At dinner time, some Americans have the luxury of choosing between meat and potatoes with dessert or going to a restaurant to have somebody else cook for them.

In many countries around the world, including some parts of the United States, such options aren’t taken for granted.

The second annual Hunger Banquet, sponsored by the Leadership Enrichment Action Program (LEAP), will show ISU students how it is easy to take food for granted.

Laura Bestler-Wilcox, program coordinator for the dean of student’s office, said she expects participation to be down from 75 to about 50 participants this year.

Bestler-Wilcox said the idea for the banquet came from a similar event she organized at another college campus.

“It was a great way to demonstrate what world hunger is and how lucky the majority of us truly are in the United States,” she said.

Bestler-Wilcox said students who attend the banquet will draw a profile as they walk in.

Fifteen percent of the participants will sit at an elegant table and eat a gourmet meal. Thirty percent will wait in line to receive a meal of rice, beans and milk.

The majority of participants, around 55 percent, will sit on the floor and eat rice and water out of a large tub with plastic silverware to represent Third-World populations and others with minimal incomes.

Molly McMenimen, assistant student coordinator, said the banquet is more effective at educating students than any textbook could be.

“It is a visual representation instead of hearing it on the news,” she said. “It involves a little bit more raw emotion because it’s your peers sitting down there on the floor, rather than just people [on television] that have no emotional value.”

People sitting at the first-world table will be provided with an abundance of food, including two meats and a dessert, said McMenimen, sophomore in pre-business.

“When people are served so much food that no person would eat it in one meal, they’ll feel guilty they were one of the people at the table and not part of the majority on the floor,” she said. “People on the floor will see what it’s like to actually be hungry and they’ll be able to sympathize with them and understand how they could get hungry and how hard it is for them to obtain food because that’s all they’re getting.”

Bestler-Wilcox said the banquet will illustrate the realistic proportions of world hunger to students.

“It’s an excellent opportunity for them to learn about world hunger and what happens in the United States as well as other countries, as well as give students the opportunities to educate themselves on what’s happening and how they can help,” she said.

Jenifer O’Neal, Service Learning and Community Service Coordinator for LEAP, said students can help reduce the problem of world hunger.

“This event is a great eye-opener to what is going on around us, whether it be in the United States or South Africa,” said O’Neal, sophomore in political science. “Students are the future of this country and by experiencing the Hunger Banquet, they can take their knowledge on hunger into the future and use it to develop ways of stamping out hunger in the world.”