Hunger, By Design
By Mike Odetalla
At the height of my cancer treatment, I lost 60 pounds in less than two months.
Not by choice. Not by neglect. But because I simply could not eat.
Every
swallow felt like fire. Every attempt at nourishment became a
negotiation with pain. My body, once familiar, began to disappear before
my own eyes—reduced not by lack of food, but by my inability to take it
in. I didn't recognize the person looking back at me in the mirror.
And yet, even in that darkest stretch, one truth remained constant:
Food was there.
It
sat within reach. Prepared. Available. Waiting for me, even when I
could not accept it. Doctors urged me. Nurses monitored me. My
suffering, though severe, was never compounded by denial. The world
around me was structured to keep me alive.
That distinction matters.
Because
elsewhere, at this very moment, there are people whose hunger is not
the byproduct of illness—but the result of policy. Of decision. Of
design.
In Gaza, and within the walls of Israeli prisons, hunger is not incidental. It is imposed.
There,
food is not something a patient struggles to swallow—it is something
withheld. Rations are restricted. Access is controlled. Malnutrition
spreads not because bodies fail, but because systems ensure they do.
I
know what it feels like to weaken. To feel your strength slip quietly
away. To measure your days not in hours, but in ounces lost and energy
drained.
But I also know this: My suffering existed within a system trying—however imperfectly—to save me.
Theirs exists within a system that does not.
That is the difference between illness and injustice.
Between misfortune and intention.
Between hunger… and hunger used as a weapon.
And once you understand that distinction, you cannot unsee it.
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