D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
July 2005
D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
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Hunger at Home
By Sharman Apt Russell
Every day, the food we eat is broken down in our stomach and intestines into smaller parts, which are sent through the bloodstream into cells, where they are broken down into even smaller parts, creating the energy our cells need to function. It is a miracle of transformation. Every day, we break down the world, and every day, we build it up again into who we are. Specifically, every day our body needs about 200 grams of glucose. Our brain requires half of that. When the amount of glucose in our system drops low, as in short-term hunger, our body becomes alarmed. Our stomach sends hormones up to the brain: Feed me! Our brain sends hormones to the stomach: Get ready for food! Our emotions are primal. When scientists study short-term hunger in men and women who have not eaten for 36 hours, they see the same areas of the brain light up as when people are thirsty or in pain or fighting for oxygen. Short-term hunger is not uncommon in America. More than 30 million people—one in 10 Americans—live in what is called "food-insecure households." Twelve million of these are children. One in four people standing in line at a soup kitchen is a child. Most families that worry about food are headed by a single mother. A disproportionate number of these families are black or Hispanic. For the last four years, the number of American households experiencing some form of hunger has steadily increased. In America, short-term hunger is a choice between paying for food at the end of the month and paying for rent or heating or medicine. It is skipping a few meals. It is a Sunday waiting for Monday's school breakfast program. It is eating dry cereal for three days. It is shoplifting. It is being homeless or mentally ill or old.
New Mexico leads the nation in the percentage of people who have to worry about their next meal (almost 16 percent, or more than one in eight) and in the number of children who live below the poverty line (almost 25 percent, or one in four). In Albuquerque, our largest city, the Roadrunner Food Bank distributes more than 50,000 pounds of food every day to hungry people. Part of the national Second Harvest program, the food bank gets salvageable products from donors such as General Mills or large grocery stores and redistributes them to a network of soup kitchens, day cares, group homes and smaller food banks. The bank also purchases food in bulk. Their motto is, "The sooner you believe it, the sooner we can end it." Almost half the people who get help from Roadrunner have a job. Often they work in service industries, as maids or waitresses, and can't stretch their paycheck to feed a family for a month. In Grant County, the portrait of hunger is somewhat different. We don't have some of the problems of an urban area—such as a large population of illegal immigrants afraid to seek social services. We don't have some of the advantages, either—such as a centralized organization like Roadrunner Food Bank that distributes food. In our population of roughly 31,000, about half of us are Hispanic and half non-Hispanic. Our poverty rate is high, our unemployment is high (more than 12 percent), our suicide rate is high, and our problems with alcohol and drug abuse per capita are among the worst in the state—as are our statistics of child abuse and neglect and teen pregnancies. For a family of four, we are not a particularly cheap place to live. In a comparison of 52 New Mexican communities done by the New Mexico Voices for Children, Silver City ranked eighth in housing costs, 13th in food costs and 22nd in child-care costs. (Rankings were highest to lowest, with 1 as highest out of 52.) Here, as elsewhere, different populations have different experiences of hunger. There is no single cause, and there is no simple answer. The images of hunger are kaleidoscopic.
