increased physical activity, better access to healthy foods and, ultimately, personal responsibility. It has bipartisan support, as demonstrated by the presence of two mayors, one a Republican from Hernando, Miss., (population 10,000) and the other a Democrat from Somerville, Mass. (population 77,478). And it purposefully and adamantly steered clear of defining itself as a campaign in favor of foodie proselytizing and against french fries, burgers and cookies.

“This isn’t about trying to turn the clock back to when we were kids, or preparing five-course meals from scratch every night. No one has time for that,” the first lady said in her remarks. “And it’s not about being 100 percent perfect, 100 percent of the time. Lord knows I’m not. There’s a place for cookies and ice cream, burgers and fries — that’s part of the fun of childhood.”

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Regardless, getting angry isn’t the answer, said [Dr. Reed] Tuckson, who cautions against demonizing heavy people.

“Not only is getting angry mean-spirited and antithetical to the kind of society we want to live in, but it’s also counterproductive,” Tuckson said. “We need to convert our concern into positive action and find ways to support individuals to make better choices.”

He believes that reducing the incidence of obesity and its related health costs will require changes on four levels:
* Individuals need to be more accountable for their choices — and that includes what they put in their bodies.

* Families must be responsible for what they feed their children, with parents acting as role models for healthful diet and exercise habits and schools providing proper choices.

* Community institutions, including the workplace, must take a more active role in what foods are served and offer a healthy culture, wellness programs and financial incentives to encourage more healthful behaviors.

* Better research is needed so we can know what works and doesn’t. “Healthcare decisions are made by individuals but in the context of families and the community,” Tuckson said. “That context has to change.”

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Dressed in Sunday church finery and fashionable hats, these devout Baptist women looked decades younger than their ages, 70s and 80s ”” evidence, it seemed, of virtuous living.

The group of a half-dozen or so gathers every Sunday after church to talk about their shared bonds: faith in Jesus, and memories of long-ago journeys from sleepy Southern country towns to the big city with its smokestacks and sirens.

“We fellowship,” said Gloria Davis, a native of the Mississippi Delta, “and we remember the days.”

These women were part of one of the nation’s most important periods, the Great Migration, the mass trek of blacks going north for jobs and the hope of civil rights. It has been more than a half-century since the peak of migration to Chicago.

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The United States has more poor children now than it did a year ago.

As recession-hammered families increase, more are using food stamps to feed their kids, according to a study by the Brookings Institution and First Focus, a bipartisan child advocacy group.

“They are a really good barometer, a kind of economic-needs test,” said Mark R. Rank, an expert on social welfare programs at Washington University in St. Louis. “If you’re receiving food stamps and you’re a child, by definition, you’re in poverty.”

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The early bird special at Cafe Prima Pasta began last year after the restaurant’s owner, Gerardo Cea, lost all his savings in real estate and began seeing his regular customers at the supermarket.

“They weren’t coming anymore,” Mr. Cea said. “They couldn’t afford it.”

He expected his offer of a 50 percent discount before 6 p.m. to attract the usual crowd of frugal retirees. But word kept spreading, and on most nights now, at least half the tables are filled with young families, singles or hip couples ”” women in short skirts and men who prefer “dude” to “sir…..”

“The value of money has changed in America,” said James Accursio, whose family has owned the Capri, an Italian restaurant in Florida City, since it opened in 1958. “We’re not high rollers anymore.”

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After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic housing bust ”” the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the investment property.

Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for rejection, she is supporting two daughters on an income that inspires a double take: zero dollars in monthly cash and a few hundred dollars in food stamps.

With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, Ms. Bermudez belongs to an overlooked subgroup that is growing especially fast: recipients with no cash income.

About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times.

Makes the heart sad. Read it all.

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Watch for the answer to the question “what’s the greatest compliment you can receive?”

With poverty, hunger and environmental degradation on the rise worldwide, people must do all they can to not waste precious food, said Cardinal Renato Martino.

“In developed countries every year, 30 percent of foodstuffs are wasted, ending up in the garbage,” he said, adding that during the Christmas holidays the amount of wasted food rises to 40 percent.

In the United States, however, up to half its food supply is wasted year round, he said.

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Hospitality can encourage what discussion and debate cannot: reconciliation. As we see across the globe today, theology tends to divide people and too often leads to conflict. Our own nation is still highly segregated on Sunday mornings. But a shared meal can unite people at the level of a basic human need. Over the course of my 23 years of ministry, I’ve seen the power of a simple international potluck dinner. As James Beard wrote, “Food is our common ground, a universal experience.”

