All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?

Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 12:00 noon:
Vroman's Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena

Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 7:00 pm:

Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood

With the biting wit of Supersize Me and the passion of a lifelong activist,
Joel Berg has his eye on the growing number of people who are forced to wait in lines at food pantries and soup kitchens across the nation. All You Can Eat reveals that hunger is a problem as American as apple pie, and shows what it is like when your income is not enough to cover rising housing and living costs and put food on the table.

A former Clinton administration official, Berg now heads the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.  His book takes to task politicians who remain inactive; the media, which ignores hunger except during holidays and hurricanes; and the food industry, which makes junk food more accessible to the nation's poor than healthy fare.  He even chides organic food gurus such as Michael Pollan and Alice Waters for class bias when they argue that recent food price increases are a positive development. Most importantly, the book challenges the new President and Congress to make hunger eradication a top priority - and offers them a simple, affordable plan to end it for good.

The book has already sparked a national conversation in the media and among policy makers about the causes and extent of domestic hunger -- which threatens more than 36 million Americans -- and is provoking a discussion of concrete, sensible solutions to end it.  According to the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Berg is prone to saying things like, ‘We are a country that’s giving nearly a trillion dollars to Wall Street.  How about a few bucks to keep people from being hungry?’…Berg makes it clear that he wants one thing: to end hunger in America. Really.”  Former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said:  "Hunger is a national disgrace in America, and Joel Berg has in a straightforward and provocative way given all of us a framework to deal with it."  And City Limits Weekly said: "Though dense with useful statistics, Berg’s trademark good-natured snarkiness makes this an eminently readable book that lays out the dimensions of the growing hunger epidemic, and what can be done about it."

  A spirited call to action, All You Can Eat shows how practical solutions for hungry Americans will ultimately benefit America's economy and all of its citizens.

Admission is free. 

Please RSVP for this event by clicking here.

To learn more about All You Can Eat or to buy the book visit http://joelberg.net.