If you are a parent, you can not imagine a child going to bed hungry at night, but that is what happens with over 13 million children across the United States. The problem has been given a label of ‘a food insecure household’ by the USDA, but the situation is a deeply hidden secret within the social folds of American society.

Helplessness and Hopelessness Run Rampant

According to a map published by the USDA in 2016, more than 90 percent of the country has an average of 15 percent of the children in each state that don’t have enough food. Eyal Gutentag established a charity with his wife Diane, to fight hunger when they discovered that one in every five children would go to bed hungry at least once during the year. In a country with so much abundance, how can that happen?

Government and Food Don’t Mix

America exports tons of food each year and is the largest food exporter in the world. So, how can the United States send so much food out of the country when the children within its borders are suffering from hunger? Many people claim it is due to almost $75 million other governments pay for the food they receive and that private corporations are more concerned with their bottom line than feeding hungry children. Others state it is an invisible problem that stays out of sight and thus, out of mind.

Americans and Excess Could Help

More than $165 billion in food is discarded in the US each year. In other words, that is enough to feed more than all the hungry children in America twice. The problem is how to safely get that food to the children – and that is another issue altogether.

Until American’s believe feeding hungry children is important enough to warrant a solution to the problem, childhood hunger will continue to be a crisis. The question is, when will it become an issue worth focusing on?