How Lies Become Accepted Truths

I continue to be in despair about the lack of awareness of Americans about matters of importance, those things that really matter in their lives. It seems to me that we are way too informed about stupidity, celebrity news, the latest trendy technological play device etc. And we know too little about reality....uh.....not idiotic reality as portrayed on TV and radio shows, but real life. We know too little about what is happening in the real world and this is distorting our understandings and perceptions.

One case to show this is the massive propaganda program by "Feeding America.org" (the fourth largest charity in the U.S.) that claims that "one in five children in America is struggling with hunger" How ridiculous! Air head celebrities wail that tome while sad music drones in the background. They claim there is mass hunger and in one of the ubiquitous ads, even bring on a sweet child who claims " They say I'm a pretty good kid"....but of course, he tells him he's hungry. It's a pathetic appeal to the emotions based on false claims. To an audience so disconnected to what is happening in the real world it sounds good.

Not publicized by the childhood hunger lobby are the USDA’s (United States Department of Agriculture, which is charged with actually defining who is hungry) most direct measures of childhood hunger. They reveal that between one and two percent of families “cut the size of children's meals” or report that “children were hungry” or “skipped meals.” And only one tenth of one percent of families reported that “children did not eat for a whole day.” These findings do not suggest, to say the least, the claimed 1 in 5 epidemic of childhood hunger that the dishonest ads tell us. The USDA's most direct measures yield a childhood hunger rate between one and two in a hundred, not one in five. That's 1.5 % of all kids are really hungry.

Surely a wealthy nation like the United States should have nearly no hungry children. And the USDA figures show that we are close to this ideal. With food stamps, free school lunches and numerous private charity food programs to serve the poor, few people, including kids , are going to bed hungry. That the so called “food insecure” families (the ones the ads claim are hungry) spend almost enough to buy the government's suggested minimum balanced diet tells us that the problem is poor food choice, not hunger. Mom and dad are not doing their job. That would be, spending too much money on junk food.  This may also explain why the most obese population in America is that which is lowest in income. Haha Maybe that ad should instead claim that, "One in five kids in America is struggling with obesity".

Also, thirty percent of all American school children, receive free school lunches. And almost every child in “food insecure” families participates. Just on that basis alone, it's ridiculous to claim they are not getting enough food. It is only the deceptive definition that allows entertainers, activists and the mass media to foster the myth that "one in five Americans is struggling with hunger." Lazy Americans who are too busy watching their reality TV or chatting on their cell phones blindly accept the crazy lies about children "struggling with hunger".

In the survey that the ads use when falsely claiming that 1 in 5 kids is struggling with hunger, households were counted by them as being hungry if they reported, for instance, that in the past year they had been "worried whether their food would run out before they got money to buy more." This is a good description of a worry concerning food, not of a lack of food.  Other criteria the phony ads use is the incapacity to afford "balanced meals," or the need to rely on a "few kinds of low cost food sometimes during the past year". Once again, this is a feeling of insecurity or worry about food, not a lack of food. 

The dependence on cheap food is certainly very undesirable but it ain't being hungry! It is a shame if even a tiny percentage of children must skip meals for economic reasons, but the public should at least know the true figures and not be lied to (so politicians can further expand the food entitlement programs that voters love). I fear this one issue is just a microcosm of the ignorant electorate syndrome that is getting worse and worse as communication technology gets better and better. How ironic that the public seems less informed and more easily manipulated by lies as the ability to access truth becomes more readily available.

Sigh, I wish I could throw a sandwich or two at the Feeding America people and all those who believe their lies about kids struggling with hunger.