World Hunger and discussion of the human body

mangaddict_reborn · Naginata Ashigaru Joined: Sep 06, 2006 Posts: 483

I was eating pizza and watching The Office with my roommate. It was that hour long special when Jim and Pam got engaged. Adorable right? Well anyway, that commerical came on. It was the one with that woman singing and collecting money. Anyway, the commercial said that every six seconds, a child dies of hunger. You can imagine, the pizza began tasting like blood and I lost my appetite. And much to my annoyance, I began counting every six seconds for the rest of the night.

What exactly are we doing about this? Paying our taxes? Puh-leeze. Prayers? Prayers are changing the world as much as letters to Santa Clause. Like the monster under our beds, we think ignoring it makes it go away. Or maybe we think those children are all going to heaven or being reincarnated anyway. But that's kinda the same as saying life has no value. Why am I blabbing anyway? What's my solution to world hunger? Well, keep reading.

I live for fitness, and I know everything there is to know about the human body. I know that the average man can live without food for 30-40 days. Amazing, isn't it? However, the average American rate of consuption is about 3500 calories per human. I know that America, by itself, consumes 4 times more meat than the rest of the world combined, and 10 times more grain (by product). Basically, I can summarize the average American in two ways: A fat person who eats too much, and an athelete who eats too much.

I however, consume about 1000-1200 calories a day, and have been for almost two months. I am also 170 pounds of muscle and at 7% body fat. According to caloric calculations, I should be consuming about three times as many calories to "maintain" my current body weight. Yet I am only getting bigger and stronger and can even do laundry with my abs. Why? Because I understand nutrition and metabolism, and eat a small snack every two hours instead of meals. I'm talking, a protein bar, or a handful of chex mix, or even broccoli as a meal. And just when you don't think I can get any weirder, watermelon or cherries is like ice cream to me. I only eat heavy carbs, such as pizza or a hamburger 30 minutes before I work out. The way I work out now is with compound exercises rather than isolation exercises. This way, I can work out for 10 minutes, 3 times a week and get as good results or better than the average gym machine retard who works out 45 minutes, 4-6 times a week. And these people have to eat so much more, and I do not. They have to do cardio, and I do not. Because of lifestyle choices I have made, I am healthy and strong while eating about a third of what I "need to". I am eating as much as a little girl and I am 170 POUNDS.

An old principle goes, "As long as the rich exist, so will the poor". The same goes for everyone as we indulge in food that we don't need or deserve. We have nuclear power plants, the key to unlimited energy. We have desalination plants, the key to unlimited water. However, right now we are producing as much food as we can and there is no scientific short cut, as of yet. America is destroying the world. As long as things continue the way they are, more people will die. It's on all our heads.

Btw, this is an essay I'm working on for college! Very Happy

Feedback?

LoneWolf325 · Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 12:02 am Post subject:

Five paragraphs. Three begin with the word "I." For someone who claims to be concerned about children starving in Africa, you sure talk about yourself a lot.

I think it's hypocritical for you to worry over the child who starves to death every six seconds, and then turn around and call the children who are murdered once every other second in the United States alone a human right.

Welcome to Earth, planet of wickedness, evil, and cruelty. If we all pull together to try and fix what's wrong with this place, we would still make a small colony of ants attempting to recreate Hoover Dam look overwhelmingly successful.

Choose your battles very carefully, because if you try to fight even half of the ones you see, you'll burn yourself out before you can blink.
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The pen is mightier than the sword
But the sword is so much harder to silence than the pen.

mangaddict_reborn · Naginata Ashigaru Joined: Sep 06, 2006 Posts: 483

LoneWolf325 · Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 9:54 am Post subject:

Killswitch · Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 10:06 am Post subject:

World hunger is one problem. AIDS is another. Global warming another. What about deforestation? Some people say piracy of goods is a problem. Others may say communism is a problem. What about those suffering in the Philippines? Not to mention the problem of corruption. Crime is another problem. I could go on.

Point is, there are way too many problems in this world. To say world hunger is the one worth fighting is too sad, considering that there are other problems that directly affect you everyday, mangaddict.
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mstice · Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:01 am Post subject:

As far as the world hunger issue is concerned (pro-life vs. pro-choice is a topic for another thread, Lone. Feel free to start it and rant there) in the areas where an actual shortage of food is concerned conditions are getting better. In China and India hundreds of millions of people have been pulled out of UN defined "absolute poverty" over the last 10-15 years. China alone has seen that number decrease from 600 million to 200 million. In fact, the UN made it a goal to cut world hunger in half by 2015 (I forget the date when this was made, but I'm almost positive it was within the last decade) and it looks like one of the few truly lofty goals they might achieve.

