# Debate...a large number of people starve to death in the US every year **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 28, 2014, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144 "2014-04-28T01:03:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![yellowjacketcoder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/4bbf92/32.png) [@yellowjacketcoder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yellowjacketcoder)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/41 "2014-04-28T18:49:51Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > So I would venture that the any starvation in America is due to abuse or mental illness, with maybe a few elderly folks and people lost on the woods thrown in. Personally, I’ve known freehand who’ve lived well for years on discarded food. The link posted by **Inbred** has 2030 of the 2790 deaths due to malnutrition (which, as noted, is a larger category than starvation) happening in people over the age of 75. So it’s mostly the elderly. ---
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/42 "2014-04-28T18:52:04Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > 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. No, they don’t. I used to work with the homeless and unless they are drug-ravaged or mentally ill, (or both) none of them “starve” to death. They may die of illnesses related to their general health and poor diets (which are exacerbated by substance abuse and mental issues) but I have never heard of a case, either anecdotally or in the media where a homeless person died from lack of food in the US. There are simply too many sources of **free** food (from dumpsters to jails to shelters) for this to occur. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/43 "2014-04-28T18:57:51Z")
> [@nevadaexile](#): > > No, they don’t. > > I used to work with the homeless and unless they are drug-ravaged or mentally ill, (or both) none of them “starve” to death. They may die of illnesses related to their general health and poor diets (which are exacerbated by substance abuse and mental issues) but I have never heard of a case, either anecdotally or in the media where a homeless person died from lack of food in the US. > > There are simply too many sources of **free** food (from dumpsters to jails to shelters) for this to occur. Agreed. Just pointing out that I did not makes the second comment. ---
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/44 "2014-04-28T19:03:34Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I would speculate that low homeless (especially roofless) life expectancy has nothing to do with malnutrition per se, but is really probably more related to greater chance of death from: violence, exposure, and alcoholism. Alcoholism probably the biggest of the three, then after alcoholism other drug addictions as well. If you’re an alcoholic not in recovery it’s a disease that almost always kills and usually many years before life expectancy norms. > > One of the reasons we have so many “roofless” homeless in America is actually because our homeless shelters mostly have anti-alcohol policies. Some municipalities have started running ‘wet house’, which allow homeless alcoholics to drink in the shelter as it was recognized it’s better to have them drink themselves to death inside versus outside, because if you ask an alcoholic to choose between their bottle or a roof almost always they will choose the bottle. To slightly veer off-topic, “wet” shelters are a disaster waiting to happen. The reason that homeless shelters don’t allow alcohol or illegal substances isn’t because of any moral stance. It’s a practical decision, as people who are drunk or high can often become belligerent or violent towards residents and staff. The bans keep the other residents safer as it cuts down the numbers of conflicts between people who already have personality difficulties and mental illnesses. One of the most common misconceptions (at least in my experience working with homeless) is that most are “nice people” who caught a “bad break,” That’s not the case. Most have family members and friends who will help them if they would simply maintain a socially acceptable attitude and make an effort to get along. They cannot or chose not to (inflexibility is a critical reason that many of the homeless remain as such long-term) and those closest to them finally tire of them and remove them from their daily lives. When you are homeless, most of the time it means that none of your family members will give you funding or a place to stay and you are unable to find housing with a partner or an SO. That almost always is an indicator of a difficult personality even apart from the mental illnesses and substance abuse which plague the homeless community. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/45 "2014-04-28T19:09:37Z")
The wet houses I’ve read about in Minneapolis (I think) had some decent restrictions in place which seemed to keep fighting and such down. Although again, like you mention the truly inflexible homeless won’t abide by any restrictions. Some years ago one of my commercial tenants regularly saw a homeless guy only known as “Charles” who pushes a shopping cart around and usually looks like Santa Claus (fat, huge white beard.) He’d stop in once a day at the tenant’s business for free coffee he was offered there and was nice enough. Anyway our tenant owned a few rental properties in a nearby neighborhood (the whole area was definitely lower income), and offered Charles a free place to live in a walk-out basement unit that while not posh was a fully up to code apartment, carpeted, with full facilities etc. Charles did go to look at it but after giving it the once over said he didn’t like it and declined the offer. Our tenant was always confused about it but I figured if Charles wanted to live indoors he probably wouldn’t be doing what he was doing. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/46 "2014-04-28T19:31:04Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Really? Because I’ve been speaking English for nearly half a century now and I have never encountered that particular usage. Any cites for that? “To starve with cold” is reasonably common in Victorian literary English, but unqualified it mens want of food. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/47 "2014-04-28T22:14:20Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > Starve has its origin in OE ‘Die’. Let’s see… you cite old English. The prior cite starts talking about the word before 1000 AD. We aren’t speaking Old English here, we’re speaking Modern American. As I noted, in common usage I haven’t hear unqualified “starve” as meaning anything other than “lack of food”. To say an engine is starved of fuel is analogous as fuel is the “food” of an engine, and we sometimes describe food as “fuel” for the body. I’ll take the word of the post saying that the Victorian English used to use “starve of cold”, but again I point out _we aren’t Victorian English_. Even the modern UK posters here are more than a century removed from that. “Starve” means “lack of food”, not lack of warmth, blankets, or tiddlywinks. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/48 "2014-04-28T22:38:36Z")
**Broomstick** : I’m with you on this, but keep in mind that not all poster here are American. **Pjen** , in particular, is English. So, while we’re all speaking modern English here, we’re not all speaking American English. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/49 "2014-04-28T23:15:18Z")
Yes, I mentioned that, and accepted the Victorian usage but most of the cites have been for OLD ENGLISH which no one on either side of the Atlantic (or Pacific) is using in daily discourse at present. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/50 "2014-04-28T23:41:15Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Yes, I mentioned that, and accepted the Victorian usage but most of the cites have been for OLD ENGLISH which no one on either side of the Atlantic (or Pacific) is using in daily discourse at present. My objection is simply this, no more and no less: > [@Broomstick](#): > > …we’re speaking Modern American. Not all of us are, so I’m unsure why you are simply not accepting that correction without qualification. We all know there are some significant differences between British usage and American usage, even if “starve” doesn’t fit that category. ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/51 "2014-04-29T02:34:55Z")
After reading the last few posts I am just glad I mistakenly conflated starvation and death by malnutrition and not modern versus old English uses of the word starvation. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/52 "2014-04-29T03:13:09Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Not all of us are, so I’m unsure why you are simply not accepting that correction without qualification. We all know there are some significant differences between British usage and American usage, even if “starve” doesn’t fit that category. American message board discussing starvation in American - will probably be mostly in American, don’t you think? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/53 "2014-04-29T09:41:10Z")
Even if that is the case (which I agree it normally is), when **Pjen** specifically made it a point to say that he was referring to an OBBBBSOOOOOOOLEEEEEETE meaning, it’s those of you who replied having missed that line who rolled a critical fail, not **Pjen**. Or are y’all also gonna start saying that not only are posts completely in a [del]LOTE[/del]LOTAE not acceptable, people should never use LOTAE-expressions? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/54 "2014-04-29T10:29:28Z")
How is an obsoltete thousand-year-old word usage relevant to a discussion of the issue of how many people starve to death in the US every year? ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/55 "2014-04-29T13:34:41Z")
If it’s not relevant then hows-about you guys quit talking about it? Crazy idea? ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144/56 "2014-04-29T13:36:02Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > So I would venture that the any starvation in America is due to abuse or mental illness, with maybe a few elderly folks and people lost on the woods thrown in. Personally, I’ve known freehand who’ve lived well for years on discarded food. This answer makes the most sense to me speaking from the perspective of someone who’s signed a lot of death certificates over the years… We (and possibly no nation) are very good at actually defining and aggregating causes of death. For a lot of deaths it’s a multifactorial process. If what’s at issue is how frequently individuals die because they could not get enough calories even if they wanted to, you’re pretty much talking about the neglected elderly. If we are talking about dying from a lack of calories that you could theoretically access but don’t (perhaps because you are marginally functional mentally and live on the street), that’s an even harder number to get because when those folks eventually die, it might be listed as “exposure” or “pneumonia” or whatever, and “malnutrition” might or might not get tossed in as an afterthought. Then there’s the problem of separating “malnutrition” (which might be present in a wealthy alcoholic) from “starvation” (as in outright kwashiorkor, marasmus, and the like). I may have seen a single case of kwashiorkor in my entire practice, and he presented as an immigrant. The only useful data for “starvation” from a social policy standpoint would be around access to appropriate nutrition and not “deaths from,” in my view. If the root cause is neglect or mental incapacity, framing the topic as “death from” will never address the root cause. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/debate-a-large-number-of-people-starve-to-death-in-the-us-every-year/687144.md?page=2)