Still Hungry In America

Originally published in 1969, the documentary evidence of poverty and malnutrition in the American South showcased in Still Hungry in America still resonates today. The work was created to complement a July 1967 U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty hearings on hunger in America. At those hearings, witnesses documented examples of deprivation afflicting hundreds of thousands of American families. The most powerful testimonies came from the authors of this profoundly disturbing and important book. Al Clayton’s sensitive camerawork enabled the subcommittee members to see the agonizing results of insufficient food and improper diet, rendered graphically in stunted, weakened and fractured bones, dry, shrunken, and ulcerated skin, wasting muscles, and bloated legs and abdomens. Physician and child psychiatrist Robert Coles, who had worked with these populations for many years, described with fierce clarity the medical and psychological effects of hunger. Coles’s powerful narrative, reinforced by heartbreaking interviews with impoverished people and accompanied by 101 photographs taken by Clayton in Appalachia, rural Mississippi, and Atlanta, Georgia, convey the plight of the millions of hungry citizens in the most affluent nation on earth. A new foreword by historian Thomas J. Ward Jr. analyzes food insecurity among today’s rural and urban poor and frames the current crisis in the American diet not as a scarcity of food but as an overabundance of empty calories leading to obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

With the biting wit of Supersize Me and the passion of a lifelong activist, Joel Berg has his eye on the growing number of people who are forced to wait on lines at food pantries across the nation—the modern breadline. All You Can Eat reveals that hunger is a problem as American as apple pie, and shows what it is like when your income is not enough to cover rising housing and living costs and put food on the table. Berg takes to task politicians who remain inactive; the media, which ignores hunger except during holidays and hurricanes; and the food industry, which makes fattening, artery-clogging fast food more accessible to the nation's poor than healthy fare. He challenges the new president to confront the most unthinkable result of US poverty—hunger—and offers a simple and affordable plan to end it for good. A spirited call to action, All You Can Eat shows how practical solutions for hungry Americans will ultimately benefit America's economy and all of its citizens.

Three years ago, Carnie Wilson was 300 pounds, unemployed, depressed, and sitting in a doctor’s office being told that she probably wouldn’t live much longer. At night, she had terrible dreams of her mother getting a phone call from the police saying, "We’re very sorry, but someone found your daughter in bed, and she’s gone." Knowing she had to do something to save her own herself, Carnie opted to have gastric bypass surgery. She woke up the next day in the hospital determined that she wouldn’t just work on having a new body, but also a new life. That’s the story we’ve already heard. In I’m Still Hungry, Wilson picks up where she left off in her 2001 book Gut Feelings. She takes readers step by step on her weight loss journey, which wasn’t just a road to reaching 125 pounds. It was a mental trip where she had to conquer all of her fears and insecurities, including issues with her father, Beach Boy Brian Wilson—which made her gain the weight in the first place. This book offers a unique way of showing the progression of weight loss, with one section serving as a diary of sorts. It details Carnie’s weight at specific times so that readers can use this part of the book to find their own weight and see how Carnie’s life lessons got her head in the right place so the pounds could keep falling off. Wilson also offers a humorous look at her own weight loss, asking: What’s better—sex or chocolate? (Answer: "Sex followed by chocolate.") She also discusses re-establishing her career as an actress and singer in Hollywood. It wasn’t easy when the National Enquirer was practically staking out her house to catch her on "a fat day," or when fans e-mailed her to chastise her for flashing "some arm flab" on Entertainment Tonight. And, of course, the book includes Carnie’s minute-by-minute description of posing for the June 2003 issue of Playboy magazine, with the inevitable questions: Can I eat breakfast before posing nude? Why do I have my period this week of all weeks? and Do I look fat? Carnie also gives readers a glimpse of what spurred on the much awaited 2004 regrouping of the Wilson Phillips band and how she is in perfect harmony again with her partners, sister, Wendy Wilson; and bandmate, Chynna Phillips. Finally, the last part of the book reveals the specific weight-loss plan that Carnie still uses to keep slim—and anyone can follow this plan to lose weight whether they’ve had weight-loss surgery or not. Carnie even includes a few of her favorite desserts. Wilson is still hungry for knowledge, love, acceptance, and yes, a chocolate chip cookie or two.

In Still Hungry at the Feast, Episcopal priest and professor Samuel Torvend invites readers to expand their experience and understanding of the Mass, the Holy Eucharist, as more than a personal encounter with the risen Christ. Drawing on recent Jesus research, the long history of eucharistic reflection among Christians, and contemporary commitments to economic justice, Still Hungry at the Feast invokes the integral relationship between eucharistic practice and eucharistic mission. Here the ecumenical pattern and meaning of the Mass opens toward care for our wounded creation, solidarity with the poor and outcast, keeping the fast, and recovering a eucharistic economy. Lectionary references will assist those charged with liturgical preparation, while preachers and catechists will find guidance in the eucharistic homilies that conclude the book.

In the US, there is a wide-ranging network of at least 370 food banks, and more than 60,000 hunger-relief organizations such as food pantries and meal programs. These groups provide billions of meals a year to people in need. And yet hunger still affects one in nine Americans. What are we doing wrong? In Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries, Katie Martin argues that if handing out more and more food was the answer, we would have solved the problem of hunger decades ago. Martin instead presents a new model for charitable food, one where success is measured not by pounds of food distributed but by lives changed. The key is to focus on the root causes of hunger. When we shift our attention to strategies that build empathy, equity, and political will, we can implement real solutions. Martin shares those solutions in a warm, engaging style, with simple steps that anyone working or volunteering at a food bank or pantry can take today. Some are short-term strategies to create a more dignified experience for food pantry clients: providing client choice, where individuals select their own food, or redesigning a waiting room with better seating and a designated greeter. Some are longer-term: increasing the supply of healthy food, offering job training programs, or connecting clients to other social services. And some are big picture: joining the fight for living wages and a stronger social safety net. These strategies are illustrated through inspiring success stories and backed up by scientific research. Throughout, readers will find a wealth of proven ideas to make their charitable food organizations more empathetic and more effective. As Martin writes, it takes more than food to end hunger. Picking up this insightful, lively book is a great first step.