Join us on Sunday, 4/28 at 12:30pm, for Slow Food Katy Trail's film and discussion featuring the documentary A Place at the Table. The film is a jolting look at the impact of hunger in America, a problem plaguing 50 million people in the U.S, one in four of which are children.
"Hunger in America is not about a shortage of food but an abundance of poverty. This is where the spiral spins downward. Obviously, when money is tight, families look to eat cheaply. Processed food is the least nutritious but also the least expensive, because its ingredients come from 'mega-farming corporations' that receive major public subsidies. So the price of such food has fallen 40 per cent over the past few decades. By contrast, the cost of the most healthy food, fruit and vegetables, has risen by the same 40 per cent, since it tends to be produced by smaller farms that, ironically, are not subsidized.
The logic is pernicious: Poor folks are obliged to buy cheap food that sees them balloon in weight even while suffering from malnutrition. What’s worse, in the rural areas of the United States, there exist entire 'food deserts.' For the big transport trucks that carry healthy yet perishable food, it’s uneconomical to stray far from the urban centers. Consequently, on the shelves of many small-town stores, potato chips and chocolate bars are plentiful, but a tomato is nowhere to be seen. Stuck in one of these deserts, a woman describes making a two-hour commute by bus to reach the oasis of a fully stocked supermarket."--Rick Groen at The Globe and Mail