Kevin Fast has been running the Gospel Mission, the only soup kitchen in the Silver City area, for three years. The Gospel Mission serves a free lunch Monday through Friday and stocks a food pantry that gives away bags of food for people to take home. Kevin's wife, Adellina, began to help him in the kitchen two years ago, where she is joined by her mother and, sometimes, their three children. On Sundays, a volunteer church group comes over to cook breakfast. Lunch at the soup kitchen does not involve a Christian service, but Christianity—counseling clients and praying for them—is at the heart of this organization. Adellina Fast estimates that about 20 people come into the Gospel Mission for lunch at the beginning of the month and that the number can swell to 50 people a few weeks later, as the money from paychecks and disability checks and welfare checks and Social Security checks runs out. Adellina always plans for 50 lunches, in any case, since she'd hate to turn anyone away. Some of her clients are working men and women who only have a half-hour to spare. Some are low-income couples who don't qualify for other resources, such as lunch at the senior citizen's center. Some are single women with young children. Homeless men used to be regulars but Adellina says that many of these have banded together recently to rent apartments or houses in the area. They still come by for lunch, especially on days when she is serving a favorite, like her red enchiladas. A few people, she says, come in for the companionship. The food is plentiful. Local stores like Food Basket and Albertson's donate their day-old bread, as well as canned goods. Public schools in Silver City package and freeze food that is not eaten that day. Restaurants like Pizza Hut also freeze pizzas or meals that were ordered but not picked up. The Silver City Food Co-op brings fresh salad every Tuesday. Organizations that host parties and barbeques send over the leftovers. The Copper Cowbelles donate beef. The list goes on. People want to help. The food pantry is also well-stocked, and Kevin figures he gives out bags of nonperishable food to about 200 families a month. A family of four will get two bags; a family of six will get three. Kevin Fast believes that if the Gospel Mission were not here, along with the help provided by other church organizations like the St. Francis Associates and St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, then there would be real hunger in Silver City in groups like the working poor, the disabled or mentally ill, the homeless and illegal immigrants. "For a lot of these people, this is their meal of the day. I can see that." At the same time, he says, "Food is not really the problem. This is a generous community. With what we get from so many different people and groups, we have enough. The hunger I keep seeing usually relates back to some kind of addiction. That's the situation that births hunger. . . . I've seen moms and dads who are so enthralled, so eaten up by their addiction that they have lost the ability to care for their children. I've seen serious hunger in these children of addiction. They come in and eat as though they've never eaten before. The parents are hungry, too, but they hardly even notice it." What Kevin Fast needs most at the Gospel Mission is more people willing to give three or four hours a week, serving lunch or manning the food pantry or the Federal Commodities Program housed nearby. "It's a sign of the times," he says. "We're just all so busy." (To help at the Gospel Mission, call 388-5071 or visit them for lunch at 12 p.m. at 114 Texas St.)
Linda Detrick is director of the Grant County Senior Services, a nonprofit organization that uses state and federal grants, as well as private donations, to serve seniors. "There is hunger among our seniors," she says easily, not a doubt in her mind. Most seniors are hungry because they don't have the money to buy food. Their Social Security benefits may be as low as $550 a month, with a meager $15 in food stamps. On this income, they may qualify for programs that help with housing or medical expenses—or they may not. They may have family in the area who can help—or they may not. They may have transportation to food pantries or the meal served at a senior citizens center—or they may not. They are extraordinarily vulnerable. In Grant County, senior citizen centers in Silver City, Santa Clara, the Gila and Mimbres Valley, and the Hurley Community Center serve a hot fresh-cooked lunch to roughly 200 seniors every Monday through Friday. Detrick's program Meals on Wheels brings food to another 160 seniors who are home-bound. "Some of these people may have the money to buy food, but they can't prepare it or they can't get to the store," Yvette Valenzuela, director of In-Home Services, says. "Maybe food doesn't appeal to them anymore and they have to be coaxed a little. For most of our clients, this will be the only meal of the day. Later, they'll have a piece of bread with butter or something small." Detrick and Valenzuela have seen all the permutations of being old and hungry in America. They have seen seniors give their food and other resources away to children and grandchildren because "they need it more." They have seen spouses too ashamed to admit they can no longer cook or care for each other. They have seen the self-neglect of long-term alcoholics. They have seen the signs of slowly growing dementia. They have seen the man who refuses to use a microwave or the woman who won't leave her dilapidated home. They have seen the cost of isolation. They have seen frailty and empty refrigerators. They have seen enormous dignity and pride. Meals on Wheels does not have a waiting list. For now, anyone who is referred or found to be in need will get their service. On the other hand, Detrick says, "I wish we had the money for weekend meals." Valenzuela agrees: "You can see how it has been a long weekend for some of these people. You can see their anticipation when we come on Monday. And it's not just for the food. It's the social contact, too." "The person delivering a meal isn't there for very long," Detrick adds, "but you can make such a difference with a smile or a 'How are you?,' a minute of conversation." She would also like to deliver a hot breakfast and have more education programs and follow-up visits by nurses and other professionals. She knows, too, that there are older people in need who are not getting referred to her program, who have become, for various reasons, invisible. Like Kevin Fast, what she could really use are more volunteers, people to drive a meal to a senior's home and come in with a smile and bit of conversation. (For more information about Grant County Senior Services, call Linda Detrick at 388-2523 or visit their offices at 2610 N. Silver St.)