Meals also can build relationships across enormous socio-economic divides. My friend Kathleen Kline Chesson is the senior pastor of First Christian Church in Falls Church, Va., a congregation that serves 150 homeless people breakfast and lunch every Tuesday and Thursday. One rainy day, Chesson saw a homeless man ”” uninvited and dripping wet ”” shuffle into an elegant reception being held at the church after the funeral of a longtime member. Chesson greeted him, then smiled as three other members of the congregation rushed up to welcome him, making sure that he quickly had a plate of food.

So how are churches evolving today? Many are trying to become the “third place” that Starbucks has staked out in our culture a place for people to go after (1) home and (2) work.

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KIM LAWTON, anchor: Joining me with more on all of this is Candy Hill, a senior vice president at Catholic Charities USA. Candy, it seems like this time of year, every year, we hear appeals from groups saying “Oh people are hungry, you need to give.” What makes this year different?

CANDY HILL, Catholic Charities: Well, we certainly are seeing such an increase, and new people that have never come to Catholic Charities for services before, some of them are even our donors, and some of them are our former board members, so we see a real crisis in the number of people coming, and who need assistance this year over the other years we’ve been in business.

LAWTON: And there’s been some talk of food insecurity, I mean we’re not talking about starving in the streets, but we’re talking about people who are just having a harder time feeding their families?

HILL: Yes, and I think when we talk about food insecurity we’re really talking about people not having food for three meals a day, so we find parents who are scrimping or not having a meal themselves in order to feed their children, and seniors who are making choices between whether they buy medicine or feed themselves, and a country as great as this country, we shouldn’t have people doing that.

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Hunger is the most cruel and concrete sign of poverty. Opulence and waste are no longer acceptable when the tragedy of hunger is assuming ever greater proportions. Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Catholic Church will always be concerned for efforts to defeat hunger; the Church is committed to support, by word and deed, the action taken in solidarity ”“ planned, responsible and regulated ”“ to which all members of the international community are called to contribute. The Church does not wish to interfere in political decisions: she respects the knowledge gained through scientific study, and decisions arrived at through reason responsibly enlightened by authentically human values, and she supports the effort to eliminate hunger. This is the most immediate and concrete sign of solidarity inspired by charity, and it brooks neither delay nor compromise. Such solidarity relies on technology, laws and institutions to meet the aspirations of individuals, communities and entire peoples, yet it must not exclude the religious dimension, with all the spiritual energy that it brings, and its promotion of the human person. Acknowledgment of the transcendental worth of every man and every woman is still the first step towards the conversion of heart that underpins the commitment to eradicate deprivation, hunger and poverty in all their forms.

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The number of Americans who lack dependable access to adequate food shot up last year to 49 million, the largest number since the government has been keeping track, according to a federal report released Monday that shows particularly steep increases in food scarcity among families with children.

In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children — more than one in five across the United States — were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million youngsters the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Among people of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.

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“Norman Borlaug probably saved more lives than any single person in the history of the world. He probably improved the way more people live than any one in the history of the world.”

—Michael Specter yesterday on NPR (In case you missed it, we covered Norman Borlaug earlier on the blog–KSH)

Failure to act by governments and international institutions has left more than 1 billion around the world undernourished, according to a coalition of religious, human rights and development groups.

“Despite record grain crops worldwide, the number of undernourished people in the world reached in 2009 the historically high figure of 1.02 billion people, about 100 million more than in 2008,” says a report released Monday (Oct. 12) by a coalition of groups including Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, the Swiss Protestant agency Bread for All and the FoodFirst Information and Action Network.

The worldwide recession that started last year “pushed aside” the global food crisis, according to the report, “Who Controls the Governance of the World Food System.”

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This is a nice story–before you watch it, guess the estimated number of grandparents taking care of their grandchildren in America right now.

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Dorothy Carson figures her diet of frequent fried chicken and virtually no fresh produce finally caught up with her in July, when she was hospitalized for a stroke-like condition.

After two months in recovery from blurred vision, Carson returned to church at First African Methodist Episcopal Church a few weeks ago. That very same day, she said, the church launched a new open-air fresh produce market to bring healthful foods and better diets to the residents of South Los Angeles.

So there she was this weekend, scooping up fresh cucumbers, avocados, green beans, grapes and other produce she said she never would have dreamed of eating before. Carson said she now consumes about six daily servings of fresh fruits and vegetables. Her weight and cholesterol levels are down.

