Outside View: While Americans overeat, many elsewhere in the world are starving

The following editorial appeared Sunday in the Chicago Tribune.

Grandpa used to say clean your plate, kids are starving in Armenia.

Today they’re starving in Sudan, Rwanda, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uganda, Somalia, North Korea, Afghanistan …

Here in America, meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has mounted a campaign to get restaurants to stop serving portions as big as our heads.

Our first response was to snarl something about the government sticking its nose in our dinner plates. We go to restaurants to enjoy ourselves, we want our money’s worth, and yes, some of us are aware that our behinds are too big. Mind your own business.

But then a delegation from the U.N. World Food Program dropped by for a visit with the Chicago Tribune editorial board and we haven’t looked at a giant plate of pasta in quite the same way since.

The World Food Program responds to food emergencies caused by natural and man-made crises around the globe. In the 1980s, there were about 15 such emergencies each year. Since then the number has more than doubled, for a variety of reasons that tend to hold public attention only briefly: locusts and drought in Niger, marauding militias in Darfur, flooding and intractable poverty in Haiti, tsunami in Indonesia, an earthquake in Pakistan. Last year, the agency helped feed 73.1 million people left hungry by disasters.

Besides saving lives, the agency works to break the cycle of hunger so people can feed themselves. Providing food to people left homeless by conflicts or natural disasters allows them to concentrate on rebuilding and planting crops for tomorrow’s needs instead of scratching for food every day. Agricultural training helps families become self-sufficient. Free lunches and take-home rations encourage families to send their children to school. In communities ravaged by HIV and AIDS, better nutrition helps the sick live longer and keeps families going when a breadwinner falls ill.

A typical WFP food basket contains cereals and oil along with possibly meat or fish, vegetables and fruit, sugar and condiments. The goal is to provide 2,100 calories per person per day. For six months last year, the agency was able to provide only half that ration in Darfur; now it’s up to 1,770 calories a day.

Here in the United States – where we bristle at government reminders that a serving of meat should be about the size of a deck of cards and a serving of rice or pasta about as big as a tennis ball – it’s possible to rack up 1,770 calories at lunch if we’re not careful. As the waiter says, enjoy your meal.