Americans today are both obese and starving. We’re spending more than ever on an ever-widening array of diets, and yet hunger and obesity are increasingly driven by a web of overlapping factors. According to the latest data, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association in March 2018, some 40 percent of American adults are obese. Meanwhile, nearly 15 percent of Americans live in food-insecure households, unsure where their next meal will come from. We have a tendency in this country to attribute numbers like these to personal choice, but doing so ignores the complex drivers that range from the mechanization of the food system to institutional racism and sexism to the stigmatization of poverty. Every community in the country has a different relationship with food, money, and labor, as we found when we put a call out for local stories about food access. The result is the 7-episode first season of our new podcast, The Fifty One, which explores what national issues look like for women at the local level.
To listen to this podcast episode of The Fifty One, please click here.
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