When They Own the Information

In a world with an estimated 7.6 billion people and a majority of them going to sleep on an empty stomach every night until they die of starvation, when you type into Goggle Search the turn of phrase, "over the counter diet aids sold in the USA" (or just click on the link as I did it for you) in point 70 (0.70) seconds, faster than you can swallow a teaspoon of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, you have 1,390,000 listings. Wow. We are quite the species, ain't we?

If everyone in the US who wishes to lose twenty pounds in 2018, lost just ten, we'd still have shed enough excess weight to populate a medium-sized state (and sadly, one or more of those not yet officially running for President would be campaigning there, even as I type this).

As a nation, we spend more on Slim-Fast and Jenny Craig than we donate to relief agencies who are struggling to mitigate 'third world' hunger. That term is quite and quaintly inaccurate because there are millions of our own citizens hungry every night to include some in every town in Connecticut, the wealthiest state of all fifty, and I sure don't think of myself as living in the Third World nor in the Land of Second Chances, for that matter.

We've all gone to a fast food restaurant and heard someone order a cholesterol-bomb burger with cheese and bacon, large dipped in boiling fat french fried potatoes and, wait for it....a Diet Coke. No ice, please, I'm on a diet and the water from the ice makes me fat. 

Explains the size of the butts on those penguins and polar bears, right? Please. We fret that so many of the problems in our world are beyond our attempts at solution and demand to know why the 'government doesn't do something?' and for something like world hunger and malnutrition, all we have to do for one another is spend the same amount to relieve world hunger as we might spend at the drive-through, talking into the clown's head, getting those triple thick shakes and yogurt smoothies. Voila! Crisis averted.

Grab seven days, starting today and track how much money you spend on food purchased or eaten outside of your house for that seven-day period. That doughnut with coffee this morning; that bag of chips this afternoon for the snack, that's what I'm talking about here. 

Count every pizza (by the slice or pie), the pretzels, chili hot dogs, take-out sushi, burgers, fries, tacos, ALL of it. Keep a running tab and look at the total next Tuesday at about this time. And then, and here's the hard part because it's just you watching and keeping track, donate that same dollar amount to a local food bank, soup kitchen or any of the agencies that combat hunger here on our getting more crowded by the minute globe. 

Or we can just sit around, nursing our cups of designer coffee while talking about how we'd like to change the world. Just because it hasn't yet happened doesn't necessarily mean that it won't happen now, I suppose. 
-bill kenny