A Place at the Table Page #3

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in this country,

that's their way of life.

Every day is a struggle just to eat.

$39.37.

Um...

Would you take 35?

You're gonna have to put

something back.

Back in the '80s,

when I formed the End Hunger Network,

we wanted to show what it was like

to live in America and, you know,

be holding down three jobs

and, you know,

you got a couple of kids

and maybe a medical problem,

and you've gotta put food

on the table,

keep a roof on your head,

and it's...

It's really a daunting task.

And we wanted to make

a film about that.

And it was made,

you know, 10, 12 years ago,

and it doesn't seem

out of date at all.

It seems...

It seems just as fresh

as the day we made it.

The problem is getting...

is getting worse.

The policy and my own feeling

in this administration

is that if there is one person

in this country hungry,

that is one too many.

And for those who cannot do

for themselves,

society has to respond.

In this era

of unprecedented prosperity,

we still have some work

of our own to do.

We hear the call

to take on the challenges

of hunger and poverty

and disease.

And that is precisely

what America is doing.

We are Americans.

We are tougher

than the times we live in,

and we are bigger

than our politics have been,

so let's meet the moment,

let's get to work,

and let's show the world once again

why the United States of America

remains the greatest nation on Earth.

We've got 44 million Americans

on the Supplemental Nutrition

Assistance program,

what we used to call

food stamps.

One out of every two kids

in the United States

at some point in their childhood

will be on food assistance.

You better watch it.

Come on.

Chips right here, Mommy.

- Can I have a cheeseburger?

- Huh?

No.

Mom, I need a doughnut.

No, you got chips in your hand.

- I want a doughnut.

- You don't need doughnuts.

Aiden.

I want a doughnut!

Aiden's first year of life

was a period of a lot of struggle.

At that time,

I was making $9.00 an hour.

Buying food

was really an obstacle for me.

So I applied for food stamps,

which means

I was in the welfare office

from 8:
00 in the morning

to 4:
30 in the afternoon,

to then be told that

I was $2.00 over the income limit.

So because I was

$2.00 over the income limit,

I didn't... I was not eligible

for even a dollar in food stamps.

Watch.

So, you know, I didn't have

what they needed,

or there just wasn't

any more food.

And I feel like

it affected Aiden a lot.

- Mom.

- Yes?

Here, it's...

- My Elmo.

- Yeah.

- Thank you.

- I want a hug.

Huh?

What happened?

- House.

- What happened with the house?

What happened? Mommy room?

Aiden... he was constantly

in and out of the hospital.

He was diagnosed with G6PD,

which is an immune deficiency.

He has hearing problems,

and earlier this month,

he was diagnosed with speech delay.

Any kind of nutritional deprivation,

however short that it could be,

in those first three years of life

can have lifelong

consequences for a child.

It affects

their cognitive development,

their ability to get along with others.

No!

Let's shine

our flashlight here and look.

They could be constantly sick,

constantly getting infections,

because they're not well nourished.

Do you know, has he had any colds?

He's actually a little sick right now.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

It can truncate

a child's developmental potential.

Whether or not it affects

their growth outcomes,

sort of their physical...

their stature and their weight,

it affects their brain

at a much deeper level.

Okay, mine is about

this, um, goddess or queen.

Her husband died,

and he gave half of his kingdom

to the Romans and...

Hunger definitely

impacts my classroom.

I have had students

come to me upset,

and it's definitely a huge issue

in our small community.

We are going to spend

a little bit of time

talking about

how to use context clues

to help us when we find words

in the textbooks that we're reading.

One student in particular, Rosie,

I just really felt

that she wasn't really

applying herself in the classroom,

and I couldn't figure out

where that attitude was coming from.

I felt that she just

really didn't care about what

I wanted her to learn or

that school was that important,

and what I realized

when I brought her in one day was

the main issue was

that she was hungry.

I struggle a lot.

And most of the time, it's because

my stomach is really hurting.

So let's take a look.

And my teacher tells me

to get focused,

and she told me to write "focus"

on one of those stickers.

And every time I look at it,

I'm, like, "Oh, I'm supposed

to be focusing."

I start yawning,

and then I zone out.

And I'm just looking

at the teacher,

and I look at her,

and all I think about is food.

So I have these little visions

in my eyes.

You're still

gonna use the same skills.

Sometimes when I look at her,

I vision her as a banana,

so she goes like a banana.

And everybody in the class

is like apples or oranges.

And then I'm, like, "Oh, great."

What were the two you were

trying to narrow it down to?

- "A" and "B."

- "A" and "B."

And why were you thinking "A"?

Um... Me, um...

We are tying the arms

behind the backs of children

as they go into public schools.

We're making it

so that we spend money for teachers

and that we deliver to them

a lot of children who can't learn.

The lost potential...

Some of those kids

could potentially be

a great scientist

or go on to be leaders

in our armed forces,

but the impact that hunger has

messes everything up.

And as a result of that,

we're weakening our nation.

Food was really important growing up,

especially around holidays.

We had to be home

for dinner every night.

My mother was

the typical Italian mother

who would not sit down

unless everybody was served.

Um, and I think that was, you know,

her way of showing

how much she loved her family.

I was in high school at the time.

My mother decided to take a job

managing a school cafeteria

at Elizabeth where we grew up.

Years later, my brother and I,

we tried to get her to retire.

And she sat down and she said,

"You know, I'm not ready to retire yet."

I said, "Why?"

She said, "You know, these kids

"that come into my lunchroom

for breakfast and lunch,

"I know this is the only thing

they're eating all day."

For your elimination challenge,

you'll be feeding students

using the same restrictive budget

that our public schools have:

$2.68 per child.

Childhood nutrition has become

a huge health crisis in this country.

And in this challenge,

we were looking at various things.

Part of it to get kids

to eat vegetables and stuff

and whether or not you were

cooking food

that was appropriate

for a school lunch.

I had wanted to do a healthy dessert

that incorporated fruits,

but that was not possible

within our budget.

The point was that you guys

would get tripped up

because that's the problem

that the country has.

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