On March 24th, we are partnering with MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, Progressive Jewish Alliance, Valley Beth Shalom, and Sinai Temple for the First Annual Los Angeles Hunger Seder. 

During the Passover Seder, we open the doors of our homes and invite all who are hungry to come and eat but are we really ready to feed all those hungry people?

The statistics are staggering: about 1 out of every 8 people in Los Angeles is hungry, making us the Hunger Capital of the US.  The number of people in poverty in Los Angeles County is roughly equal to the population of Philadephia, our nation’s 6th most populous city.  Around the world, over 1 billion people suffer from hunger.

Come to the first every LA Hunger Seder on March 24th at VBS at 7:o0 pm to learn about hunger in LA and worldwide and to learn how you can make a difference.  Register here.

All proceeds from the $18 ticket will be donated to The SOVA Community Food and Resource Program of Jewish Family Service. 

It will also be webcast at www.JewishJournal.com

Join us on the bus with The Progressive Jewish Alliance and the Alliance for Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores for a tour of food deserts on Sunday, March 21st.  The bus will leave the Westside JCC at noon and tour the food deserts of Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights.  The program includes learning from health experts, text study, a visit to a community garden, talks with residents, and concludes with an Interfaith Observance of Passover. 

From our Blueprint to End Hunger:

…an assessment by the East L.A. Community Corporation (ELACC) identified one supermarket for almost 90,000 residents in the Boyle Heights area, or more than four times lower than average for the rest of Los Angeles County…61% of residents of California’s 46th Assembly districtm which includes much of Boyle Heights and some surrounding neighborhoods, are either obese of overweight.   

You can register here or click here for more information.

On Sunday, as part The Jewish Federation’s Fed Up with Hunger Purim events, Jewish volunteers delivered food, toiletries, and other care essentials to people in need all over Los Angeles in the Purim mitzvah of matanot l’evyonim (giving gifts to the poor).

A group of volunteers from Federation’s Young Entertainment Division (some of whom helped organize the Ghostbusters JFS/SOVA benefit screening at Hollywood Forever during Sukkot) and their friends joined me to cook a meal for 60 residents of Proyecto Pastoral’s Guadalupe Homeless Project, the only men’s shelter in East Los Angeles (recipes below).

Even before the cooking started, the volunteers spent the earlier part of the afternoon buying all of the ingredients for our menu.  Sara Reich, who did the yeoman’s job of coordinating all of the volunteers and the food procurement, bought 35+ pounds of chicken.  Jeannine Hamaoui cleared out the produce departments of Vons and Albertsons to get the 30 bunches of Swiss Chard that we needed.  Rachel Fleischer brought enough chicken stock to fill a large kiddie pool.

With the groceries, the group converged around 3:00 p.m. at the basement kitchen at the Dolores Mission in East L.A. where the meal was to be cooked and served.  They immediately got to work.  One team filled and organized the larder and another team started on kitchen grunt work, otherwise known as prep.  They chopped carrots, celery, cabbage, squeezed limes, picked cilantro, seeded jalapenos, rehydrated guajillo chilis, browned chicken, caramelized onions, fire-roasted red peppers, soaked rice, cleaned and stemmed a forest of chard, and above all else, they diced onions.  Lots of them.  Tearfully.

Over the course of the afternoon, all of their prep work slowly came together to form the different components of our menu.  By the time the residents of the Guadalupe Homeless Project arrived at 7:00 pm, the carrots, celery, cabbage, and chili paste had turned into Vegetable “Pozole” Soup.  The chicken, caramelized onions, and roasted red peppers had become Arroz Con Pollo.  The limes, jalapenos, and cilantro became the Salsa Verde garnish.  The raw chard was wilted and then combined with some beef stock and white bean to become the Braised Swiss Chard.

After serving the meals, a number of our volunteers sat down with the residents of the shelter and ate with them.  This is one of the important differences between cooking a meal at GHP and doing the same at other homeless shelters.  The service doesn’t end at cooking and serving the meal.  It also includes sitting and eating with the men, which provides them with some social interaction, an important piece of feeling cared for.

