Documentary 'A Place at the Table' highlights US hunger epidemic

A new documentary, "A Place at the Table," takes viewers inside the lives of three people struggling with hunger in America. They are part of a population of 50 million people, including one in four children, facing hunger in the country.

Through personal stories and interviews with experts in the field, the documentary shows that even people who are doing everything they're supposed to — working, trying to get an education, staying out of trouble — still struggle to get food on the table for themselves and their family.

Lori Silverbush, co-director of "A Place at the Table," started working on the issue after seeing hunger up close. In an interview with NPR, she explained that she had helped a girl she was mentoring get into a better school. She was surprised to get a phone call from the school's principal, who said the girl was "foraging in the trash for food. ... She had been getting a free lunch at her old school, and this school did not offer that. And I had inadvertently made her hungrier."

Raj Patel, a fellow at The Institute for Food and Development Policy and author of "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System," appears in the documentary. While America focuses on the country's obesity epidemic, it's important to remember how it's related to hunger too, as he explains in the film:

A lot of people think there is a yawning gap between hunger on the one hand and obesity on the other. In fact, they're neighbors. And the reason that they happen often in the same time and often in the same family and the same person is because they are both signs of having insufficient funds to be able to command food that you need to stay healthy.

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