The World's Largest Hunger

While riding the subway this morning, I opened my paper and the first pair of pages presented an astounding summary of our cultural mindset.

On the left side: "...the world's largest bowl of tabouleh"

On the right side: "More Going Hungry"

It seems almost every day I read a story about the world's "largest burrito" or the "longest sandwich". Particularly in light of November 9 being Guinness World Records Day, I've recently been extra inundated with accounts of oversized food. At a minimum, this is about as uninteresting as news can get. Exactly who is interested in and inspired by "Denmark's Heaviest Cupcake"? Are you kidding me?

Yet, here we are as a civilization that on the one hand gathers 600 pounds of butter for a sculpture of a cow and on another gathers hundreds of state representatives from across the globe for a hunger summit. U.S. unemployment is at record highs and poor families are struggling to feed themselves, but we still managed to find the resources to create the world’s largest meatball.

The fundamental problem is not really a shortage of food or the capacity to grow it - even with the earth’s enormous population, it would be theoretically possible to nourish everyone on the planet. The real problem is that this utopian idea is prevented by two fundamental obstacles - a lack of motivation and a lack of action.

The truth is that most people aren’t motivated to ensure that nobody goes hungry. Like so much in life, they consider it someone else’s problem. We would need to make - wait for it - sacrifices in our daily lives in order to achieve an end to world hunger. Such a line of thinking would require a radical change in how people think; too radical a change to have any hope of it actually happening, unfortunately.

We are a week away from a national holiday that celebrates abundance. We gorge ourselves and give thanks that we have more than we need. Until we collectively adjust that mentality, people will continue to starve all over the globe and nothing will change.