Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

Close to a billion people - one-eighth of the world's population - still live in hunger. Each year 2 million children die through malnutrition. This is happening at a time when doctors in Britain are warning of the spread of obesity. We are eating too much while others starve.

Unhealthy eating habits cause major health problems, such as diabetes and heart disease, and can also lead to food insecurity, disrupted eating patterns, and low self-esteem.

I saw so many innocent lives, especially children, who were literally robbed of their potential because they're not given the food and nutrition that they need to get by. As a result, when young kids aren't given that proper nutrition, their minds are stunted; they're physically stunted. Truly, their start in life is one that is debilitating to them. And again, I certainly didn't grow up ever having to worry about where my next meal was coming from. The fact that so many people, even in our own country, worry about something so basic, it's something I really wanted to help do something about.

You can't expect kids who don't have enough to eat to do well.

And who is any of us, that without starvation he can go through the kingdoms of starvation?

The correlation between poverty and obesity can be traced to agricultural policies and subsidies.

It's not okay to be fat - not because of the way you look, but because it's unhealthy. I have experienced hormonal problems, bad skin, immense laziness, and back and knee pain. It's not fine to be too fat or too thin! Anything in extremes is wrong. I am afraid of putting on weight because I don't want to develop health problems.

What happens when corn and wheat prices rise is that we see real increases in malnutrition and under-nutrition. And when children are malnourished, their brain development actually slows down and is affected. So this is not just a short-term impact.

40 percent of North Korean children suffer from stunted growth. 20 percent are underweight.

The lack of access to proper nutrition is not only fueling obesity, it is leading to food insecurity and hunger among our children.

When food prices surge, poor families suddenly find themselves unable to afford enough nutritious food. If this happens during the first thousand days of a child's life, the damage to his or her body and mind can be permanent.

I went to Ethiopia, and it dawned on me that you can tell a starving, malnourished person because they've got a bloated belly and a bald head. And I realized that if you come through any American airport and see businessmen running through with bloated bellies and bald heads, that's malnutrition, too.

Hunger is the most influential disease.

There are at least 1 billion people who struggle for basic caloric protein sufficiency; probably another 2 billion people … who have serious micronutrient deficiency… We don’t have a healthy food supply for the world, nor is it assured for the future.

More die in the United States of too much food than too little.

When I was at school, you could tell the demography of children by how thin they were. You could see by looking at their eyes.

People are overweight and starving at the same time. It's a tragedy for both the individual and society.

Child hunger and child obesity are really just two sides of the same coin. Both rob our children of the energy, the strength and the stamina they need to succeed in school and in life. And that, in turn, robs our country of so much of their promise.

For the first time in the history of the world, this year, more people will die from the effects of too much food than from starvation.

This statement of fact is an eloquent comment on the apathy with which many people regard the mental and physical health of the rising generation…A woman will lavish love and care, and attention on her pet cat or ‘prize’ poodle, and yet draw her skirts aside from the starving children in the gutter. The mew of the cat and the howl of the dog, to say nothing of the squeal of the ‘tortured rabbit’- that figment of anti-vivisectionist imagination- are far more potent to loosen the purse-strings of the sentimentalists than the wail of children.

A child's mental health is just as important as their physical health and deserves the same quality of support.

My most visible goal is to do something in nutrition to children in India, and pregnant mothers. Because that would change the mental and physical health of our population in years to come.

Our bodies are truly the result of what we eat, what we think about, and the exercise we receive. If we are not wise, these little things can soon cause major health problems that will limit our success and ability to serve.

Nowadays, we have become so busy in our work, especially in our phone, that we don't go out for workout. It creates a lot of health problems.

My own motivation has come from the fact that all the indicators in the world, the hunger index or whatever index you say, shows a high prevalence of malnutrition.