An Out-of-Whack Food Chain

We always start out at the Zupan's pastry counter, where today free samples of cinnamon rolls and pound cake are on display. I give one of each to my 7-year-old son and my 5-year-old daughter. Then we head to the produce section, where chunks of pineapple and orange beckon. While I bag lettuce and carrots, my children jostle over toothpicks and pieces of fruit, managing to gulp down two or three of each kind before we move on to the meat aisle. On top of the deli counter are plates of crackers and a bacon cheese dip. As it turns out, my kids love it. I dole out two slathered crackers each, while the woman behind the counter smiles indulgently.

For the past five years I've lived in inner city Portland, Oregon, a couple of blocks from both Zupan's, a gourmet grocery, and the Sunnyside Methodist Church soup kitchen. It was during one of our daily walks from home to school to grocery store that this revelation first came to me. My children are dumpster divers, albeit the type of dumpster divers who are sweet, adorable and irrefutably middle-class. In their lust for free samples (the calories consumed this way are not insignificant) my kids are the identical opposites of homeless people we see scrounging for discarded food in the garbage. Both reflect the twisted logic of a food supply that has less to do with scarcity than the twin specters of excess and waste.

For the past several years, Oregon has been the number one state in the country for hunger. According to a study released in 2002 by Brandeis University, 6 percent of Oregon households go hungry, compared with 3.3 percent nationwide. One in four children in Oregon lives in a household that is "food insecure," defined as having limited or uncertain availability of safe, nutritionally adequate food. That translates into 193,000 kids in the state who are either skipping meals or fending off hunger by eating poor quality foods.

Theories about Oregon's high hunger ranking abound. Most revolve around the current economic downturn. The reason Oregon is suffering more than the rest of the country, says Nick McRee, a sociologist at the University of Portland, is because of problems associated with the unique transformation of the state's employment base.

"Many states experienced a high-tech boom in the 1990s," he says, "but Oregon experienced a decline in natural resource production at roughly the same time. "

The social costs linked to the economic dislocation of loggers, millworkers, fishermen, were masked by the growing affluence of high tech workers in the urbanized areas of the state, he says. "But this meant that Oregon was exceptionally vulnerable to any disruption in the high tech economy." When people are poor, adds McRee, they tend to cut back on food expenditures first, rather than reduce spending for inelastic measures such as housing.

Here's the syllogism. People who don't have money don't have enough to eat. People who have enough to eat are people with money. But make no mistake. In 21st century America, we're all catenating on an out-of-whack food chain.

Thus in my own household, the problem is that we waste enormous quantities of food and have unfettered access to more. On a recent Saturday morning I awoke to the sound of a crashing noise, squeals of laughter and one long "Mooommmy." I stumbled downstairs in my bathrobe, to find four children under 8 (two friends were spending the night) and a pool of Grapenuts and milk all over the dining room floor. It was a new box and a fresh carton. "All right," I sighed, "give me a minute and I'll run to the store."

Then there was the time my kids and I were at Whole Foods, arguably Portland's most expensive grocery store. We had come from Powell's Books across the street, and I wanted to pick up something for dinner. "Can I have a sample, mama?" the children ask. Fifteen minutes later, I take inventory of the free food each child consumed: