Here in the richest country on earth, 50 million of us -- one in six Americans -- go hungry. More than a third of them are children. Debates on how to address hunger – in both Congress and the media -- are filled with tired clichés about freeloaders undeserving of government help, living large at the expense of honest, hardworking taxpayers. But the documentary A Place at the Table paints a truer picture of America’s poor.
Kristi Jacobson, one of the film’s directors and producers, and Mariana Chilton, director of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities, join Bill to break these stereotypes apart and share how hunger hits hard at people from every walk of life.
“The cost of food insecurity, obesity and malnutrition is way larger than it is to feed kids nutritious food,” Jacobson tells Bill.
“There’s no opportunity for people who are low-income to really engage in our democracy,” says Chilton. “I think they’re actively shut out.”
Moyers & Company: The Faces of America’s Hungry. Friday at 9 p.m. on PBS 6.
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