Month: June 2024

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Hierarchy of Hunger

Graphic displaying the word hunger five times to fill the shape of a pyramid.
Illustration by Samantha Diwa

by Hamilton Stewart, Journalism, Distance Learning

The brain signals the body that it needs sustenance, and the state of hunger focuses the entire system on finding food in that environment. Human intelligence itself evolved because hunger made early hominids more effective hunters and gatherers. The old adage goes, empty stomachs are often wiser than empty heads. Hunger is wise.

Hunger is a noun, defined as “a feeling of discomfort or weakness, coupled with the desire to eat (“Hunger,” 2024). It is a sensation caused by insufficient consumption of dietary energy. It is a basic need that must be addressed. The body must consume nutrients to grow and sustain life. Hunger is suffering.

Hunger is also a verb, defined as “having a strong desire or craving for” (“Hunger,” 2024). There is no hunger pang. There is no feeling of discomfort or weakness. There is no physiological need. It is a feeling, but it is one of yearning and longing for something. More than an involuntary stimulation to nourish the body, there is an existential need to nourish the mind and soul. Hunger is a struggle.

Abraham Maslow first introduced the concept of a hierarchy of needs in a 1943 paper, titled “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Presented as a pyramid, there are five different levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, starting at the lowest level known as physiological needs. Basic requirements are shelter, clothing, temperature regulation, sex, air, and nutrition (Maslow, 1943). Hunger is human.

Malnourishment, famine, and food insecurity are types of hunger that belong on the basic level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Much like an individual, a society cannot move on to the other levels of more advanced needs until the basic needs are met. Food insecurity has reached unprecedented levels globally. In recent years, the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, recurrent droughts, and severe weather events like flooding have driven the increase in global hunger. These factors often compound and contribute to the worsening of food insecurity worldwide (Omer, 2024). Hunger is thriving.

Progressing through Maslow’s pyramid, the second level, known as security and safety needs, refers to financial security, health, wellness, and protection from accidents or injuries. Finding a job, living in a safe neighborhood, contributing to a savings account, and obtaining health insurance are all examples of actions motivated by security and safety needs. The safety and physiological levels combined make up what are considered basic needs. These basic needs are vital to survival and Maslow believed that these needs are similar to instincts and play a major role in motivating behavior. The hierarchy theorizes that people are motivated to fulfill basic needs before moving on to other, more advanced needs. Hunger is a catalyst.

Social, esteem, and self-actualization needs make up the remaining levels of the pyramid consisting of advanced needs. Socially, we need love, acceptance, and belonging. For our self-esteem we need appreciation and respect. Self-actualizing people are concerned with personal growth and achieving their potential. Hunger is transcendent.

Perhaps conflict theory best explains food insecurity (Coser, 1956). Conflict is the main driver of hunger in most of the world’s food crises. Conflict breeds hunger. Conflicts in Syria, Gaza, and Ukraine can disrupt markets, driving up prices, and damaging livelihoods. It can displace farmers and destroy agricultural assets and food stocks. Displacement is both a driver and a consequence of food insecurity. When people are displaced, they can lose access to essential resources like food, clean water, and healthcare and become more vulnerable to malnutrition and hunger. Hunger is well-traveled.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2 is to end hunger by 2030. Ongoing conflict, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and extreme weather events have intensified existing inequalities globally, making this goal even more challenging. Today, more people are hungry than at any other point in human history. They are concentrated in the developing world, and their hunger has been exacerbated by several factors related to conflict theory. Over 800 million people, or 10% of the world’s population, go to bed hungry (FAO, et al. 2023.) Hunger never sleeps.

In the United States, however, what strikes us is not hunger, but obesity. According to a recent World Health Organization (WHO) study, more than 1.6 billion people globally are overweight or obese. This epidemic is not limited to America and Western Europe. It is visible in Central and South America, South Africa, and East Asia. In China, the prevalence of childhood obesity rose from 1.5% to 12.6% in eight years. In South Africa, 30.5% of black women are obese (FAO, et al., 2023). Hunger is confusing.

Escalating global hunger and obesity levels might seem like a contradiction, but it is part of a single global food crisis, with environmental, economic, and geopolitical factors. It is perhaps the most glaring way in which global inequality is evident. For most of history, humans hunted or grew food for their own consumption and traveled only short distances from source to stomach. Today, production is concentrated in parts of the world where transportation, refrigeration, and fertilization escalated and became more globally connected and energy-intensive than ever before. Well before the 1970s oil crisis and current biofuel controversy, food and energy systems have been inseparable. This system created a sustained caloric rift dividing western Europe and North America from much of the rest of the world. The combination of energy-intense agriculture and distribution with globalized asymmetry of consumption patterns made food crises on a global scale possible. Hunger is calculated.

