Snap Judgements

Childhood hunger in a filthy rich nation

“Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end.” The Angel of History Carolyn Forché

I thought I was done with this newsletter but I’m not. I thought I was finished with Don’t Make Me Stop this Car! But I’m not. I can’t stop. I won’t stop. You can’t make me stop. I won’t ever turn on the money switch. But I will take my story for a few more drives around block. For free always for free. Because I’ve learned a thing or three from a childhood of poverty and neglect. Sadly, its relevant. So, here we go for another Tuesday post. Jump in if you are up for it, hop in the Rambler for another sob story from a girl grown up on the road with her troubled mother and her carload of kids. Hungry and tired and often without hope.

Keep your hands inside the vehicle hang on buckle up brace yourself for the big picture twirl of human beings once again starving, chased and disappeared only to be statistically displayed below the fold of what used to be the News with a capital N, now just all cap COWARDLY acquiescence. No justice. Just a barrage of false equivalency. But here’s the thing. Good and bad are not the same. Have never been the same. Evil exists and it is after us. As ever and as if it will never end. So, get in roll up the window I want to drive us home I’m heartsick and need to head home I’m wobbly and dreaming of a good meal around a communal table not fast food or no food, good food, nourishing food, given to those in need. But where is the road home what map do I use whose direction should I follow where to go now I do not know. We are living in dangerous times.

1 in 5 children across America don’t have enough to eat. (1)

I know about childhood hunger. As a child I was hungry a lot. It was tough. I felt terribly alone, and I wasn’t a special case. I knew I wasn’t special, boy did I know, and if I didn’t there were plenty people around to remind me if I ever forgot. May I never forget. Belly empty and fully aware of the judgement surrounding us. Poor. Not good enough. You people they would say. Strangers and relatives. You people. Always needing a handout. Back then I believed what they said about me and my family. Back then I thought there was something wrong with me. Now I know what it takes to break the cycle of poverty in a family. I also know that starving children are part of a failed social system.

The communal fabric once frayed is now disintegrating. Ripped apart by apathy all around. Greed and ignorance refuses to pay attention to what is happening to children. I cannot look away. I still feel like a child. In old age still living in the same body I lived in as a child; bones weakened long ago by neglect and poverty. Now I have perspective. No longer a despairing child hungry and often homeless. Now I can place my childhood experience into a bigger picture, beyond my family and what happened to us, what happened to me. All these years later I am oh so much more aware. I see the self-justification. I hear the moral relativism. I smell the greed and grift. And I see where we are heading.

I’ve been to the end of this road, and I know what is at stake for families in crisis. Needy families fed by strangers, food banks, cheap drive throughs. I still feel that cold metal lunch token in my tight fist every day at school. Eyes on me. Full of judgement and pity. Because my family needed assistance. I know what it feels like to be met with judgement and scorn, when you are a child in need of milk and bread, kindness and care.

SNAP also known as food stamps is currently being used as a cynical political bargaining chip. Withholding funds from the nation’s largest anti-hunger program; gambling with the health of families.

According to First Focus on Children, Nearly 15 million children rely on SNAP benefits to access adequate nutrition, making up nearly 40% of all program participants (2)

When I was a child my family used food stamps to get the basics and often those basics were all we had in the house: cottage cheese, yogurt, milk and day-old bread, sometimes big bricks of Velveeta cheese. That’s the food we’d have in the fridge and the cupboard after a trip to the grocery store with the food stamps. If we were lucky. I don’t ever remember drinking the milk much. Or eating eggs. Too expensive. I wish I’d consumed more milk. Milk is bone building. Recently diagnosed with severe osteoporosis I searched online for clues as to how this had happened to me. A physically strong person with a healthy diet who exercised regularly. I found out that petite women often develop osteoporosis. Okay, not much I can change there. Oh, and then there it was the real culprit: those who were undernourished in childhood are more likely to develop osteoporosis in later life. Our bone density is built by the time we reach our early twenties.

In my early twenties I was transitioning out of foster care where I was well fed but still clueless about what kind of diet was best for me. Pizza and Dr. Pepper is what I chose for a school lunch. Or Cheetos and Diet Coke. Salty and fizzy. Hits the tongue with a bang and doesn’t linger. Made me think I had a good life. Helped me forget all the fast food in the backseat of the car.

My sister M recently reminded me how she and our brother T, when they were little and hungry would get a single McDonald’s hamburger, and she’d tell him as they sat on the ground in back of McDonald’s we can split the hamburger meat and save the buns for tomorrow in our pockets. They shared what little they had with one another. They knew to share, and they knew to save for tomorrow to parcel out what little they had. They’d been through this. I’ve been through this. Have you? Do you know what this looks like for the future of our nation’s children.

According to First Focus on Children it looks like this: More children without routine and preventative care, leading to higher infant mortality and preventable illness. Fewer mental health services at a time when youth suicide and depression rates are rising. Delayed diagnoses for chronic conditions, worsening long-term health outcomes.

Hungry children can’t change where they live, how much money their parents make, how much and how often their cost-of-living increases, nor can children change the fact that they were born into a family caught in a cycle of poverty and hunger, passed down conditions which are hard to break. Housing, childcare, healthcare, basic needs, vulnerable children are powerless to change their living conditions. Children from communities of color, single parent homes, and rural households are most vulnerable.

The most recent statistics for childhood food insecurity I could find were from 2023. The CDC’s Early Childhood Nutrition Report for 2025, published in June and updated in August 2025 framed the 2023 statistics in this backhanded way.

Affordability of Nutritious Foods: 65% of children 1-5 years lived in households that were always able to afford nutritious foods in 2022-2023. It is important for all families to be able to afford healthy foods, so they can make healthier choices. (3)

I read that policy statement several times before I realized it was not a typo. The statement was skewed to emphasize the percentage of families who had enough, not the families in need. Do the math.

35% of children ages 1-5 years old living in American households were NOT always able to afford nutritious foods in 2022-2023.

Imagine what those statistics are now two years later and what they will be if this cruelty continues.

I’m not interested in excuses. The red state blue state divide. Fears about investment. The God you pray to, your yoga retreat. Ideology can’t feed a hungry homeless frightened child when there’s not enough to go around. The fact is there is enough to go around in America it just doesn’t go around. Find a food bank and give. Charity is important. But so is public policy. Charity is temporary. Growing children need regular and dependable community support. No single church or individual can feed generations of starving children.

No one person can solve the problem of poverty in a filthy rich nation.

Rich or poor life ends. Death will come for all of us rich or poor. There is no magic potion, no fountain of youth. None of us will live forever and none of us can take anything we have acquired with us when we go. We will all age and fail and fragile we will die. Along the way we can help others or not. We can move towards a more just society or not.

It’s beyond time to decide.

Notes

1. https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/child-hunger-facts

2. First Focus on Children. “Children’s Budget 2024.” 2024. https://firstfocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/First-Focus-on- Children-Childrens-Budget-2024.pdf

3. https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/media/pdfs/2025/CDC-Early-Childhood-Nutrition-Report-National-2025-508.pdf

4. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us

5. https://firstfocus.org/resource/an-assault-on-children-the-devastating-impact-of-proposed-budget-cuts-on-americas-kids/