"Children in US Hungry. Epidemic." Misdiagnosis?

Huffington Post leads today with:

'SILENT EPIDEMIC'
Number Of US Children Going Hungry Soars

She links to "Missing more than a meal" in the Washington Post, where there are links to many more stories of growing numbers of children and teens feeling hungry much of the time. See also here.

All of these appear to focus on scarcity of food. Or not enough access to food.

But this is probably not the real problem.

(See the lady leaving the food center with a bag full of boxed stuff - see anything fresh looking? Here - have a big bag of cookies on your way out.)

That's why people feel so hungry. And are so overweight. The culprit is eating mostly nutritionless food. The body needs nutrition, not food-like substances it just piles on because it can't do anything else with it. Hunger is the only way the body has to call out: I need nutrients!

Check out the other image: How much nutrition is in the giant cola bottles on the table beside the mother and child?

Dr. Heidi, my nutrition professor friend, made my day worse. Here's what she said - from my notes...

Most of America's children and teens eat cereals and packaged snacks every day. But there is little nutrition in either the cereals or snacks. They're mostly sugar. That's why, no matter how much a person eats of that stuff (and pizza), they feel hungry shortly after. No nutrition. Read the labels - mostly sugar.

Then, off they go to McDonald's to get some cheap protein - say Chicken McNuggets. Little do they realize that those are not protein - but 56% corn (a carb) - and low grade industrial corn at that. With almost no nutritive value.

So then a mom buys juices, that should be good, right? Not. All the vitamins and enzymes have been boiled out of conventional juices in bottles, cartons or cans. The first ingredient (what it's got most of, in it) in almost all of them is either sugar or artificial sweeteners. The latter are known to be potentially poisonous to us.

Then there's the microwave secret.

To save time, Moms and kids throw whatever into the microwave. Fast. But. Anything microwaved has no nutrition left. The microwave distorts the food molecules.

It's not for nothing the makers of these things don't call them 'Radar Range' anymore. Bad PR. Who would use them if they knew the radiation destroys the food molecules they are about to eat? More nutritionless food down the hatch.

How about eat fruits and veggies? That beats anything in boxes, cans or crinkly bags or wrappers. Yes, right. BUT if they're the conventional stuff, the fruits and veggies have little nutrition because of how they're grown. Instead, you get a dose of pesticides.

Bottom line. It is not the lack of food that is causing the hunger and obesity in children and teenagers (and many adults). It's the lack of nutrition in the food we eat.

Which big food provides. Which so many Americans demand and consume like crazy.

Nutritionless is food cheaper to make, has longer shelf life and it's fast for everybody. And we buy more and more of it because we're hungry all the time. And away we go to become a nation of FATAFATs.

Child hunger and obesity: Not a crisis of lack of food. Our crisis is a crisis of choice.

"To see what is right, and not do it, is want of courage, or of principle." Confucius

Maybe they're right - It's in our nature to destroy ourselves for short term desires and pleasures.