The structural violence of hunger: Poverty versus personal responsibility in the discourse on malnutrition

“ It is not the first time in history that starvation and famine affect people all over the world. What is new is the scale of the problem, affecting well over one billion human beings. In June, 1974, in the Assessment of the World Food Situation, commissioned by the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the situation was described in terms still unchanged: "The causes of inadequate nutrition are many and closely interrelated, including ecological, sanitary, and cultural constraints, but the principal cause is poverty. ”

“ The situation of the peoples afflicted by hunger and malnutrition arises from their historical circumstances, especially social inequalities, including in many cases alien and colonial domination, foreign occupation, racial discrimination, apartheid and neo-colonialism in all its forms, which continue to be among the greatest obstacles to the full emancipation and progress of the developing countries and all the peoples involved ”

“ Each year millions die of starvation or disease; many others are permanently disabled as a result of chronic vitamin deficiencies. Recognizing the threat that hunger poses to human life and to the stability of nations, the United States is participating in the 11th annual observance of World Food Day. ”

“ We pledge our political will and our common and national commitment to achieving food security for all and to an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger in all countries, with an immediate view to reducing the number of undernourished people to half their present level no later than 2015.
We consider it intolerable that more than 800 million people throughout the world, and particularly in developing countries, do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs. ”

“ Every country in the world has vulnerable and disadvantaged individuals, households and groups who cannot meet their own needs. Seventy percent of all poor are women, which should be taken into consideration when preparing poverty eradication action. Even where and when overall food supplies are adequate, poverty impedes access by all to the quantity and variety of foods needed to meet the population's needs. Rapid population growth and rural poverty have resulted in excessive migration to urban areas with serious negative social, economic, environmental and nutritional impact. ”

“ There is no economy in buying denatured grain, even though it is put up in cartons, at ten times the price of the natural grain.
"Put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite." Stop the immense waste of strength, energy, money, and time due to mere gratification of appetite.Pg 10 Stop preparing food that is intended simply to coax the appetite to the point where eating becomes gluttony. In the words of an eminent authority, "Most men would attain better health and greater efficiency if they would reduce their rations by twenty-five per cent or more." ”

“ Hence, food taken in excess of requirements, being only partially digested, acts as a foreign substance; i. e., a poison, and in addition unduly taxes the system to dispose of the unnecessary waste.
Hunger is the natural expression of the needs of the system for nutrition. Appetite is the index as to the quantity of food that should be taken to replace the loss by waste. It should never be overruled. Appetite is a wise provision of Nature. Gluttony is a degrading habit. ”

“ My father died of starvation in Ireland in the black 47, Maybe you've heard of it.
VIOLET. The Famine?
MALONE. [with smouldering passion] No, the starvation. When a country is full of food, and exporting it, there can be no famine. ”

“ Society is confronted in this age with most pressing problems in economics, and we need the fullest understanding of the factors involved. These problems are almost wholly social rather than physical, and concern not the capacity of a given society to produce and distribute enough wealth for its maintenance, but some maladjustment of internal processes which checks that production and distribution, and developes such irregular and morbid processes of innutrition, malnutrition, and over-nutrition as continually to injure the health and activity of the social organism. ”

“ The search for food is the oldest of instincts. It is the master-motive of evolution. It has reared empires up and thrown them down. As Buckle has shown, where the national food is cheap and plentiful, population increases more rapidly. And as Sir James Crichton-Browne, in a recent book on "Parcimony in Nutrition," maintains, the lack of food is a prolific cause of war, disease, and social misery in its various forms. "Nothing is more demoralizing," he says, "than chronic hunger."
"For lack of bread the French Revolution failed," said Prince Krapotkin. ”

“ Progress has been made in averting the threat of famine in many regions, but widespread poverty and hunger, especially in developing countries, constantly challenge us to ease the human suffering they cause and to preserve the human potential they deplete. As hunger robs people of health and strength, it also saps the economic systems to which they might otherwise contribute, upsets the social order, frustrates progress at every level, and engenders hopelessness and instability. ”

“ Every reliable investigation that has been conducted into our social conditions reveals an appalling amount of poverty and a still more appalling bitterness in the struggle for life under sordid and heartless conditions. Practically the whole of the vital energy of more than half of our people is consumed in providing bread and butter for their stomachs and a shelter for their heads, and then they do not always succeed. ”

“ Arising from poverty, homelessness, civil strife or famine, hunger burdens the lives of nearly 800 million people throughout the world. Women and children suffer the most. Studies suggest that in developing countries, some 36 percent of children under 6 years of age are moderately or severely undernourished. ”

“ Provision must be made for the present generation of school children; their necessities must be relieved and future inefficiency due to underfeeding in childhood must be prevented. But at the same time, and above all, a determined attack must be made on the evils which lie at the root of the children's 229malnutrition. Industrial conditions must be so organised that it is possible for every man himself to provide for his children at least the requisite minimum of food, clothing and other necessaries. ”

“ I was reading a book just the other day on the effect of the lack of nutrition on character. We are breeding a million degenerate citizens by starving them, to say nothing of the effect of disease and bad air, of the constant fear of poverty that haunts the great majority of homes. ”

“ As a result of hunger, these children have higher levels of chronic illness, depression and behavior problems. This is a travesty that can and must be prevented, and school feeding programs provide a critical means to this end. The National School Lunch Program feeds 30 million children in more than 100,000 schools each day. While reduced price meals are available to students whose family income is below 130 percent of the poverty level, state and local school board members have informed me that many families struggle to even pay this fee. ”

