Food for Thought - Democratic Underground

H2O Man

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Sat Feb-28-09 06:39 PM
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Food for Thought

"Recent research shows that many children without enough to eat wind up with diminished capacity to understand and learn (‘cognitive impairment’). Children don’t have to be starving for this to happen. Even mild undernourishment – the kind most common among poor people in America – can do it. This can happen before the baby is born (if the mother isn’t eating enough), in infancy, or in childhood. When there isn’t enough food, the body has to decide how to invest the limited foodstuffs available. Survival comes first. Growth comes second. In this nutritional triage, the body seems obliged to rank learning last. Better to be stupid and alive, it judges, than smart and dead.

"Instead of showing an enthusiasm, a zest for learning – as most youngsters do – the undernourished child becomes bored, apathetic, unresponsive. More severe malnutrition leads to lower birth weights and, in its most extreme forms, smaller brains. However, even a child who looks perfectly healthy but has not enough iron, say, suffers from an immediate decline in the ability to concentrate. Iron-deficiency anemia may affect as much as a quarter of all low-income children in America; it attacks the child’s attention span and memory, and may have consequences reaching well into adulthood.

"What once was considered relatively mild undernutrition is now understood to be potentially associated with lifelong cognitive impairment. Children who are undernourished even on a short-term basis have a diminished capacity to learn. And millions of American children go hungry every week. …."
--Carl Sagan; The Demon-Haunted World; Ballantine Books; 1996; pages 359-360.

One of the things that is of most importance to my family and I is doing our part to make sure that there is food available for people in need. It includes on the local level: donating to and volunteering at the local food bank; on the national level: paying taxes and working towards electing politicians who support programs that feed the poor; and on the international level: stressing to US politicians that this country has positive influence to the extent that it helps provide food (and medicine, etc) to other people in need of our assistance.

One of the problems we face is politicians and other "leaders" who lack the vitamins and nutrition needed to develop an individual and social conscience. They may have suffered from a lack of something while in the womb, or in infancy, or had a deprived childhood of some sort. Whatever terrible thing happened to them, I can’t be certain. But I do know for a fact that they are lacking in a sense of goodness and have been stunted in the growth of their humanity.

As the individuals, families, and communities across this nation endure the economic hardships that result from the demon-haunted policies known as "Reaganomics," we must be careful not to allow fears and resentments to cause us to begrudge our neighbors. We should rely on the common sense and uncommon insight of people such as Carl Sagan, and recognize that it is in our best interests to feed the hungry.

Thank you,
H2O Man