The Waste Not Want Not Project Research

The average community in the United States already possesses—and is likely already expending—enough resources to end hunger five times over, but likely is meeting only about one-fifth of the need because of how those resources are being mobilized and employed.

These facts are a result of a research study of hunger relief programs conducted in 1994-96 by Michigan State University, which became known as the Waste Not Want Not Project.

This research was prompted by a study of Michigan’s Kent County conducted in mid-1993 by the Heart of West Michigan United Way, which concluded that hunger was the area’s most pressing unmet need. Technically, hunger was tied with child abuse and neglect for the number one spot, but since significant aspects of that abuse and neglect included kids going hungry, hunger took the spotlight.

Hunger’s reach

The United Way explained that research had not revealed starvation, but “had found hunger’s fingerprints everywhere.” It didn’t matter where they looked or what issue they looked into, hunger was always lurking in the shadows, having either caused or at least having exacerbated the problem.

Problem pregnancies and the incidence of premature low birth-weight high-risk babies often linked back to poor prenatal nutrition. Kids too listless or restless to pay attention to their lessons in school often tracked back to the fact that they were simply too hungry to care. In too many classrooms, school lunch was the only predictable food in many children’s lives.

Teens living in what is now known as “food insecurity” were much more likely to have health problems, get into trouble, use drugs or alcohol, drop out of school and attempt suicide than were teens who have reliable food access.

All age levels, if hungry, were more likely to commit crimes such as purse snatching, shoplifting, mugging, and breaking and entering in pursuit of food or the means to get food.

Women were more likely to engage in prostitution. Both sexes were more likely to experience health and mental health problems. Both were more likely to succumb to the temptations of drug and alcohol abuse in order to block out—at least temporarily—the pain, humiliation, fear and anger that comes from not having enough to eat or not being able to feed one’s family in the so-called “richest country in the world.”

Child abuse and other domestic violence often tracked back to that same stress.

Senior citizens too often had to choose between having food and getting the medicine or medical care they needed, or between having food and heating their home.

Obviously ending hunger wouldn’t eliminate drug and alcohol use, prostitution, domestic violence, or any of the other problems, but hunger was such an evident and obvious cause or contributing factor in so many specific instances of all of them that it was the United Way’s conclusion that we simply had to eliminate hunger if we ever hoped to make our community the kind of place we want it to be.

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