Sensibly Dealing With Food

TWENTY PERCENT OF AMERICAN CHILDREN, roughly, might or might not get enough to eat on any given day. No one disputes this. America throws away half of its food, roughly. Nobody disputes this either. Its widely known. In our era of alternative facts and personal bubbles, these two facts are reality in America. they are either a horrible indictment of the country as a whole or at the very least of its economic system. Take your pick. For God's sake, you're asking, why can't we do something about this? It would appear that the free market, that the immutable laws of supply and demand which make capitalism allegedly work so very well - is an utter failure, food wise. Oh sure, the government has a farmer subsidy program, and has for years. And, then too, we have food stamps and the government free school lunch program for poor children. In America we have a mixture of socialism and capitalism in the food industry, like many other industries. But since those who produce and provide food, such as giant food companies, farmers, restaurants, and grocery stores, overwhelmingly do so for profit, it is capitalism which controls the industry. All of the capitalism is designed to enhance profit, all the socialism is designed to redistribute food to the poor, so its hard to see how the misappropriation of food in America is anything other than a capitalistic problem. At my local senior center, of which I am a member, every day leftovers from lunch are thrown away, pounds and pounds of perfectly good food; because the law says it must. That's socialism gone astray. Heaven forbid that leftover food should be given away to those who need it. Our nonfunctional food system in the United States is inherent in the system, and is not fixable without fixing the system. It is interesting to note that the distribution of food in America tends to match the distribution of money. The difference, of course, is that we all need approximately the same amount of food.