As I watched the volunteers eating with the GHP residents, it occurred to me why matanot l’evyonim is the lesser known Purim mitzvah brother of mishloach manot (giving gifts to friends).  It’s because they’re both the same.  When you give gifts to people who are poor or needy and you take a moment to interact with them to get to know them and try to see them, you actually transcend the act of giving a gift to someone less fortunate than you.  In the process of matanot l’evyonim, you achieve mishloach manot; by getting to know someone in the process of giving them charity, you’ll end up having given a gift to a friend.

As we were wrapping up, one of the residents came up to us and excitedly told us that he didn’t know what kind of soup we had made but it was the best soup he ever had.  It was so good, he actually came back a few minutes later to tell us once again.  I told him that it was a “pozole” and his eyes lit up.

“Pozole?!  No!” he said.  “To me, it was a vegetable soup but it was the best kind of vegetable soup ever.  It was so good.  I never tasted anything like it before.  When are you guys coming back?  I want to be sure I’m here.”

As a former chef, I’ve kicked around in some fine restaurants and cooked some very fine food and I have never received a compliment like that.  Who knew that of all things I’ve ever cooked, it would be a humble vegetable soup that would elicit the most heartfelt compliment.

The resident was so excited that he told his story to all of the Young Entertainment Division volunteers who smiled and pointed at me telling him that I was the “chef.”  This was nice but the compliment really belongs to the volunteers.  Any chef worth his salt knows that he is only as good as his brigade.  As my brigade on Sunday, the group of volunteers put their hearts and souls into procuring, preparing, and cooking the meal for the residents of GHP.  I saw it as they worked through the afternoon.  Most importantly, the GHP resident could taste the love in the soup.

And here, for your home entertaining pleasure, Sunday’s recipes scaled down for service for 4-6.

The Best Vegetable Soup Ever (Formerly known as “Vegetarian Pozole Soup”)

Olive Oil
1 medium or small onion
1 carrots
1 stalk celery
2 green peppers
2 dried guadjillo peppers
1 chipotle pepper
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 teaspoon dried oregano
4 quarts vegetable broth or water and broth cubes
1 29oz can hominy, drained
salt to taste
1 can of chopped tomatoes
1 12oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 small cabbage or 1/2 regular cabbage
Herb sash (bay leaf, thyme, oregano)

Prep

Rinse guadjillo peppers, remove stems and seeds, and soak in hot water, when soft blend peppers with soaking water, chipotle pepper, garlic and dried oregano to make chili paste.  Add more soaking water, if too thick.  End product should be a paste.

Chop onions, carrots, celery, green peppers and cabbage into large chunks.

Mince garlic.

Tie rosemary, oregano, and bay leaf with kitchen twine or make a sash with cheese cloth.

Method

In a medium pot, sauté onions on medium heat for about two minutes.  Once onions have sweated down, add carrots, celery, green peppers and sauté for three minutes.  Add cabbage and continue to sweat for two to three minutes. Add chili mixture, herb tie/sash, and remaining 1 teaspoon of oregano.  Cook for a minute to develop the chili paste.  Add broth and tomatoes. Bring to a boil and simmer until cabbage is soft.  Add black beans and hominy.  Season with salt and pepper.  Simmer until ready to serve (be sure to remove the herb tie/sash).

Arroz Con Pollo

1 chicken (three to four pounds) cut up into 8 pieces
3 limes
Spanish olive oil
2 onions
3 red peppers
4 cloves of garlic,
1 quart of tomato sauce
1 teaspoon of ground cumin, plus extra to season chicken Dried bay leaves
1/2 dry white wine (omitted from the GHP recipe)
1/4 cup of sherry vinegar
1.5 cups of long grain rice
4 cups of chicken stock
5 saffron threads
1 bag of frozen sweet peas

Prep List

Roast Red Peppers, peel and dice.

Dice onions.

Mince garlic.

Juice limes into bowl for chicken.

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a mixing bowl, combine chicken with lime juice. Season liberally with salt, pepper and cumin.  In a large dutch oven or high sided pan, heat the olive oil. Brown the chicken over medium high heat – about 3-5 minutes on each side.  Remove the chicken from the pan, and set aside.