The hunger problem that isn't getting better is in countries where there is sufficient food to feed everybody, but dictator/warlord control of the country and/or regions within don't allow food distribution to those in need. You can send as much food to Rwanda as you want, but if you don't give it to the starving villagers yourself it isn't going to reach them. It will be treated as a commodity, not a charitable donation. That brings China, the country who has fed the most starving people over the last couple of decades, back into the picture because they are supporting many cruel, unjust African dictatorships and warlord states in exchange for oil and mineral rights (not that the US hasn't acted similarly in the past in Middle Eastern and South American countries). Until we solve the corrupt political situations in those types of countries we'll never have a chance at really stopping hunger there.

I agree, though, about the simply awesome and terrifying rate of US consumption of food. And you're right that meat is the big issue. 40% of all the corn grown in the US (and a lot of other stuff) goes to feed our 100 million cattle. The reason it takes that much is because it takes 10 pounds of corn to make 1 pound of beef. Every step up the food chain takes a 10X increase in food consumed. The most dramatic illustration is of carnivorous fish (like salmon and tuna). For every pound of them, they ate 10 pounds of bait fish, who ate a total of 100 pounds of krill and other smaller organisms, who ate 1000 pounds of aquatic vegetation.

That isn't to say we should all stop eating meat (I, for one, think meat is great), but we should try to limit our consumption of meat to 1.5 to 2 lbs of meat a week. That provides more than enough of the essential amino acids readily found in meat, but much more difficult to find in a vegetarian diet, that we need to be healthy. The truth of the matter, though, is that the agricultural industry, which holds tremendous sway in US politics, doesn't want to see this happen. The various meat industries (cattle, chicken and pork being by far the largest) want us to eat as much of their product as possible, and the corn industry (really big agro in general in companies like Cargill who gross 120 billion in revenues a year) want to see as much corn being fed to animals because it's 40% of their market.

As far as your own consumption goes, it freaks me out. I would also question how well your immune system and other parts of your body are functioning on those limited calories. Even the people who believe that caloric restriction leads to longer lives (as has been demonstrated in rats) still take in 1800-1900 calories a day. Any doctor would tell you that 1200 calories is the bare minimum recommended for serious dieting and would advise you to eat more, but, like most patients, you probably wouldn't listen. Feel free to keep doing it, but don't be surprised if it winds up biting you in the ass months or years down the road.

LoneWolf325 · Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:07 am Post subject:

mstice · Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 8:04 pm Post subject:

mangaddict_reborn · Naginata Ashigaru Joined: Sep 06, 2006 Posts: 483

mstice · Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2009 9:01 pm Post subject:

LoneWolf325 · Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 9:27 pm Post subject:

mangaddict_reborn · Naginata Ashigaru Joined: Sep 06, 2006 Posts: 483

LoneWolf325 · Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:06 am Post subject:

I don't eat lunch because about five years ago, I never had enough cash to buy lunch at school. A year or two of this, and I'm out of the habit.

It's not a protest or anything, and it doesn't mean that I eat less, necessarily, it just means that I have to eat more at breakfast and dinner to make up for it.

World Hunger is a noble enough battlefield, but I think I've made it pretty clear what atrocities I'm most upset about.

As for "soldiers and unborn children go to Hell," that's simply not true. Soldiers in war are killing, yes, but it's not murder. It's not murder when you're protecting your own life, or the lives of others in the heat of the moment, and it's not murder to execute a criminal for certain crimes(murder and rape come to mind).

As for unborn children, frankly, nobody knows. I'd like to think that a child who hasn't been born yet hasn't had a chance to sin, but at the same time, the Bible says that we're born sinful. If children murdered before their first breaths go to Hell, though... Well, that just makes abortion that much more horrible.

Additionally, it's my theory that the abortion rate is why technology hasn't advanced significantly since the 1970s. Where's the next Albert Einstien? We'll never see him, because he was aborted. Where's my flying car? The guy who was supposed to invent it was aborted. Why haven't cancer and AIDS been cured yet? They were supposed to be, but the medical geniuses who were going to do it WERE ABORTED!

Why haven't we solved world hunger? WE SHOULD HAVE, BUT THE BOTANIST AND GENETICIST WHO WERE GOING TO DO IT WERE GROUND UP INSIDE THEIR MOTHERS' WOMBS, POURED DOWN THE SINK, AND USED FOR STEM CELL RESEARCH!
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The pen is mightier than the sword
But the sword is so much harder to silence than the pen.

mstice · Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 2:56 pm Post subject:

LoneWolf325 · Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:05 pm Post subject:

Well fine then, it was the diplomats and negotiators who were supposed to fix it who got ground up.

As for using stem cells from aborted children for research, perhaps that doesn't "waste" the bodies, but it does justify the murders.

And you'll note I said technology hasn't advanced significantly since the 70s. Yes, I'm saying that pretty much the entirety of the information age has not been a significant advancement. We're still doing everything pretty much the same as we did it forty years ago, just with artificial brains taking over the monotonous and dangerous jobs. In fact, I'd argue that we've actually lost ground in certain fields. Do you think we'll go to the moon in this decade(By which I mean the next ten years)? I don't. We can't. Existing 21st century technology isn't up to the challenge.
_________________
The pen is mightier than the sword
But the sword is so much harder to silence than the pen.