Hunger and Overeating

I want to reiterate the time function in all of this. It has taken me at least an hour a day of active cooking and cleaning time this week.

I was talking to someone about the relationship between lack of money and hunger, noting that a relatively low percentage of people are actually suffering from "hunger" and that many more people are overweight or obese. As Andy has noted, he was able to get enough calories on a very low budget, and explicitly based his purchases around this concern.

I have also been able to get enough calories on this budget, but I find that I am still feeling hungrier than I usually do. If I went back to the store and did this for another week, I might choose to switch out some of the vegetables for a product with more calories so that I don't feel hungry. Then I would be overconsuming calories, and I might still be hungry. During a meeting at the Rudd Center, we talked about this challenge and the disconnect between calories and perception of fullness. This got me thinking about diets, such as Volumetrics, that explicitly emphasize eating more vegetables and whole grains to help you feel fuller while reducing calories. Check out the pictures showing how this can be done. The foods that are calorie-dense (chips and macaroni and cheese) are actually some of the cheapest calories that you can find in the store. I wonder how much it would cost to recreate the veggie platter in the picture.

I was talking to someone else about how people who do suffer from hunger may only do so intermittently, but that the memory of being hungry and the fear of being hungry again would drive one to purchase calorie-dense foods. The research on the link between food insecurity and overweight and obesity is not complete, but it seems that there is a connection. I am curious whether splitting food stamp benefits into biweekly payments would reduce intermittent hunger, and potentially reduce overweight.

Although I have been aware of the academic discussion, for me, this challenge has more clearly demonstrated the experience of real hunger and the potential for weight gain at the same time. I do also recognize, and do not want to suggest otherwise, that there are people in this country who do not have enough calories to eat. This issue is much more important when we view hunger from a global perspective. There are many millions of people without enough food to eat. At the same time, we are starting to see the same relationship between malnutrition on the micronutrient level and obesity in other countries that we are seeing in the United States.

So, I didn't blog yesterday, but I ate:
Breakfast: 3 eggs scrambled
Lunch: Black beans and brown rice
Snack: Apple
Dinner: Butternut squash soup with squash, navy beans, carrots, onion, rice, canola oil, dried rosemary, dried thyme, salt and black pepper. The soup was good, but I saved half of the squash for later in the, making this more of a rice and beans soup.
Snack: Black beans and a tortilla

Today:
Breakfast: 2 eggs and two corn tortillas scrambled
Lunch: Fried brown rice, navy beans, one small onion, one carrot, 1/4 sweet potato and half of the frozen broccoli
Snack: Apple
Dinner: Butternut squash soup (I still have some leftover)