Add the onions, roasted red peppers, and garlic to the pan. Cook until the onion starts to caramelize. Add the tomato sauce, cumin, and bay leaf; cook for another 5 minutes.

Add the chicken back into the pan, the white wine, sherry vinegar, and cook for 5 to 8 minutes.  Add the stock, bring to a boil, and add the rice and saffron.

Bring the mixture to a boil, cover, and cook in the oven for 45-60 minutes.

Remove the rice from the oven and add the peas, fluffing the rice and mixing in the peas at the same time. Drizzle with Salsa Verde.

Salsa Verde

1 Jalapeno pepper, seeded
1/2 bunch of cilantro
1/4 cup unsalted, unroasted almonds
2 limes, juice
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup chicken stock

Blend all ingredients together.  The end product should be of a saucey consistency.  If it is too thick, thin with chicken stock.  If too thin, thicken with olive oil.  Season with salt and pepper.

Braised Swiss Chard and White Bean

2 cloves of garlic
2 bunches of Swiss chard
1 can of white beans
1/2 cup of beef broth (can substitute vegetable broth, if desired)

Prep

Clean the Swiss chard leaves and chop, keeping the stalks.

Open white beans and drain liquid.

Method

Pour the olive oil into a large frying pan and heat.  Saute garlic for 3-4 minutes. Toss in Swiss chard leaves and stir.  Once the chard leaves are wilted, add white beans and broth. Simmer on low for 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Yesterday, the First Lady of the United States unveiled her Let’s Move initiative to combat childhood obesity, a problem that affects nearly one in three children in America.  With hunger affecting nearly one in four children in America, the link between food security and obesity is pretty clear.   

The initiative itself is impressive and far reaching, tackling childhood obesity and its causes through physical activity, quality of food, education, access, and affordability.  It’s a good first step in achieving President Obama’s goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015. 

What struck me most about the press conference was the First Lady’s even-handed, compassionate yet stern tone.  While she sympathized with working families that may not have the money, time, or information to make healthier choices for her family, she also put families, food companies, and legislators alike on notice:

…it’s a moment of truth for our country…Our kids didn’t do this to themselves. Our kids don’t decide what’s served to them at school or whether there’s time for gym class or recess. Our kids don’t choose to make food products with tons of sugar and sodium in super-sized portions, and then to have those products marketed to them everywhere they turn. And no matter how much they beg for pizza, fries and candy, ultimately, they are not, and should not, be the ones calling the shots at dinnertime. We’re in charge. We make these decisions.

This year, we can act on some of these responsibilities by advocating our members of Congress to support a strong reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, including the President’s request for an extra $1 billion in funding for the programs. 

 A fully funded package of child nutrition programs would:

• Reduce child hunger by increasing access to programs
• Improve the quality of food served in schools by improving reimbursement rates and establishing better farm to school links
• Bring additional federal funds into the states
• Reduce paperwork and administrative costs for schools
• Reduce the stigma of participating in free school meal programs, all of which will enhance the quality of our children’s learning

By engaging together as a national community on this issue, we can make sure that fewer of our children go needlessly hungry.

Click here to go to the California Food Policy Advocates to learn more about the California implications of the Child Nutrition Act and some of the specific actions that we are asking Congress to support. 

Click here to write a letter to your Senator or Representative to tell them that you want them to support a fully funded Child Nutrition Act.

As if the most recent USDA food insecurity numbers weren’t compelling enough, The Food and Research Action Center (FRAC) recently released their Food Hardship report.  Based on a Gallup Poll, it has food hardship – yes, hunger – data for the nation, states, metropolitan statistical areas, and every Congressional district.  Nationally, about 18.5% of Americans reported not having enough money to purchase enough food for their family at the end of 2009, up from 16.3% at the beginning of 2008.  In households with children under 18, the likeliness of experiencing food hardship was 1.62 times more than a household without children (24% to 15%), further confirming the fact that children are among our most food insecure.

Drilling down to Congressional district, those of us lucky enough to live in Henry Waxman’s district, where The Jewish Federation is headquartered, we only have a food hardship rate of 8.3%, one of the lowest in the nation (427^th out of 435 total congressional districts).  However, if you move a little to the east, south and north, the food hardship rates skyrocket.  It is 28.3% in Xavier Becerra’s district, 22.9% in Maxine Waters’ district, and 23.2% in Buck McKeon’s district (ranked 16^th, 70^th and 65^th in the nation, respectively).  Not only are hunger and food insecurity literally in our own backyard, they also surround us in our neighboring communities at alarming rates. 

Though it may seem daunting, the things you do can go a long way to help end hunger.  Here are five things you can do today, tomorrow, or this weekend that will have an immediate effect on hunger and food insecurity in our communities:

1. Volunteer:  There are plenty of great anti-hunger organizations in Los Angeles that need your help to cook, distribute, organize, receive, and sort food.  Our list of local anti-hunger organizations is by no means exhaustive but provides a good list to get started if you are interested in volunteering.  The volunteer corps for many of those organizations is graying and many of them need an influx of younger volunteers to sustain their activities. 
2. Donate:  Local anti-hunger groups need money to continue providing emergency food services.  You can donate directly by contacting the list above or you can consider making a micro-donation to Fed Up with Hunger by clicking here.      
3. Plant a food garden: The demand for fresh foods at local food banks and pantries is growing.  By planting a food garden and donating your harvest to local food banks and pantries, you will be increasing the supply of nutritious, fresh foods in the emergency food system (to say nothing about helping to green LA).  If you don’t think your little garden (or apartment box garden) can help, keep in mind that for every $1 invested in a food garden yields $6 in produce.  Furthermore, during World War II, 40% of our vegetables were grown in backyard gardens.    
4. Glean: We are surrounded by a bounty of nutritious food.  By joining gleaning organizations like Food Forward and other organizations who have partnerships with local farms and restaurants, you can further help increase the amount of fresh, nutritious food in the emergency food system.   
5. Advocate: The key to ending hunger lies in creating the political will in our elected officials to do so.  Sign a petition to call on Congress to support creating access to healthy foods, write a letter to your legislator and tell them you support a strong Childhood Nutrition Reauthorization Act, and tell your friends to join the movement.  Our elected officials will have no choice than to listen to us if we all declare, in one righteous voice, that we are all Fed Up with Hunger.

At the launch of “Hungry No More: A Blueprint to End Hunger in Los Angeles,” we announced our first round of “Fed Up with Hunger” micro-grants!   Here is a list of our recipients

Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles in support of SOVA Community Food & Resource Program
JFS/SOVA provides free groceries and supportive services to people whose limited incomes make it difficult to provide adequate, healthy food for themselves and family members.  In addition, SOVA has been a core partner in Fed Up with Hunger.

St. Margaret Center
A program of Catholic Charities, St. Margaret Center serves individuals and families living at or below the poverty level in the LAX area via a food pantry, classes and job training, and cash assistance for rent and utilities.

Food Forward
An all-volunteer organization that mobilizes individuals to glean excess fruit from orchards and backyards which is then donated to local food pantries.

MudTown Farms
A 2.5 acre community garden in Watts that provides fresh fruits and vegetables to a community with only one supermarket and less than a half-acre of park space per 1,000 residents.  They are in the process of reinventing the space as an urban agricultural center featuring a general store, cannery, community room, greenhouse, and classrooms in addition to gardens

Hunger Action Los Angeles
A grass-roots organization working to end hunger and promote healthy eating through community education, outreach, networking, and empowerment of low income people to speak on issues that affect their lives directly, Hunger Action LA is especially involved in a campaign to increase enrollment in the food stamp program for eligible Angelenos.

Temple Emanuel MATCH program
Every year, a group of teenagers in the MATCH (Money And Teens Creating Hope) program from Temple Emanuel utilize a pool of funds to make small grants to organizations they have researched.  This year, the teens are focusing solely on the cause of hunger, and an additional amount from Fed Up with Hunger will insure that they can maximize the impact these grants will have.

