A Place at the Table – about Poverty, Hunger & Health

Spread the word today! This important documentary is coming to movie theaters, YouTube and on-demand on March 1.

A Place at the Table shows us how hunger poses serious economic, social, health and cultural implications for our nation, and how the problem of hunger can be solved once and for all, with your help.

Now think about the dramatic role that a proper diet can play in decreasing obesity, diabetes, chronic illness, food allergies, and healthcare costs by improving the health of Americans.

As Dr. Wahls says in her TED video, “Hunter-Gatherer diet feeds Mitochondria & Brain Cells.”  “You’ll pay one way or another” – either pay now for a nutritious diet that improves your productivity and quality of life, or pay more later for medical intervention and long-term healthcare. This concept applies individually or nationally as portrayed in A Place at the Table.

Some of the Statistics

• 2 out of 3 adults (69%) are overweight or obese, and experts project that 32-52% will be obese by 2030.
• One in four children in the U.S. don’t know where their next meal is coming from.
• One out of every two kids at some point will be on food assistance.
• The average food stamps benefit is about $3 per day, but you can’t live on that.
• If you have a limited amount of money, you’re going to spend it on the cheapest calories you can get, which is processed food.
• This generation will live sicker and die younger than their parents’ generation. (per WHO)
• Most of us eat too much processed food, especially the poor, because it’s cheaper and often all they have access to.
• $190 billion, or 21% of our annual medical spending, goes to obesity-related illness, because weighing too much increases risk of chronic diseases such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, asthma, sleep apnea, and other serious illnesses.
• >$300 billion/year is the 2018 estimate if we continue on our current path.
• As businesses lose $4.3 billion due to obesity-related job absenteeism and another $70 billion in lost productivity, they off-shore jobs to avoid rising health costs and thus contribute to our economic decline.
• … Many more statistics about

What the critics are saying

“An engaging and enraging movie that will enlist supporters for its cause.” – Variety

“It asks you to … get involved, which is the mark of an EXCELLENT DOCUMENTARY.”
— Toronto Film Scene

“How can you be both hungry and obese? It’s a paradox that more and more people in the United States are beginning to understand, and a question that’s convincingly answered in this PROVOCATIVE DOCUMENTARY about hunger within America’s own borders.” — Press+1

“The film explains with devastating simplicity why so many go hungry in a country with more than enough food to go round.” — London Evening Standard

“The Sundance Film Festival is chock full of documentaries this year about the troubles besetting America… but A PLACE AT THE TABLE may rank among the most moving in that it tackles a seemingly straightforward, solvable problem: hunger in the United States.” — LA Times

“A poignant film about hunger in the United States” — Deseret News

“Beautifully shot and edited. The craft is of very high level.” — Toronto HotDocs Film Festival Must See

Other Resources

• Food, Inc. is a documentary that exposes the highly mechanized underbelly of our nation’s food supply and how it is controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health.
• Fed Up addresses processed food and the lack of good nutrition fueling the next great American health crisis.
• Food Chain$ is an exposé about Florida farmworkers’ battle for fair wages and working conditions, against the $4 trillion global supermarket industry.
• The Weight of the Nation is a 4-part HBO documentary that we feature on this site by embedding the movie trailer and all four episodes, along with a large collection of statistics about the growing obesity problem.
• The Future of Medicine is… Not Medicine promotes nutrition, health & wellness rather than an increasing dependency on prescription drugs.
• Other articles here on Modern Health  Talk