Perhaps the old axiom holds that society is a mass of people who get hungry at the same time. The question is, hungry for what? On the developed side of the caloric rift, fat is accumulating at a startling rate. On the developing side, huge populations are increasingly vulnerable to famine and hunger. In 2024, we live in a world divided into fat and hungry zones. People who live in the hungry zones are hungry in the most fundamental sense of the word. Those fortunate enough to live in the fat zones are hungry for the advanced levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. These are fat zone problems. Hunger is biased.

Once the needs at the bottom three levels of Maslow’s hierarchy have been satisfied, the esteem needs begin to play a more prominent role in motivating our behavior to acquire the respect and appreciation of our peers. This is about needing to accomplish things, having our efforts recognized, and contributing to the world. Together, the social and esteem levels make up what is known as the psychological needs of the hierarchy. Hunger is mental.

The top level of Maslow’s hierarchy is the self-actualization needs. In short, it is about achieving one’s full potential. Once we fat zoners are comfortable enough that our survival is assured and we can focus our bandwidth on existential crises, we pursue the need to self-actualize. As Maslow put it, “What a man can be, he must be.” Hunger is subjective.

People today living in hungry zones around the world know true hunger. The physical kind. The kind that hurts. The kind that is ever present develops its personality and shapes the way a person makes decisions by conditioning them to operate from a mindset of scarcity. The hungry zoners have what Maslow (1943) calls deficiency needs which arise from deprivation. Satisfying these lower-level needs is important to avoid unpleasant feelings or consequences. Hunger is denial.

Fat zoners have growth needs. A mindset of abundance allows for these so-called needs. These are the advanced needs at the top of Maslow’s pyramid. These needs don’t stem from a lack of something, but a desire to grow as a person. Hunger is desire.

As Europeans colonized the world and built food systems that underpinned their industrialization and development, they embedded dietary inequality within these systems. The global food crisis is a product of these past practices. One of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century, then, is to find a way of overcoming this history and producing a more equitable global food system, one in which the fat zoners lose some weight and the hungry zoners gain some. Hunger is balance. Hunger is equity. Hunger is a hierarchy.

Works Cited

Coser, L. A. (1956). The Functions of Social Conflict. New York Free Press.

FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. (2023). The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023. Urbanization, agrifood systems transformation and healthy diets across the rural-urban continuum. Rome, FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc3017en

“Hunger.” Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press, Retrieved March 10, 2024. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/hunger_n?tab=factsheet#1153877.

Maslow, A.H. (1943). “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review.

Omer, S. (2024). Global Hunger: 7 Facts You Need to Know.” World Vision. https://www.worldvision.org/hunger-news-stories/world-hunger-facts.

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Hungry Legacy: On the 64th Anniversary of Austin’s Lunch Counter Sit-Ins

Photo of "The Greensboro Four"

by Christopher Rzigalinski, Managing Editor, Riverside Campus

April 29, 2024 marks the 64th anniversary of Austin’s first large-scale lunch counter sit-ins to protest segregated restaurants. The actions were Austin’s entry into a progressive civil rights strategy of passive resistance that began in earnest on February 1 of that year, after a group of African American students sat-in at a Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth’s counter (History.com Editors, 2022).

Similar demonstrations were staged across the country, resulting in protesters being arrested for trespassing, beaten, and, in some cases, murdered. Their sacrifices led to the re-examination of segregationist service policies and, by extension, a critique of institutional racism in the United States. Hunger served as a pivotal symbol by both mirroring the biological sameness of all human beings and acting as an alarm to signal social inequities.

Food is central to understanding the African diasporic experience in the United States. Culinary historian and James Beard Lifetime Award Winner Jessica B. Harris argues that Texas occupied a complex space for enslaved people in the 19th Century as both a gateway to freedom and as a multicultural intersection. In High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, Harris notes that enslaved people from Africa were forced into the territory of New Spain by Europeans as early as 1528, cross-culturally shaping the region by synthesizing their traditional recipes with those of Spanish and Native American cuisines (Harris, 2011). These practices continued for nearly three hundred years until enslaved peoples were freed under Mexican independence in 1821. This mélange inspired those who felt marginalized on the East Coast.