RootDown LA
Root Down confronts obesity and related health issues in South Los Angeles by engaging youth in the educational experiences and skills training necessary to help build healthier food communities.  They build demand for healthy food in urban areas, do cooking demos and demystify “healthy” food.  Simply, they get kids to get kids to eat their vegetables.

Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness
LACEHH works collectively to end hunger and homelessness through public education, technical assistance, public policy analysis, advocacy, organizing and community action.

Valley Interfaith Council
VIC provides numerous social services in the San Fernando Valley to seniors and families in need, especially in the areas of food and nutrition, where their efforts insure that over 200,000 seniors receive a hot nutritious daily lunch.

Eastmont Community Center
Located in East Los Angeles, Eastmont Community Center enhances the quality of life for local children, youth, working adults and seniors in low-income families by providing needed education, social services, and health and wellness services that promote personal development and self-sufficiency.

It’s Blog Action Day 2009, a day when the bloggers unite online for a cause.  It’s sort of like USA for Africa’s “We are the World,” except with 50% less singing, 100% more typing, and 23% more Hall and Oates (at least in my case).  This year, the cause is climate change, which makes Blog Action Day sort of like “blogosphere for the atmosphere.”

The topic got me thinking to 2003 when the Pentagon was asked what they thought was the biggest threat to national security. The Pentagon didn’t say terrorism.  They didn’t say banking, national health care or reality shows

They said climate change.

That’s right.  The Pentagon, still recovering after 9/11, in a time when the correct answer to any question was global terrorism, said the greatest risk to U.S. national security was climate change.

Not because we would get a little hot, or that Al Gore would win the Nobel Peace Prize, but because climate change would lead to world-wide hunger, food insecurity and famine, which would foment political instability and war.

In the end, it all comes back to food.  The report here is pretty unsettling.

Climatically, the gradual change view of the future assumes that agriculture will continue to thrive and growing seasons will lengthen…Overall, global food production under many typical climate scenarios increases. This view of climate change may be a dangerous act of self-deception, as increasingly we are facing weather related disasters – more hurricanes, monsoons, floods, and dry-spells – in regions around the world. [Emphasis mine]

This reminds me of the halcyon days before 2008, when all signs pointed to an economy would continue to expand, unabated.  There were a few people who sagely saw the meltdown coming but 99.9% of us ignored the warning signs that our economy was deeply troubled.  We know how that ended.  Now try, if you can, to imagine the banking collapse of 2008 translated to The Climate, a system that no government can bail out or nationalize.

Weather-related events have an enormous impact on society, as they influence food supply, conditions in cities and communities, as well as access to clean water and energy. For example, a recent report by the Climate Action Network of Australia projects that climate change is likely to reduce rainfall in the rangelands, which could lead to a 15 per cent drop in grass productivity.  This, in turn, could lead to reductions in the average weight of cattle by 12 per cent, significantly reducing beef supply. Under such conditions, dairy cows are projected to produce 30% less milk, and new pests are likely to spread in fruit-growing areas. Additionally, such conditions are projected to lead to 10% less water for drinking. Based on model projections of coming change conditions such as these could occur in several food producing regions around the world at the same time within the next 15-30years, challenging the notion that society’s ability to adapt will make climate change manageable.

That’s only the introduction.

Steven Chu, a Nobel Laureate and President Obama’s Secretary of Energy, said, “I don’t think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen. We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California.”

Growing food is a delicate interaction between seed, soil and water to harvest the energy of the sun, that can only take place in temperate climates.

As the climate has been slowly changing, there is more water tension and soil erosion, which leads to less fertility, loss of arable land and harsher growing conditions, which leads to overall lower crop yields, which leads to scarcer amounts offood, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more hunger.

Last year, as food prices rose, wages stagnated.  Here locally, many Angelenos fell off the edge of getting by and became food insecure and hungry.  As unemployment has continued to rip through Los Angeles County (12.7%!), more and more people are out of work and having to deal with high food prices, driving a record number of people to food pantries and other food assistance programs.

You can’t tease apart climate and hunger.  They are inter-related systems that have enormous effects on each other.

