We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet.
We cannot stick our heads in the sand concerning the issue of hunger in America. Even though this subject seldom reaches the front page of our newspapers or is featured on news programs because of its lack of sensationalism, the problem exists in massive proportions and must be defeated.
In 2008, a year of supposed 'food crisis', we grew enough food to feed 11 billion people. Most of it was not eaten by humans as food, however.
I do think we have a food problem. In 2006, which is the year for which we have the latest data, 35.5 million Americans were food insecure. That means there are 35.5 million Americans who are so hard up at some point during the year that they didn't know where their next meal was coming from. That's a lot of Americans. They don't get reported very much because there's nothing spectacular about people skipping a meal because they're poor. The media tends to ignore that, just as it ignores the sort of chronic food shortages elsewhere in the world.
24,000 people, 18,000 of them children, die every day because of hunger. Each year we bring food to nearly 90 million people in more than 80 countries. Food - there's no greater gift, and no better way to give it than the World Food Programme.
Wherever I go people recognize me, call my name, cheer for me. But there are names no one cares to remember, that no one cheers for: the 805 million people suffering from hunger in the world today.
