The "Hidden Scandal" of American Hunger

What happens when gas prices reach such heights that poor families in rural areas can't afford to drive into town to visit the food pantry?  What happens when quitting your job is actually more economically sound than spending $200 a week on gas to reach employment 50 miles away?  What happens when you have to choose between feeding your children or buying needed prescriptions?  What happens when the social safety net fails to catch those who are falling into chronic hunger?

These are some of the questions that Sasha Abramsky seeks to address in his recently-released book Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger And How To FIx It. Admittedly, I have only just started reading it and am about 40 pages in right now. However, I wanted to let all you hunger advocates know about this book in case you haven't heard of it already.

A more detailed summary of Breadline from the inside book jacket:

Trapped in the triangle of housing and financial market collapse, energy price instability, and an increasingly dysfunctional heath care system, a growing number of American families are fighting an even more formidable enemy: hunger.  Their battle against food insecurity has only recently begun to register in mainstream media, which has focused more on obesity and the environmental impacts of the food production system.  Part first-person account, part reportage, Breadline USA tells the stories of American families in all types of communities who struggle to put food on the table.

One of the suggestions Abramsky makes in the initial chapters of his book is to develop a gap stamp program to alleviate some of the barriers high energy prices place on the ability of low-income rural individuals to access food and employment.  A federal gas stamp program--which would be set up much in the same way our current food stamp program is structured--would provide poor rural residents who have no choice but to drive to work or the food pantry or the doctor with the means of paying for gas.

Abramsky claims this isn't such an outlandish idea and cites the passage of The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program which helps poor Americans pay for their heating and cooling bills to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  If the government is subsidizing energy consumption for the poor in one way, why not in another?

I encourage you to go out and pick up a copy of this book to learn more about the factors that have created a new generation of hungry Americans over the past decade.

Look forward to discussing it with all of you in the near future when I finish reading it!

(Photo Credit: cliff1066 on Flickr)