Thankfully, we are not powerless in this.  We can and must advocate and work for the changes necessary to change the course we are on in order to leave a bountiful and temperate world for our grandchildren.

Here are some things you can do to fight hunger and climate change:

• Help green L.A. by planting a food garden in your home or apartment
• Start a community garden
• Donate your harvest to food banks and food pantries
• Donate leftover food from large events to food rescue organizations
• Learn about and advocate for sustainable agricultural practices

I was talking to the Dr. Missus about Fed Up with Hunger and she mentioned Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. According to her, eating and other essential human needs like breathing and drinking make up the base of Maslow’s hierarchy. This base level must be satisfied before higher-order activities in human life can be achieved – you know, the things that make up a civil society like morality, creativity, spontaneity, acceptance of facts, self-esteem, friendship, family, so on and so forth. Forget her smart talk, the layman’s translation is: the Hierarchy is like psychological Jenga; if you take out the lower blocks, you lose.

This is why I’m Fed Up with Hunger. Hunger deprives the people suffering from it – and the society as a whole – of their potential.

However, since nobody is starving in the streets, hunger in the first world is sort of an opaque problem. If you’re a busy person with a job and you and your family are lucky enough to not be directly affected by hunger and food insecurity, it can be difficult to really be fed up with hunger in a world so full of food.  In fact, food is so overabundant, we waste a full third of the food we produce, so I can see how an appeal to end hunger might not really connect and hit you where you live. 

But it does.  And in a big way.   

If you are a parent, your child likely attends school with children who are food insecure. In LAUSD, about 3 out of 4 children qualify for the free-and-reduced lunch program. As studies show, hungry children are less attentive, meaning they have more difficulty learning, and as they are also more disruptive, they impede your kid’s learning. Also, hunger and malnutrition are contributing factors to childhood obesity, which in Los Angeles is reaching epidemic numbers. In L.A. County, more than 1 in 5 children in the 5th, 7th and 9th grades are obese .

If you are a local business leader, you are losing out on $500 million of annual economic purchasing power in the hands of your customers because Los Angeles County’s participation in the Food Stamps program is only at 50%. While it’s true that Food Stamps can only be used to purchase food and other essentials, they generate over $1 billion of local economic activity annually, so even if food retail is not the business you are in, you still get the rippling economic benefits of the best fiscal stimulus the federal government can provide. Furthermore, you are footing part of the $5.8 billion in annual lost productivity due to hunger and malnutrition issues in Los Angeles County. 

If you are an environmentalist, wasting food is exactly like wasting resources like land, water and sunlight. Annually, over 100 billion pounds of edible food (1/3 of our country’s total food production) is not eaten, which is equivalent to wasting 10 trillion gallons of water a year. That amount of food waste, which could more than adequately feed our nation’s hungry, is like wasting the amount of water in the Hoover Dam every year. Currently, only 2.5% of all food waste is recycled. The rest of the 97.8% sits in landfills creating tons and tons of methane gas. By volume, food waste is both the largest contributor of water waste and methane gas production in the world.

If you are a labor leader, protecting workers’ rights also means protecting workers’ ability to work. Hunger and malnutrition effectively short circuit peoples’ wills to work, making them less productive, unfocused, and sick more often.

If you are a local elected official, you should very be fed up, especially in a time of such fiscal difficulty. Because of L.A.’s low participation rate in the Food Stamp program, you are losing out on around $10,000,000 in local tax revenue and $65,000,000 at the state level.

If you are a federal elected official, you should be horrified that the total economic cost to the United States of hunger and malnutrition is conservatively estimated at $90 billion a year. The cost of ending hunger is about $25 billion. I’m no mathlete, but even I know that that saves around $65 billion, give or take. Meanwhile, as we are so consumed by the health care debate, it’s important to note that it will be impossible to rein in the rising cost of healthcare without taking a look at the things we eat.

If you are in the military/law enforement, you are a natural ally to strengthen the nutritional value of school lunches because you have noticed that 3 out of 4 adults of military age are physically unfit to serve. Close readers of history will remember that the National School Lunch program began in 1946 as a measure of national security. President Truman started the program after reading a study that showed many young men had been rejected from the World War II draft due to medical conditions caused by childhood malnutrition. We have a similar problem now as the military has been lowering its fitness and BMI index requirements for new troops due to our expanding national waistline. If we don’t appropriately address the food our young children eat, we will not have a military fit enough to protect our country nor a police force fit enough to protect our neighborhoods.

