FEED THE KIDS ( BUILD FUTURE)

All of us should take action and start preparing for the future. Unfortunately, this will not be a personal or nation problem, it will be a humanity problem.

Children require nutritious food to grow, learn, and thrive. However, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, children in America were going hungry at alarming rates. 

Institutional racism, low wages, and other inequities rendered many families unable to put food on the table, particularly Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous families. 

Simultaneously, policymakers have refused to fund nutrition programs sufficiently to reach and feed all children in need. 

Millions of children entered this crisis without consistent access to nutritious food, putting them at an increased risk of hunger and harm.

In 2019, nearly one in every seven children—10.7 million—were food insecure, which means they lived in households where not everyone had enough to eat (see Table 10). 

These households struggled to afford and obtain nutritious meals, forcing them to rely on low-cost food, skip meals, or even go hungry.

Black and Hispanic children were twice as likely as white children to live in food-insecure households. 

In 2019, nearly one in four Black children (24.1%) and one in five Hispanic children (19.2%) lived in households that did not have enough food to eat, compared to one in nine white children (11.0 percent).

Additionally, younger children faced a greater risk of hunger. Families with children under the age of six were more likely to lack access to healthy food than families under 18. 

Even with full- or part-time employment, most households experiencing hunger struggle to put food on the table. In 2019, 61% of households experiencing hunger were employed; 51% had at least one full-time employee. 

With rising living costs, stagnant wages, and systemic racism, working families are increasingly unable to afford food and other necessities.

Low birth weight and congenital disabilities, physical and mental health problems, oral health problems, and poor educational outcomes are all associated with a lack of nutritious and healthy food. School meal programs such as the National School Lunch Program (NLSP) and the National School Breakfast Program (SBP) provide critical nutrition for hungry or poor children. 

Many children typically consume up to two full meals per day at school, and these are frequently their only meals.

Ref: The State of America's Children 2021 - Child Hunger and .... https://www.childrensdefense.org/state-of-americas-children/soac-2021-child-hunger/