In the late 1960s, politicians and social workers were shocked to discover that extreme hunger existed in America. In reports before Congress, one physician stated that in a year she had treated 14 cases of severe malnutrition among Navajos. Another scientist pointed out that while a certain number of children in the United States were born retarded, that number rose significantly by the time children reached the age of 12, with most of these children coming from poor urban and rural areas. In effect, we were creating a disability through malnutrition. At that time, even the poorest of children had to pay to participate in a modest school lunch program. Today, the expansion of the federal school lunch and breakfast programs and the establishment of the aid program Woman, Infants and Children (WIC) have contributed enormously to a rise in children's health and a decline in hungry children. Even so, children in America still go hungry. In Albuquerque, the Roadrunner Food Bank has a school program that feeds 1,600 kids over the weekend. Individual public schools identify which children seem to need more than the daily free breakfast and lunch. Then Roadrunner provides the school staff with backpacks of food for the children to take home on Friday afternoon. The backpacks all look different so as not to stigmatize the child. Inside is a collection of single-serving, non-perishable, well-packaged items: milk or juice in a box, peanut butter crackers, beef stew or soup, applesauce, raisins and cereal. Extra food is packed for preschool siblings. When there are a lot of baby brothers and sisters at home, the backpack is so heavy that some kindergarteners and first graders have trouble carrying it. Some kids, naturally, sit down and start eating as soon as they are off school grounds. For that reason, the backpacks now include a plastic spoon. Gayle Reeves, director of food services at the Silver Consolidated School District, also says, without doubt, "Definitely we do see hunger. A good percentage of kids come to school hungry every morning. Maybe 5-10 kids at every elementary school are very hungry on Monday morning." The Silver Consolidated School District has roughly 3,222 children, of whom 59 percent are eligible for a free or reduced meal at school. Eight hundred children get a free or reduced breakfast every morning, and 1,400 get a free or reduced lunch. Reeves says these numbers have gone up in the past 10 years. At the Cobre School District, with almost 1,500 children, more than 75 percent qualify for a free or reduced lunch. That high number allows this district to participate in a federal program that offers a free breakfast and lunch to all children. Everyone is fed, without question, at no charge. Free snacks are also part of a supervised after-school program with educational activities. The school district is then reimbursed at a set rate from the Public Education Department. A recent innovation in the Cobre schools is to serve breakfast in the elementary and middle-school classroom as the children listen to the news and start their day. Daisy Lucero, director of food services, explains, "We wanted to get breakfast to more kids. When we served it earlier, kids would come in late and miss going through the breakfast line. We often had teachers or nurses come in from the classroom and say, 'You know, Johnny's parents just brought him and he didn't get breakfast and now his stomach hurts.' This new way seems to work better." The two school districts also feed children during the summer by offering lunches at designated areas, like the city park or public library. In these programs, of course, they are reaching a much smaller percentage of children. Everyone in the hunger business knows that children go hungry in the summer. Gayle Reeves talks about nutrition. Children, especially, need more than junk food and empty calories. Schools have strict nutritional guidelines for what they can serve for breakfast and lunch. But Reeves sees a need for much more parent education—for us all to become more educated. "If a child fills up on a bag of chips," she says, "he is not hungry, but he's not necessarily getting what he needs to grow and develop." Could the Silver Consolidated School District use a school-based food pantry program like the "backpacks for kids" offered by the Roadrunner Food Bank? Should an outside volunteer group help the schools send food home for the weekend, for that small percentage of hungry children and their younger brothers and sisters? Reeves gets excited: Yes, why not? Of course! "You can't learn if you're hungry," she says. "We can't teach to hungry children." (To help set up a "No Child Goes Hungry" food pantry program in the schools, call Sharman Russell at 538-9111.)
Marsha Bowman is the director of family programs at Border Area Mental Health, a nonprofit community health center. She says that hunger in Grant County comes "in different doses and different environments. We have many families on welfare or who work a minimum-wage job, who have difficulty budgeting money, who have empty refrigerators at the end of the month. We have families who live in tents. We have nomadic families. We have homeless families. We do have an addiction problem. We do have adults who have mental dysfunctions, maybe post-traumatic stress syndrome, something that prevents them from being employed. "And we are getting less and less money from the government," she admits, "partly because New Mexico is doing better economically overall and so we qualify for less federal funds. But the good news is that we have so many agencies and committees and groups here who come together to help. We have a great network of churches and community-based organizations." Bowman believes that "for those who have been identified as needy—for the severely mentally challenged person, say—we have services. These people aren't hungry. It's the unidentified person. It's the person we don't see or know about." She wants more prevention and intervention programs, more education that teaches children and parents about choices. Hunger in America, she believes, often begins with bad choices. Hunger begins in families that don't offer children good choices at all. "But really, if I were going to say anything about hunger, I would just say to society: Open your eyes. Go out and meet your next-door neighbor and see if the needs in your neighborhood are being met. You might have a woman living right next door who needs help. That's what we should be doing as a community, people checking on other people, people talking to each other." In her program, Bowman's greatest need now is for foster parents willing to care for homeless children and adolescents who have special behavioral requirements. This "treatment" program is paid for by Medicaid, and these children, she says, "can be tremendous success stories." (For more information about becoming a treatment foster parent, call Marsha Bowman at 574-4619.)