The third annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color (“News from Texas”) was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1833. Debate about how to escape from racist oppression led to a vote for mass immigration to Texas (Harris, 2011). From afar, Texas appeared to be a refuge. However, tensions between Tejanos and the Mexican government were on the eve of erupting into another revolution. When Texas became an independent republic in 1836, its government reinstated slavery laws. By 1845 it was annexed to the United States as a slave state. The Civil War broke out shortly thereafter in 1861, leading to a Texan alignment with the Confederacy.

When Major General Gordon Granger of the Union Army ordered the final enslaved Texans freed on June 19, 1865, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, African American cuisine took on a new importance. Jessica Harris reflects:

[T]he backbone of Juneteenth celebrations had always been the table. In the early years, those who had toiled in sorrow’s kitchen commemorated their liberty with some serious eating. Picnics and barbecues were the hallmarks of the early celebrations, and groaning boards covered with bright cloths offered specialities like barbecued ribs and fried chicken and myriad variations on summer produce like black-eyed peas, peaches, and watermelon (Harris, 2011).

In a society of oppression, sharing food was a subversive act that expressed hard-won freedom.

Laws enforcing segregation at the state and local levels took hold following the Civil War. Reconstruction, the Federal Government’s attempt to rebuild Southern states by creating employment, land cultivation, and political office opportunities for those who were formerly enslaved, fizzled by 1877. President Andrew Johnson, Abraham Lincoln’s successor, and other conservative Southern Democrats stymied progress by calling for the return of land to its original owners and arguing that state governments should be in charge of their own rebuilding (Manevitz, 2020). The resulting “Jim Crow” laws enforced segregationist policies through the division of public spaces like water fountains, movie theaters, and restaurants.

Almost one hundred years later, the Greensboro Four challenged the separation of public spaces in 1960. Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil, young Black men studying at North Carolina’s Agriculture and Technical College, took seats at their local Woolworth’s lunch counter and asked to be served. The request sent shock waves through America and reinvigorated the civil rights movement. Moreover, it illustrated the power of student voices to challenge a broken system. Protests sprang up across the South, including Texas. San Antonio became the first major Southern city to integrate its lunch counters on March 16, 1960 (“San Antonio Woolworth’s Building,” 2020).

To get ahead of any conflicts in the state’s capitol, a conference was arranged by the Austin Commission on Human Relations and held in a meeting room at the Austin National Bank. African American community leaders from East Austin and a delegation of students met with operators of downtown cafeterias, cafes, and lunch counters. Reverend Brandoch Lovely of the Austin Unitarian Church served as the spokesperson for the community and student leaders. He was quoted in the Austin Statesman on April 20, 1960, saying he hoped for a “‘peaceable adjustment’” (Weddell, Jr., 1960). Lovely went on to say, “‘There is a necessity for both sides to act with responsibility,…Negro students have shown a willingness to negotiate, and I hope the restaurant operators will adopt the same attitude’” (Weddell, Jr., 1960).

Austin Bureau of the News journalist Richard Morehead reported an update on April 29. “Congress Avenue, the capital’s main business district, was picketed Wednesday by students urging integration of lunch counters,” (Morehead, 1960) he noted. “The demonstrators indicated they plan to stage sitdowns by Saturday unless segregation is dropped in downtown eating places” (Morehead, 1960). The threat prompted businesses in major areas like those on the corner of Sixth and Congress to close their soda fountains, fixtures of mid-century drug stores and eateries. Other establishments put chains on their doors and only let in white customers.

Moorehead’s article also revealed that the protesters were multiracial and of mixed genders. “White and Negro students–both male and female–participated in the picketing on both sides of Congress Avenue from Sixth Street to Eleventh, [the] edge of the State Capitol Grounds” (Morehead, 1960). In total, over 200 picketing students came from the University of Texas-Austin, St. Edward’s University, Huston-Tillotson University, and local theological seminaries. Without resolution that day, approximately 100 students occupied seven lunch counters across the aforementioned area, peacefully requesting that Black patrons be served the same as white ones.

Surprisingly, little information exists about the sit-ins in city archives like those of the Briscoe Center for American History at UT-Austin and the Austin History Center. However, a wealth of coverage was devoted to their aftermaths. State legislatures took aim. On March 10, 1961, the Austin Statesman reported on HB 797, a bill making it “unlawful ‘for any person or group of persons’ to enter a privately owned commercial enterprise and remain there after being requested to leave, ‘or after it appears unequivocally that the presence of such person or group of persons is undesirable and unwanted by the owner or management of such enterprise’” (Capitol Staff, 1961). Ironically, the article also specified that the bill’s text noted that “provisions are to be applied ‘without regard whatsoever to race, color, or creed…’” (Capitol Staff, 1961).

Christopher W. Schmidt argues that the nationwide sit-in movement made such an impact because of its innovation. “[Students] were not simply joining a battle that the older generation of civil rights activists were already waging,” (Schmidt, 2017) he writes. “They were striking out on their own, finding new points of vulnerability in the edifice of Jim Crow and locating new targets that resonated with their particular concerns and that aligned with their particular sources of strength” (Schmidt, 2017). Sit-in protesters altered the direction of the movement by putting their bodies on the line to expose the inhumane gesture of denying any person sustenance.

Diorama of student protesters staging a sit-in for lunch counter integration in the early 1960s, part of the “Standing Up for Sitting Down” installation at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN. Source: Wikimedia Commons Fair Use

As the sixties wore on, passive resistance faded into more pronounced demonstrations like large-scale marches, Black Power militarism advocated by Stokely Carmichael, and the community service-based activism of the Black Panther Party. Arguably, the Panthers’ greatest interventions were the Free Breakfast for School Children and Free Food Program initiatives started in 1969 (Magoon, 2023).

The former’s aim was to satiate starving children in impoverished neighborhoods so they could concentrate on learning. The latter aimed to serve families and communities that otherwise would go hungry. Black Panther Party activity was relatively quiet in Austin during the group’s original tenure, instead being more concentrated in Texas cities like Houston (Smith, 2016). That changed when the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, founded in 2001, continued the legacy of food activism. Its Austin chapter made news over that year’s Thanksgiving holiday by distributing turkeys and food baskets to families in need (Apple, 2001).

One recognizable manifestation of the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins in contemporary Austin is the fact that low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods in East Austin are still classified as “food insecure” or “food deserts” (Contreras, 2022). Formal segregation was dismantled, though its residual currents still divide the city.

This April, when eating out in any Austin public space, let’s offer a non-denominational prayer of gratitude for those who made it possible for us to share those meals together. Let’s also keep an open seat at our tables for the next leaders who will feed this hungry legacy.

Works Cited

Jones, A. (2012). Diorama of Lunch Counter Sit-Down Protests – National Civil Rights Museum – Downtown Memphis – Tennessee – USA – 01 [Photograph]. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diorama_of_Lunch_Counter_Sit-Down_Protests_-_National_Civil_Rights_Museum_-_Downtown_Memphis_-_Tennessee_-_USA_-_01.jpg.

Standing up by sitting down: Student Sit-Ins 1960. (n.d.). https://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/standing-up-by-sitting-down.

[Greensboro Four photograph]. (1960). Public Domain.
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

[Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-In photograph]. 1960. African American Odyssey – Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/odyssey/educate/lunch.html.

Apple, L. (2001). Lone Star Panthers. Austin Chronicle, https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2001-12-07/83919/.

Capitol Staff. (1960). House Bill Is Aimed at Curtailing Sit-Ins. Austin Statesman.

Contreras, N. E. (2022). Austin Approves Resolution Aimed at Combating Food Insecurity in Food-Insecure Areas. Austin-American Statesman. https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2022/04/21/austin-city-council-resolution-food-insecurity-bus-routes-grocery-stores/7381822001/.

Harris, J. (2011). High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey From Africa to America. Bloomsbury.

History.com Editors. (2022). Greensboro Sit-In. History.com. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/the-greensboro-sit-in.

Manevitz, A. (2020). Failures of Reconstruction Have Never Been More Evident or Relevant Than Today. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/11/failures-
reconstruction-have-never-been-more-evident-or-relevant-than-today/.
Magoon, K. (2023). Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to The People. Candlewick Press.

Morehead, R. M. (1960). “Student Pickets in Austin Ask for Integration.” Austin Bureau of the News.

News From Texas. From the Austin Citizen. Colored Conventions Project. Retrieved March 10, 2024. https://omeka.coloredconventions.org/items/show/1616.

San Antonio Woolworth’s Building 2020. World Monuments Fund. https://www.wmf.org/
project/san-antonio-woolworth-building.

Schmidt, C. W. (2017). Why the 1960 Lunch Counter Sit-Ins Worked: A Case Study of Law and Social Movement Mobilization. Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality.
https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1065&context=ijlse.

Smith. C. H. (2016). Remembering Houston’s Black Panthers. Houston Chronicle.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/The-Black-Panthers-The-original-Black-Lives-6833943.php.

Wray, W. Jr. (1960). Talks Called Here Today to Avert Possible Sit-Ins. Austin Statesman.