The Painful Truth about Hunger in America

A radical and urgent new approach to how we can solve the problems of hunger and poverty in the US.

Most people think hunger has to do with food: researchers, policymakers, and advocates focus on promoting government-funded nutrition assistance; well-meaning organizations try to get expired or wasted food to marginalized communities; and philanthropists donate their money to the cause and congratulate themselves for doing so. But few people ask about the structural issues undergirding hunger, such as, Who benefits from keeping people in such a state of precarity? In The Painful Truth about Hunger in America, Mariana Chilton shows that the solution to food insecurity lies far beyond food and must incorporate personal, political, and spiritual approaches if we are serious about fixing the crisis.

Drawing on 25 years of research, programming, and advocacy efforts, Chilton compellingly demonstrates that food insecurity is created and maintained by people in power. Taking the reader back to the original wounds in the United States caused by its history of colonization, genocide, and enslavement, she forces us to reckon with hard questions about why people in the US allow hunger to persist. Drawing on intimate interviews she conducted with many Black and Brown women, the author reveals that the experience of hunger is rooted in trauma and gender-based violence—violence in our relationships with one another, with the natural world, and with ourselves—and that if we want to fix hunger, we must transform our society through compassion, love, and connection. Especially relevant for young people charting new paths toward abolition, mutual aid, and meaningful livelihoods, The Painful Truth about Hunger in America reinvigorates our commitment to uprooting the causes of poverty and discrimination, and points to a more generative and humane world where everyone can be nourished.Series Foreword
Notes on Reading This Book
Prologue
Introduction
Part I: The Trauma of Hunger
1 When You Can’t Lay with Yourself Comfortable
2 Hunger in Mind and Body
3 Knowing and Not Knowing
4 Breaking the Chain
Part II: Reconsider Everything
Preamble
5 Public Assistance as Divide and Conquer
6 Welfare to Work Makes You Free?
7 Nutrition Assistance as Corporate Welfare
8 Pounds of Food Does Not Feed America
Part III: Nourishing our World
Preamble
9 The Personal—Undoing Racism and Sexism
10 The Political—Solutions from Reparations to Abolition
11 The Political—Human Rights and Rights of Nature
12 The Spiritual—On Becoming a Loving Living Ancestor
Acknowledgments
Appendix 1: USDA/ERS Definitions of Food Security as Measured by the Household Food Security Survey Module (HFSSM)
Appendix 2: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Questions and Scoring
Appendix 3: Example of Adversity over Multiple Generations as Explained by Keisha (Interviewed for Child Hunger Study)
Appendix 4: Index of Acronyms
Works Cited
Notes“Chilton raises the real question: In a nation of such wealth, how can this human tragedy continue? She calls us to thoughtful actions and responses beyond reactivity, in line with values of well-being, justice, and harmony.”
—Larry Ward, Cofounder, The Lotus Institute

“Chilton’s uncompromising book cuts to the heart of what’s wrong with America’s ‘safety net’ for poverty and hunger. Her tough analysis derives from the lived experience of people dependent on this system despite its demonstrable inadequacies, inequities, and indignities.”
—Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, Emerita, NYU; author of Food Politics

“Hunger is a political problem, and Chilton’s powerful account both shows that the US food system is built on a profound degree of inequality and shares a clear vision for change.”
—Michael Fakhri, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, United Nations

“Truth-telling in these divisive times is both brave and dangerous. I deeply admire Dr. Chilton’s willingness to take on the deceit and misinformation that surround us by magnifying the voices and expertise of people who know hunger.”
—Sandra L. Bloom, MD, Founder, Creating Presence; coauthor of Destroying Sanctuary

“Equal parts memoir and academic analysis, this book exposes the violence underlying hunger in America while demonstrating the courage and love needed to end it once and for all.”
—Andy Fisher, author of Big HungerMariana Chilton is Professor of Health Management and Policy at Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. She founded the Center for Hunger-Free Communities, where she launched Witnesses to Hunger, a movement to increase women’s participation in the national dialogue on hunger and poverty, and the Building Wealth and Health Network to promote healing and economic security. She has testified on solutions to hunger before the US Senate and US House of Representatives.