The Grant County Community Health Council is a partnership between the New Mexico Department of Health and the Gila Regional Medical Center. It is a community-based organization whose mission, simply, is to improve our health. According to their statistics, more than half of the adults in Grant County are overweight or obese. The percentage of overweight and obese children is increasing. So are cases of weight-related diabetes among adults and children. This is not a regional problem. More than half the adults in the United States are now considered overweight or obese; the same is true for Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Russia, Finland, England, Bulgaria, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. One researcher describes this as an "epidemic of energy storage." The problems associated with obesity make it one of the biggest health threats of the 21st century, on the World Health Organization's top-10 list, on the top five for developed countries. People gain excess weight for many reasons. Sometimes, poverty is part of the problem. When we skip a meal or go hungry for a day, the body gets alarmed—and then over-compensates. Both physical and emotional deprivation can result in over-eating. Most important, low-fat foods such as fresh vegetables and fruit are expensive and not often available in poor urban or rural stores. Less-nutritious but high-caloric meals are cheaper, more convenient and easier to prepare. Just compare a super-sized meal at a fast-food restaurant with the cost of a fresh salad and bowl of raspberries. Poverty can also mean less opportunity for exercise and less education in the areas of nutrition and health. Hunger takes many forms. The overweight can be malnourished. The child full on chips and soda can still be hungry.
In 2004, the coalition National Anti-Hunger Organizations in America came up with a blueprint to end hunger in this country. The first step is to strengthen existing federal and state programs. Reach out to the 40 percent of people who are eligible for Food Stamp Benefits but do not receive them. Base benefits on a realistic measure. Currently the average benefit is 93 cents per person per meal. Also, the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty estimates that the federal poverty level needs to be readjusted upwards: In Silver City, for example, a family of four really requires $29, 656 a year, minus taxes, to meet its basic "bare bones" budget. The federal standard is $18,100. A number of benefits, such as help from the Women, Infants and Children program, are based on the federal poverty level. Allow people to save for emergencies or other needs while they are receiving food stamps. At present, recipients of food stamps may not have more than $2,000 in a bank account or $3,000 if a family member is disabled or over 60. Reduce the complexity and stigma of getting food stamps, the coalition urges. Give food stamps to all legal immigrants in the United States. Expand child nutrition and food for the elderly programs. Make sure that all eligible children get breakfast and lunch in the schools and during school breaks—more than 50 percent of eligible schools in America do not offer a free breakfast and lunch program. Provide the Women, Infants and Children program with more resources. The WIC program is highly successful and cost-effective in educating mothers of young children and providing them with food supplements. Over the years, increased participation means that thousands of women and children are being turned away. The second step the coalition advocates is to reduce poverty in America. Raise the minimum wage. Expand employment opportunities. Support programs for the working poor. Protect vulnerable groups such as senior citizens and the disabled. This is not rocket science. "The solution to hunger in America is not a secret," says the national anti-hunger coalition. "We have both the knowledge and the tools." Kevin Fast of the Silver City Gospel Mission might point out that this blueprint does not address the dysfunctions and addictions that also cause hunger. Marsha Bowman might say that it is not a substitute for "people checking on people," for talking to that elderly neighbor or taking in a homeless teen. "We, as a nation, have to take back that responsibility," she says, "with grassroots movements that will be asked to do more and more as the government provides less." A blueprint to end hunger in America, and in Grant County, might involve all of the above, and more. Perhaps the important thing, as with so many complex social problems, is simply to start somewhere. "The sooner you believe it, the sooner we can end it." At the Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque, the director of the school backpack program displays a drawing. The lines and splotches of brown and black don't mean much at a glance. Apparently the teacher in the class had the same problem, so she asked the little boy to explain. "This is a man," the child said, and the teacher dutifully wrote the words down, "who is angry because he just wants food."
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