Food for thought

In just 37 days, or one tenth of a year, the average American will earn enough disposable income to pay for his or her food for the entire year.¹
In 2006, the average American household spent approximately one tenth of its disposable income on food.²

In the tropics, in the nation of Haiti, the people are so hungry they are eating dirt. Click here to see a video by the Associated Press. 

Over 1.2 billion people in the developing world live on less than a dollar a day. The developing world, consisting of 125 low and middle income countries, comprises about 78 percent of the world’s total population.³
But you already knew that people are starving across the globe. Maybe you’ve felt a twinge of guilt as you threw out more leftovers, or even as you purchased another diet product. And you’ve wondered what to do. We certainly have. Maybe you’ve donated to a food bank, or contributed during a crises (such as the recent earthquake in China), but the twinge is still there and you want to do something more … to make a commitment … but what?

What if you started giving 10 percent of what you spend on food to organizations that strive to reach the starving? 10 percent of the 10 percent you spend on food, or 10 percent of the 10 percent of the days you spend working to pay for your own food. In either case, that’s 10/10. If you spend $300, you give $30. Could you donate about four days of your year to get food to someone who is eating dirt?

There are many ways to give. You could give 10 percent of each restaurant or Wal Mart receipt. You could tally up your food receipts and donate the 10 percent at the end of each month. You could even do it on a yearly basis.

Would it  help?

If only 10 percent of American households committed to giving 10 percent of the 10 percent of their food expenditures, we would be giving approximately$5,600,129,454.54 toward the starving in world. Over five billion dollars a year!⁴

May God bless you!

1The Mississippi Farm Bureau
 2$5,781 divided by $54,453 (10.6%) Bureau of Labor Statistics
 3www.foodforall.org
 410 percent of total housing units (12,631,681) multiplied by 10 percent of the average annual income ($44,334) U.S. Census Bureau