Trapped on the Hunger Carousel: Generation After Generation
I would like to invite you, the reader, to take a ride on a carousel. Not just any carousel, but a very special one: the hunger carousel. The floor on which you will be standing is poverty. The hub on which it turns is the lack of adequate nutrition, heal
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Trapped on the Hunger Carousel: Generation After Generation
I would like to invite you, the reader, to take a ride on a carousel. Not just any carousel, but a very special one: the hunger carousel. The floor on which you will be standing is poverty. The hub on which it turns is the lack of adequate nutrition, health care, and hygiene. It receives its power from a number of sources. Poverty, the actual motor, is fuelled by international commerce and its restrictions on poorer countries, in addition to our demand in Europe and elsewhere for cheap goods and biofuels, as well as by price speculation, a lack of proper education and sub-standard health care. The carousel turns relentlessly while leaving a trail of death and destruction: mothers, infants, and children are all flung off to meet their death. Those who survive the horrible ride suffer health problems from the very outset. Before we voluntarily get onboard, let us first take a closer look at what happens to those who did not choose to get on the carousel themselves. We see first of all, persons who are clearly starving and it is only for that reason that we perceive them. These are the ones who are put in the spotlight by the media whenever a hunger crisis strikes, incidentally one which had been seen coming a hundred miles off. When the food supplies sent by international organizations have arrived, then it is ‘‘mission accomplished’’. And the merry-go-round keeps spinning relentlessly and everybody onboard lives hungrily ever after (see Fig. 4.1). The majority of passengers onboard the carousel are women and children under the age of five. Day by day, 220,000 children are born all over the world and 10 % of these will not live to see their fifth birthday. From the moment they first see the light of day onward, the future of these children is anything but rosy. There is no music played on the hunger carousel and no possibility to hop off. Those who get on keep silent and hungry, passing along malnutrition to the next generation. We usually see women holding wailing children on their laps and gazing out into the distance. They know that they will never be able to get off the carousel as long as poverty and everything which caused it continues to fuel the motor. They are too weakened and oppressed to voice any protest. Their cries would only fall on deaf ears anyway. The idea that 130 children die from the effects of malnutrition every 20 minutes is something we prefer not to focus too
H. K. Biesalski, Hidden Hunger, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-33950-9_4, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
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Trapped on the Hunger Carousel: Generation After Generation
Higher mortality
Reduced physical and mental development Higherriskfor chronic Diseases in later life
Newborns Malnoruished Low birth weight Reduced power for Childcare
Infectiousdiseases Malnutrition Missinghealth care
Elderly malnourished
Low strength
Females malnourished
Poverty Malnutrition
Children Impaired development
Higher mortality
Pregnancy malnourisehd Reduced mental and physica
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