“ Gluttony and excess is a sin greatly aggravated by the necessities of the poor. What an incongruity is it, that one member of Christ (as he would be thought) should be feeding himself deliciously every day, and abounding with abused superfluities, whilst another is starving and pining in a cottage, or begging at the door! and that some families should do worse than cast their delicates and abundance to the dogs, whilst thousands at that time are ready to famish, and are fain to feed on such unwholesome food, as killeth them as soon as luxury kills the epicure! ”

“ Is it, then, any wonder that the poor should die of starvation? If this is true (and this fact has been admitted by the most thoughtful men) it must necessarily follow that all the food that we eat beyond our immediate need is food filched from the stomachs of the poor. ”

“ That such a subject is not considered a necessary part of education is indeed lamentable, for the crass ignorance that everywhere abounds upon the subject of nutrition and diet is largely the cause of the frightful disease and debility so widespread throughout the land, and, as a secondary evil of an enormous waste of labour in the production and distribution of unneeded food. ”

“ According to this report the malnutrition is due in the great majority of cases to ignorance of the relative value of foodstuffs and the means of using them economically, and only in the minority to poverty. ”

“ But babies of people in moderate circumstances, and even of wealthy parentage, are at times badly nourished, and require the same exacting care, the same attention to the food, the fresh air, and the sunshine that the poorer babies need in order to survive. Malnutrition may be the result of insufficient food, and it may also be due to the lack of one definite food element. Again, it may be brought on by some deformity of the mouth or stomach, which make it impossible for the baby to get all the food which he requires for his maintenance and growth. ”

“ But, as we have seen in considering the problem of the feeding of school children, the home in many cases is unable adequately to provide for it, and, for a time at least, some method of public provision of good and wholesome food for the children of the poor may be rendered necessary. But much of the physical evil results from improper nutrition; and here the school agencies may do a great deal in the future by furthering the teaching of domestic science to the girls of the working classes. ”

“ This kind of saving, however, is purely a question of economy, and in some strata of society would be objected to as indicative of a condition of sordidness. It has come to be a part of our personal pride to have a well-supplied table, and to eat largely and freely of the good things provided. The poorer man takes pride in furnishing his family with a diet rich in expensive articles of food, and imagines that by so doing he is inciting them to heartier consumption and to increased health and strength. ”

“ Or again; the law relating to the protection of the public food supply is approaching a high pitch of excellence; the penalties on adulteration or on the sale of diseased or otherwise unwholesome foodstuffs are severe and quite frequently inflicted; but these regulations are powerless to influence the 227 errors of nutrition constantly reflected in the features of our population at each age period, neither can they stem the tide of self-indulgence, emotionalism and luxury which enervate and deteriorate thousands of our people. ”

“ The physical effects of undernutrition and malnutrition made themselves felt in a manner which brought them home to every man. Working-capacity dropped to half the normal, or even less. Mortality increased by leaps and bounds, particularly among the children and the aged. ”

“ Malnutrition and hunger have weakened much of the population, reducing their productivity, and made more of them (especially children and the old) more susceptible to debilitating diseases and premature death. ”

“ Education given to children who are suffering from want of nourishment not only is ineffective, but may be positively deleterious. When the extent of malnutrition is known, is it reasonable to expect the Authorities deliberately to shut their eyes to the fact that so far from benefiting the children who suffer from it they may be positively aggravating their misfortunes? ”

“ When I look upon the anemic faces and undeveloped bodies that mark so many of the children of the tenements, when I read of the terrible ravages of tuberculosis in the same quarters, I can not but think that the city should provide wholesome food at the lowest possible cost in public school kitchens. To lay the legal burden of learning upon children whose blood is impoverished and whose digestion is impaired by insufficient or unwholesome feeding is not in accord with the boasted altruism of an advanced civilization or with the Divine command: Feed the hungry. ”

“ Unless extraordinary efforts are undertaken, an unacceptably large portion of the world's population, particularly in developing countries, could still be chronically undernourished by the year 2010 with additional suffering due to acute periodic shortages of food. Contributing to malnutrition is the lack of adequate food utilization which, in this context, is the proper digestion and absorption of nutrients in food by the human body and requires adequate diet, water sanitation, health services, and health education. ”

“ The reasons for much of the undernourishment among people in this country to-day are to be found in certain widespread misconceptions of long standing as to what constitutes a state of good nutrition or malnutrition and the value and purposes of different foodstuffs. For malnutrition does not necessarily describe a simple condition due to an insufficient amount of food, but to any one of several complex conditions due to a lack in the food of one or more essential substances. ”

“ In 69 cases malnutrition was due to some disease such as tuberculosis, chronic bronchitis, etc., while in 13 cases it was attributed to overcrowding, and in 10 cases to overwork with insufficient 175sleep. [467] In the following year a similar enquiry was made by Dr. Tate in a suburban residential area of the same county. Out of 167 cases, defective nutrition was found to be due to poverty and neglect in 23·3 per cent.; to rickets, adenoids, worms or digestive disorder in 28·5 per cent.; to lung affection in 5·4 per cent.; in 7·2 per cent. ”

“ Governments should initiate immediately a greater concerted attack on chronic malnutrition and deficiency diseases among the vulnerable and lower income groups. In order to ensure adequate nutrition for all, Governments should formulate appropriate food and nutrition policies integrated in overall socio-economic and agricultural development plans based on adequate knowledge of available as well as potential food resources. ”

“ The grave food crisis that is afflicting the peoples of the developing countries where most of the world's hungry and ill-nourished live and where more than two thirds of the world's population produce about one third of the world's food-an imbalance which threatens to increase in the next 10 years-is not only fraught with grave economic and social implications, but also acutely jeopardizes the most fundamental principles and values associated with the right to life and human dignity as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ”