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There’s a chill in the air, which means our appetites turn toward cozy comfort food. Soups and stews and long simmering sauces, casseroles and pies, heartier fare in general. Lucky us.

There are so many people who will go to bed hungry tonight. There have never been more hungry people on the planet than there are right now. This is not to make you feel guilty for what I hope will be a bounteous and filling dinner at the end of your Saturday, but it is a call that we all have to be involved to end hunger. Thus the theme of this year’s World Hunger Day (today, Saturday, October 16). This year’s theme is “United Against Hunger.” It is a world issue, and the responsibility of our global community. There are hungry people in your neighborhood and in neighborhoods on the other side of the Earth. In addition, we have to be diligent and careful about how we try to help. “The world’s top food aid donors, including the United States, Canada, Japan, and the European Union, continue to supply and finance nutritionally substandard foods to developing countries, despite conclusive scientific evidence of their ineffectiveness in reducing childhood malnutrition,” said the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders. Even with good intention, it turns out that some of the food we export to help starving communities is significantly LESS nutritious than grocery store dog food. The mud cookies served in Haiti to quiet empty stomachs (mud, shortening, and salt, baked in the sun, and eaten when there is nothing else, to at least fill bellies) are as good as what we send in the name of “aid.”

Find out more about malnutrition and how kids are dying of it every moment, at the website Starved for Attention. There you can take action, sign the petition, and spread the word, today, on World Food Day, and tomorrow and tomorrow.