Our language betrays our false understandings of both food and our physical needs. We've all said, many times, "I'm starving!" Starving? The food and beverage companies, via the media, lead us to think that we cannot survive without their products, and we often believe it. Bulimia and anorexia are eating disorders that cause the affected person, usually a young woman between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two, to perceive herself as overweight when in most cases she is not. This false perception leads to obsessive dieting and exercising and includes forced vomiting and the abuse of laxatives. For some, these diseases of the mind, body, and spirit are fatal.

These perceptions of food, in combination with the pace at which today's young people and adults operate, have set the stage for a lifestyle of fast food, convenience stores, and overly processed food products. Many young people eat where it is both convenient and quick; fast food is heavily processed, especially with salt.

Young people, and many adults, are not aware of where food comes from and what it takes to get it into their hands. Many people have never worked on a farm or been to one. The experience of planting, tending, nurturing, and sweating over the growth of a plant or an animal has been lost. These are only the early steps in a very long chain of making food ready to eat.

Much of the grain used to fatten cattle for hamburgers and steaks could be fed to people around the globe to alleviate hunger. Three times as many natural resources are used to produce beef products as are needed for poultry, fish, or complementary proteins like beans.

Many young people don't know how to cook from scratch. Some are not taught to cook at all, and thus they dash to fast-food establishments. Very little understanding exists between young people and their food. Food is a void-filler.

This lifestyle, filled with false perceptions and lack of knowledge, has alienated young people from their responsibility as stewards of the earth for their sisters and brothers. Our calling in youth ministries is to re-orient and balance young people's lives, and our own, into a lifestyle that provides nourishment for all people. Stewardship is taking responsibility and having the personal power to be a caretaker. Genesis 1 describes God giving all animals, plants, and trees to humans to keep and to have dominion over. In an age of violent action films, it is indeed difficult to think of dominion or power very positively. Yet we have dominion and young people have dominion.

Jesus understood our difficulty and addressed it. Jesus explained that life is a circle of interrelatedness and not a pyramid of competition. First and last trade places, and servants are royalty. He showed us that it is best to treat others as we would want to be treated. Jesus' perceptions make having dominion and power a very difficult thing: dominion filled with thankfulness, respect, and love; this is our calling as stewards. Native Americans thanked an animal and prayed over it when it was killed, as an act of respect for the life it held and the gifts it would bring to them. They used every portion of the animal --- for food, tools, clothing, and shelter. This is stewardship born of relationship. Youth ministries is an ideal forum in which to build the relationships that can instill this strong sense of stewardship. The study of food can be the context for understanding the relationship of the immediate community, the natural community, and the world community. Activities and experiences that make the sense of community more vivid are vital.

Visit a facility in your community that serves the hungry. Meet real people who are in need. Help to collect food for this facility and make a commitment to do it once a month for six months. Later, volunteer to sort food at the facility. Discover how political action affects the lives of those in the community and the world by scanning newspapers for relevant articles. Ask questions such as, Do these actions make life better or worse for the poor and hungry? Is food used as a pawn for another goal? Are these actions globally just?

Visit a production plant. Discover how food is grown and processed and how these processes affect the soil, air, and water. Visit a farm and find out which foods use more natural resources to grow. Discover which pesticides or tools are harmful to the earth. Volunteer labor hours at the farm, perhaps at different times of the year. Celebrate the harvest with the farmer.

Use simulation games to understand the current distribution of food in the global context. Ask a recent immigrant or refugee to speak about the types of food, production, and cooking practices in his or her country. Participate in fund raising for overseas hunger relief. Direct aid in the local or global community is fantastic mission work and provides a firsthand experience of service to others. Emphasize that direct aid is not going to solve the bigger problems of inequality in distribution and lifestyle consumption. Personal lifestyles must be changed in order to bring about a global community where everyone has enough to eat.

Personal lifestyles are affected by a variety of experiences centering on art, habits, nutrition, and faith. Use art to strengthen personal feelings and understandings about hunger. What color is hunger? What shape and texture is hunger? Use clay, paint, and pictures to elicit these feelings. Draw a portrait of hunger. How does it look? Is it male or female? What kind of music sounds hungry? These experiences can bring out young people's feelings about hunger in different areas of their lives.

Evaluate personal eating and food-purchasing habits through use of a journal. For a week, keep track of what was eaten, where, and with whom. Make a personal list of twenty favorite foods and then choose five and analyze them for their nutritional value, impact on natural resources, and level on the food chain. If these are convenience foods, save the money that would have been spent on them for a week or month and send it to hunger relief. Take cooking lessons from one of the parents or grandparents at the church.

Nutrition information is handy on most food labels. Take the group to a grocery store and look at all the ingredients of their favorite foods. Have a nutritionist come and talk to the group. Do this while going hungry for twenty-four hours and talk about what happens to a body without food, or a body with the wrong food. Discuss what is enough. Why is it that eating nutritional food is often not enough?

Eucharistic liturgies that focus on the bread are powerful. Have your group bake the bread for the service. Take note of where the ingredients come from and what nutritional value each has. Emphasize that many in the world do not even have bread to eat, and pray for them. Focus on a sense of gratitude whenever food is eaten. Give thanks for the food, for those who grew it, produced it, cooked it, and served it. Create a joyful atmosphere where eating is a meaningful experience, one that will fill the other hungers that plague young people.

Eating together as stewards is a challenge. Food, in the life of young people, can be a joyful celebration of community, the earth, and all God's gifts, but it is not easy. We in youth ministries are called to blight in the darkness of over-consumption and destructive eating in order to make wholeness for all people a possibility. The ability is ours through a limitless and creative God who has dominion and power over us and who continues to be fruitful.