On the surface, it seems obvious: of course food is a human right. We can’t live without it. However, the question of whether it should be a political right is much trickier to answer. Who is responsible for providing food? Who do you sue if you’re starving? In India, there's a new effort by the governing Indian National Congress Party to get the right to food enshrined in the country’s constitution. But listeners didn’t totally agree that food should be a political entitlement.

We received this comment via text message from Marissa Solomon-Garcia from Staten Island, NY:

By definition rights are entitlements. Things we deserve with or without any action on our own part. It seems everything is becoming a right, and no one has to work for anything anymore. Healthcare, food, housing... If we are entitled to these things like we are to the air we breathe, who in their right mind will work to create the food? No, it’s not a right. You have the right to get a job for the money to buy the food or work to grow it yourself.

Another texter writes:

Yes food is a basic human right. It is biblical that even in a war, trees and crops must not be interfered with for the benefit of widows and orphans.

And we received this via text: Of course, food, water and air are essential ingredients for existence. What is free speech without the energy and breath to speak it? Without food, humans leave society and reenter nature, any and all actions are justified by the need to survive. All of society’s rules are void at the point of survival and the law recognizes this when faced with no other choice. I can't see a more fundamental right than this.

On Facebook, Sara Smith writes:

Ridiculous...yes, food should be a human right.

And Kim Hunter says:

It's odd that the question is even asked. There are eateries dumping food as this is being written and as you are reading it. I see us all as the same species with basic rights and responsibilities toward one another as we try to approach civilized existence. Is existence a right?

The conversation considered on our website:

Jake from Nassau County:

How about my right not to support the ever-increasing children of irresponsible people? How about a corresponding responsibility not breed what you cannot feed? How about my right to green spaces and clean air, which the population explosion is destroying?

Paulb from Brooklyn:

I don't see how there can be any sort of legitimate "right" to anything that has to be provided to you. A legal initiative to end hunger in a country is a good thing but it shouldn't be framed or legislated as something that doesn't make logical sense. America's founders had a respect for language--something that governments in the 20th century have completely lost track of.

Mike Moxcey from Fort Collins, Colo.:

Rights exist only in the human realm and have nothing to do with biological reality. The salmon has no more right to life or to get upstream than the grizzly has to eat the salmon.

We can state we have a right to food (which is a good idea), but we cannot guarantee it, especially given the limited size of the planet and another 'right' that people think they have--the right to reproduce and have as many children as possible.

And Hector called 877-8-MYTAKE:

If you take for instance the fact that prisoners with connect to heinous crimes and so many of this is mass slaying should or a crime against the elderly against children with an incarcerated they are guaranteed three meals a day however gross the food might be… The argument should be made that you know it's not adequate but they do have food to sustain themselves. So is it a basic human right.  I don't know that we are entitled to anything besides the ability to breathe and your heart beat but and argument could made that if the prisoners who are being held for crimes have the right to food and everyone else should as well.

Food for thought from our listeners! Keep the conversation going. Add your comments on The Takeaway website, call in to 877-8-MYTAKE, check out our Facebook page, and follow us on Twitter.