If you are a health care provider, you are seeing many more diet-related illnesses than ever before – and that’s only of the people who can come in to see you because they have health insurance. As you know, hunger and malnutrition lead to a host of preventable diseases and illnesses. Furthermore, the health care costs of malnutrition and obesity in California is over $20.7 billion annually and Los Angeles County accounts for more than a quarter of that cost, spending $6 billion a year.

If you are a concerned member of a community, neighborhood council, or homeowners’ association, you are likely fed up with crime in your neighborhood. Good news – all we have to do is feed people! Hard science has long proven a link between poor nutrition and violent aggression (Joseph Hibbeln’s “Seafood Consumption and Homicide Mortality”, Bernard Gesch’s pioneering research on Omega-3’s, and USC’s Adrian Raine, with whom the Dr. Missus almost studied under, who is continuing the great work in this field) and social science has proven that in communities and neighborhoods where people are fed, crime goes down because desperation decreases. Rather than being fed up at the result of poverty and hunger, you should be fed up with their root causes and do something about them because when they fester, they lead to declining property values and crime.

If you are a person of faith, feeding the hungry is central to your faith. Whether you ascribe to the concept of tikkun olam in Judaism, compassion in Christianity, zakat in Islam, and dāna in Buddhism, you are doing God’s work by helping those who are not as fortunate.

I think you get the picture. No matter who you are, you are affected by hunger and food insecurity. Getting beyond that, more than anything else, ending hunger is just the moral, right thing to do. Please join us in this fight.

It’s been a few days since Ted Kennedy passed away and I can’t stop thinking about Jorge Muñoz.

The two men couldn’t be any more different. Kennedy was privileged beyond belief, an heir to not only one of the wealthiest family fortunes in America, but also to a political dynasty. Muñoz is a Colombian immigrant who came to the United States in the ‘80s after his father died in an accident.

Despite the struggles in his personal life, Kennedy devoted his life to fairness and morality, fighting to give guys like Muñoz a fair shake. He crusaded tirelessly against genocide, homelessness, and discrimination of all sorts. He fought for labor, health care, and equal rights (to say nothing about what he did in the Soviet Jewry movement).

Muñoz, on the other hand, earns $700 a week driving a school bus. After arriving home, he begins his second, unpaid job: feeding over 100 people a hot, home cooked meal at a subway stop in Queens. Every night. For the last four years. (He missed one night when a snow storm shut down the road).

Kennedy and Muñoz are seemingly complete opposites. But in one way, they are the same: they both care deeply about social justice.

Kennedy waged his war at the institutional level. Muñoz battles for it, literally, on the street. Great works are needed at both ends of the spectrum because while government can balance the scales of justice in a swift, wide-ranging manner, overcoming the inertia to do so can take a long time. On the other hand, while individuals don’t singularly have the power to create macro change, everyone is able to make micro change by reaching out and immediately helping those who are suffering.

So what have you done lately?

If you’re like me, not a lot. My excuse is that I work for a nonprofit; I “give at the office.”  The truth is, I have a hard time getting out of bed to get to work by 8:30 am. And if I don’t leave work exactly at 5:00 pm to run around at the gym, I won’t make it home for Hell’s Kitchen, Top Chef, Hoarders, Project Runway or whatever my reality show of the day is, even though they are all programmed on my HD TiVO.

It’s weak, I know.

Imagine a world with more Ted Kennedys and Jorge Muñozes. Imagine what we could do, together.

From now until the day we eradicate hunger in Los Angeles, I’m pledging to give up one day a week to volunteer for The Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition.  You can follow my adventures here.

What will you commit to?

• Donate now – $7 will feed someone today
• Volunteer – find an event near you
• Sign up for our newsletter and stay involved

P.S. – Watch the video about Jorge Muñoz. We dare you to NOT be inspired.