Hunger in East Tenessee: The Unnecessary Plague

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Recommended: The effects of poverty on society and individuals

Why are there families with children that go all weekend without a meal while our grocery stores are overflowing with food, and our pantries at home have more than we need? If more people were educated about the reality of hunger in East Tennessee, then more people would be inclined to help resolve the problem. Through education this issue can be eradicated. There are ways to better inform East Tennesseans about the realities that plague our poverty stricken population that are ultimately avoidable. Volunteering and making donations to the food pantries and organizations in the area are two of the best ways to support the less fortunate who need aid. In East Tennessee, hunger is a much larger problem than most people know and could be reduced if more people were educated about it, new ways were found to promote feeding the hungry, people volunteered and donated.
Ronald Reagan took office January 20, 1981, and implemented his policy of Reaganonmics, which reduced government spending. In Closing the Food Gap, Mark Winne states, “Many elderly people who were surviving off of a meager Social Security Income and an allotment of food stamps were devastated when Reagan came into office” (Winne 21-23). Because of the reduced government spending, food stamp allotments were drastically reduced. Some rations were cut nearly in half or more, and multitudes were reduced to the minimum amount of ten dollars. Due to the increasing number of hungry people resulting from the lack of government assistance, “grass-root groups fell back on a kind of quintessential can-do American spirit to address the crisis at hand” (Winne 25). Food stamps are a big deal to people who are barely able to make ends meet because their budget must be split between thre...

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...ernment services. Above all else though, the community itself is what should be caring for the hungry. Each individual person should make it a goal to end hunger in East Tennessee because it could be affecting his or her own friends, family, and loved ones. Everyone should strive to end the unnecessary plague.

Works Cited

"A Profile of the Working Poor". Center for Poverty Research, 24 July 2013. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.

Dowd, Douglas. Inequality and the Global Economic Crisis. New York: Pluto Press, 2009. Print.

East Tennessee Human Resource Agency. ETHRA, n.d. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.

"Hunger in Northeast Tennessee." Second Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Tennessee. Second Harvest, 2010. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.

Schwartz-Nobel, Loretta. Growing Up Empty. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002. Print.

Winne, Mark. Closing the Food Gap. Boston: Beacon Press, 2008. Print.

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