Are you hungry?

I don’t mean having a case of the, “So hungry I could eat any of the bagged, fat-laden, salty snacks sold in the office vending machine,” hungry, I mean really hungry.

The kind of hungry I mean has moved beyond simple hunger pains to a constant, soul-deep ache that never really leaves you.

I mean sunken cheeks, sagging skin, dark circles under your eyes, can hardly put one foot in front of the other hungry.

You might not be that hungry, might never have been that hungry, might never be that hungry, but many of your neighbors are, have been and will be.

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture, one in seven Americans did not have enough to eat in 2008. About 14.6 percent of American households, households like yours and mine, suffered from what USDA calls “food insecurity.” That means in 2008 roughly 49.1 million Americans didn’t know where their next meal was coming from.

Think about that when you sit down to your holiday feast Thursday. The typical calorie count for a traditional Thanksgiving feast with turkey, dressing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, hot roll, gravy, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie is somewhere in the hefty neighborhood of 2,057. And that is without appetizers, seconds or thirds.

About 5.7 percent of U.S. households, or 17.3 million people, have “very low food security,” meaning some members of the family will have enough to eat, but not all. In these households, parents often will go hungry in order to feed their kids.

And America is the richest country in the world.

Can you get your kids to eat everything on their plate at Thanksgiving dinner? Do they pick at the cranberry sauce, turn their noses up at the green beans, shun the stuffing or grouse about the gravy?

Parents used to try and shame their offspring into eating by telling them about all the starving children in China. Forget China. Tell them about the 16.7 million American children, little Joes, Johnnys, Janes and Jills who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. That is almost one American child in every four. Look at four kids playing on a playground. The stomach of one likely is gnawing at his or her ribs.

What is causing all this hunger? The stock market is slowly rebounding, but many millions of Americans still have no jobs. The jobless recovery through which the country is suffering is not putting food on American tables.

What can you do, shun that second helping of pie? No, fortunately you, and millions of your fellow Americans already are doing much. This is an incredibly generous country. In 2008, Americans gave $307.7 billion to charity. And despite all this giving, there are still people in this nation, many of them children, who go to bed hungry.

Locally, Enid-area residents always respond when Horn of Plenty comes to collect food. Want to help more? Give more. Donate to Salvation Army, Our Daily Bread, Hope Outreach, Shepherd’s Cupboard (the food pantry at Bethany United Methodist Church) or St. Gregory the Great Catholic Church’s food pantry, or any one of a number of other local charities.

Dig deep, it will do somebody else a lot of good, and it won’t hurt you a bit, either.

Don’t feel guilty as you sit down to your holiday repast. You’ve earned it. But don’t stick the first forkful of candied yams into your mouth without offering a prayer for all those hungry Americans, and the millions more hungry folks around the world, to whom a meal like the one spread before you would be the stuff of dreams.

Don’t feel guilty about gorging yourself this Thanksgiving day — unless you’re not willing to share it with those less fortunate. Then you should feel guilty, right along with feeling stuffed and somnolent.

Happy Thanksgiving.



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle. E-mail him at jmullin@enidnews.com.