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Norman Borlaug arguably the greatest American of the 20th century died late Saturday after 95 richly accomplished years. The very personification of human goodness, Borlaug saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived. He was America’s Albert Schweitzer: a brilliant man who forsook privilege and riches in order to help the dispossessed of distant lands. That this great man and benefactor to humanity died little-known in his own country speaks volumes about the superficiality of modern American culture.

Born in 1914 in rural Cresco, Iowa, where he was educated in a one-room schoolhouse, Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work ending the India-Pakistan food shortage of the mid-1960s. He spent most of his life in impoverished nations, patiently teaching poor farmers in India, Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere the Green Revolution agricultural techniques that have prevented the global famines widely predicted when the world population began to skyrocket following World War II.

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But for a long time he stood alongside his colleagues, handing out bread and butter as people held out their trays.

O’Sullivan told me the kitchen averages 245 lunches served per day. This is up about 10 percent from last year. He also praised Leavy for “putting his considerable faith in action.” O’Sullivan called Leavy “a remarkable fellow.”

At 12:30 p.m. it was quitting time. Leavy took off his apron, picked up his cane and called Whitney Center to ask for a ride. Within a half-hour a car picked us up and brought us back to his place, where he planned to relax, take a nap and play Bach on his piano.

When I asked him if getting downtown, working and getting back was tiring, he replied with a grin, “At this age, anything makes you tired!”

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For all the grumbling you do about your weekly grocery bill, the fact is you’ve never had it so good, at least in terms of what you pay for every calorie you eat. According to the USDA, Americans spend less than 10% of their incomes on food, down from 18% in 1966. Those savings begin with the remarkable success of one crop: corn. Corn is king on the American farm, with production passing 12 billion bu. annually, up from 4 billion bu. as recently as 1970. When we eat a cheeseburger, a Chicken McNugget, or drink soda, we’re eating the corn that grows on vast, monocrop fields in Midwestern states like Iowa.

But cheap food is not free food, and corn comes with hidden costs. The crop is heavily fertilized ”” both with chemicals like nitrogen and with subsidies from Washington. Over the past decade, the Federal Government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop ”” at least until corn ethanol skewed the market ”” artificially low. That’s why McDonald’s can sell you a Big Mac, fries and a Coke for around $5 ”” a bargain, given that the meal contains nearly 1,200 calories, more than half the daily recommended requirement for adults. “Taxpayer subsidies basically underwrite cheap grain, and that’s what the factory-farming system for meat is entirely dependent on,” says Gurian-Sherman. (See the 10 worst fast food meals.)

So what’s wrong with cheap food and cheap meat ”” especially in a world in which more than 1 billion people go hungry? A lot. For one thing, not all food is equally inexpensive; fruits and vegetables don’t receive the same price supports as grains. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips or 875 calories of soda but just 250 calories of vegetables or 170 calories of fresh fruit. With the backing of the government, farmers are producing more calories ”” some 500 more per person per day since the 1970s ”” but too many are unhealthy calories. Given that, it’s no surprise we’re so fat; it simply costs too much to be thin.

Our expanding girth is just one consequence of mainstream farming. Another is chemicals.

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Watch this whole great story to find the answer–but please guess first.

To make it easier for children to eat healthfully and move more, local governments in towns and cities across the country need to help create a better environment, a new report says.

Children and their families should have access to grocery stores that offer plenty of healthful food such as fruits and vegetables, and schools shouldn’t be surrounded by fast-food restaurants. Children should be able to ride their bikes or walk safely to school, and they should have safe places to play afterward, says the report out today from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and National Research Council.

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You can disagree with the doctor ”” you can even be offended ”” and still come to see that there is a larger point behind his tough-love approach. The debate over health care reform has so far revolved around how insurers, drug companies, doctors, nurses and government technocrats might be persuaded to change their behavior. And for the sake of the economy and the federal budget, they do need to change their behavior. But there has been far less discussion about how the rest of us might also change our behavior. It’s as if we have little responsibility for our own health. We instead outsource it to something called the health care system.

The promise of that system is undeniably alluring: whatever your ailment, a pill or a procedure will fix it. Yet the promise hasn’t been kept. For all the miracles that modern medicine really does perform, it is not the primary determinant of most people’s health. J. Michael McGinnis, a senior scholar at the Institute of Medicine, has estimated that only 10 percent of early deaths are the result of substandard medical care. About 20 percent stem from social and physical environments, and 30 percent from genetics. The biggest contributor, at 40 percent, is behavior.

Today, the great American public-health problem is indeed obesity. The statistics have become rote, but consider that people in their 50s are about 20 pounds heavier on average than 50-somethings were in the late 1970s. As a convenient point of reference, a typical car tire weighs 20 pounds.

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