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Hunger
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
73 Hunger 1. the philosophy of food In 2009, 2,377 Americans died of malnutrition while 42 percent were overweight. The number of people who were overweight surpassed the 800 million who were undernourished. back-in-the-day we never lived high on the hog—no choice cuts of steak or loin, just homemade pass-the-biscuits-please now real food is handcuffed to big business and profit comes in pretty packaging—a friend’s husband sits down at the table once again eating alone: a whole chicken, loaf of bread, liter of cola she wonders about his weight—we wonder about goods that wash up in the gyres of ocean currents and cater to no known world: paper or plastic disposable as a day’s income—is this a squid or a bag half digested by a sea bird a vegetable wrap returning to some former liquid state a dollop of oil swallowed in garbage swill—listen: the harvest of what used to be has become a mighty river silted over with eel sludge all the albatross on Midway hold some degree of whatever floats in the dross of cities or the afterburn 74 of jets—NASA claims spotting a plastic bag ballooning at the edge of Orion’s pull like urban tumbleweed set adrift on a course for unstudied stars 2. the language of need 6 percent of the world’s languages are spoken by 94 percent of the world’s population. The remaining 94 percent of languages are spoken by only 6 percent of the population. years ago women harvested wild greens: mustard and dandelion a bit of fatty meat to sweeten the pot— now maps are dotted with places where the land leeched dry nurses ghettos of food deserts—where the only growing business is the business of trash— bacteria groomed to eat the garbage of the garbage we eat where it’s easier to buy guns than goods despite the 101 brands lining shelves like assault teams on the attack: even the sky fills with trash 16,000 particles of orbiting space junk Grandma used to say: you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die now dirt fuels hunger & fast food becomes the only oasis— [54.162.124.193] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 05:58 GMT) 75 it would be dog eat dog if dog meat weren’t so scarce we plunder food from the hungry in our hunger for food how do you say: I need when our tables are bare— already we have consumed more than our share ...