I’m having a bit of an argument with some relatives. Ironically, both the left and right wingers are aligned…they both claim that a ‘large’ number of Americans starve to death every year in the US. I’m going to define ‘large’ number as 1% of the poor, but I’m willing to hear about anyone starving to death in the US each year. And I’m not talking about poor nutrition or bad diet here, but actual starving to death.
I concede that it probably happens…old people left unattended or abandoned, same with the mentally handicapped equally abandoned by society and left to fend for themselves. But a ‘large’ number? Kids allowed to starve to death because there is no food (this is, again, from both liberals and conservatives saying it happens ‘all the time’).
So, am I in denial? Are people literally starving to death in Americas streets and I’m just not aware of it?
5.7% of households have “very low food security” which means they aren’t eating adequately at some point during a year [[Cite](file:///Volumes/Dragon/Downloads/err-141-summary.pdf)]
Annecdotal: Starvation and food insecurity was a major theme in The Burning Bed (1970s). So while it’s not legitimate to say anyone is starving to death, hunger has debilitating psychological and physical effects, often long-term.
The right way to approach this is to say - people don’t starve to death in significant numbers (insert your criteria). They can refute this by providing a cite that shows otherwise. You can’t prove the negative here. If it’s happening as they claim it should be easy to demonstrate.
And having been on this board for over a decade, that’s exactly what I did. However, what was interesting to me is that both sides of the political spectrum (at least as represented in my family, so grain of salt) believe this absolutely to be true, and basically didn’t feel the need to even back it up, since it’s common knowledge that large numbers (definite I assume as a measurable number) starve to death every year. Not are at some level of food insecurity (which I conceded), not have bad diets or even die from issues related to poor diet…but, flat out die because there is zero food and starve to death. I was floored, to say the least hearing my extremely liberal family members (who are a majority in my family) in near lock step agreement with my right wing religious family members on this point. And this at a time when obesity in the US is at near chronic levels (hell, I pointed to many of the extremely poor people in my own family sitting at the table who are, well, more than a bit portly and they STILL insist that this happens all the time and all over the country…mainly in ‘the south’, which I doubt any of my family outside of me and a few others have even been too).
It seemed such a common belief, at least in my own family that I figured it might make an interesting debate.
I would also like to say that 3000 dying is probably only a small proportion of the many suffering from food insecurity (as was better said in many posts above).
I fervently believe that in America if you want to eat you can find ways. I could go beg on a street corner and easily make $10 in a day which is more than enough for 2 square meals.
I’ve seen the 1 in 100,000 figure before. A lot of those people are very old or very sick, some of them voluntarily not eating, others as a result of neglect. So thousands of people do die of starvation each year, but almost no one because of a lack of availablity of food.
Starve now means to lack food. Originally the word meant to have lack of life sustenance generally.
The figures for life expectancy for the homeless and roofless are amazingly low- often mid forties to fifties. The US has one of the largest populations of homeless and roofless in the developed world. In an archaic sense then, many do starve to death. How much of this is to do with food poverty is a different matter.
I’m not sure homeless tending to die by their mid-40’s or 50’s is due to starvation - I know for a fact that some people do freeze to death in the US, having twice encountered corpsicles during the Chicago winter. The homeless tend to have a lot of neglected health issues as well. By your 40’s or 50’s your more likely to acquire such, and if you can’t get care you’re not going to last as long as someone who can get the medical care they need. Living on the street can also make you more likely to be mugged or otherwise treated with violence. There are many ways the homeless can and do die, and absent some hard cites I’m not convinced the majority are dying for lack of food.
I’m honestly confused John, how did you miss it? He linked to a table and when you locate the United states in the table, it says 1/100,000. Just below Armenia and just above Italy. You multiply that by 300 million and you get 3,000. Seems straight forward enough to me.
As for as how they determined it (I am curious also) at the bottom of the table it says:
I Googled this and found the world health organization site quickly enough. Poking around for 60 seconds (all I have now) I found some child malutrition data, but nothing that jumped out at me as the possible source of the 1/100,000 statistic. Maybe you could do better if you have more time. Or we could ask the creator of the site that Inbred Mm domesticus linked to to give a better citation and link to the actual WHO report. Or we could just dismiss this website as garbage due to their poor bibliographic skills. However we go, the number 1.0 next to United States was pretty clear to me.
It’s a tie with Italy and the Netherlands and lower than France, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Israel. Most the developed nations seem pretty close frankly.
I don’t have time to hunt through it though, but I bet the answer to the OP’s question is in there as well as the methodology and whether the 1/100,000 or right or not.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. “Malnutrition” is not the same as “starving”. Unless we know what definition they are using, we can’t know if they are measuring starvation deaths.
That tells me that starvation like that is pretty much the province of people who in some fashion, are entirely outside the normal social/government safety nets for whatever reason- homelessness, drug abuse, etc…
It’s not like somehow the US has a better and more comprehensive safety net against starvation than Denmark or France.
Since that site is showing “Death by Malnutrition” I’m going to say that they are counting “lack of proper nutrition, caused by not having enough to eat, not eating enough of the right things, or being unable to use the food that one does eat” leading to death.
As such, I’ll throw my hat in with RNATB and say that the distinction between death by starvation and death by malnutrition are lumped together.
In terms of the thread’s question, I am all sorts of for helping the poor - but while there are people that die from starvation (and/or malnutrition) in the US, it’s not a significant amount of people and I’m not sure about the number of reported cases. I am aware of no research done that tries to control for other factors listed here, and I’m sure a lot of cases of death that could have another cause (starvation/malnutrition, disease, stroke, etc) are listed as “exposure” when they are found in the elements to make paperwork quick and easy.
Disclosure: Some probably bias based on personal experience
However, what was interesting to me is that both sides of the political spectrum (at least as represented in my family, so grain of salt) believe this absolutely to be true, and basically didn’t feel the need to even back it up, since it’s common knowledge that large numbers (definite I assume as a measurable number) starve to death every year. Not are at some level of food insecurity (which I conceded), not have bad diets or even die from issues related to poor diet…but, flat out die because there is zero food and starve to death. I was floored, to say the least hearing my extremely liberal family members (who are a majority in my family) in near lock step agreement with my right wing religious family members on this point. And this at a time when obesity in the US is at near chronic levels (hell, I pointed to many of the extremely poor people in my own family sitting at the table who are, well, more than a bit portly and they STILL insist that this happens all the time and all over the country…mainly in ‘the south’, which I doubt any of my family outside of me and a few others have even been too).