Children Hungry In Summer Months When Free School Food Is Unavailable

Children Go Hungry In Summer Months Without Free School Food

Did you know that 21% of children in America live in “food-insecure” households???

Via NBC News:

Across the country, schools are getting out for the summer. And while most students will leave their classrooms happy for the break, some parents will be fretting about how to feed their children without meals provided through schools. The hot summer months bring a fresh challenge for food banks in the nation’s poorest and hungriest counties: How to make sure millions of children get regular, healthy meals when they aren’t in school.

“The time of year in the United States (that) an American child is most likely to go hungry is the summertime, and the principal reason for that is school is out,” said Kevin Concannon, undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services with the USDA. That often means summer vacations – not the winter holidays – are the busiest time of year for food banks, because they are struggling to fill the gap for children who are not getting regular meals through federally funded school lunch programs and other services. “We know hunger, just generally across the board, is a bigger problem in summer,” said Celia Cole, chief executive of the Texas Food Bank Network, which represents regional food banks across the state.

Texas is home to six of the 10 counties in the country that had the highest rate of childhood food insecurity in 2011, according to data to be released next week by Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks. All told, nearly 1.9 million Texas children, or 27.6 percent of kids in the state, were living in food-insecure households in 2011, according to Feeding America. Many food banks also see summer as a time to meet their most important need. “There is just nothing better that we could be doing than feeding a child,” said Eric Cooper, chief executive of the San Antonio Food Bank. That food bank serves 16 southwest Texas counties including Zavala County, where nearly half of county’s children were food-insecure in 2011, according to Feeding America. A household is considered to be food-insecure if at times they had difficulty providing enough food for everyone in the family because of a lack of resources.

That’s true on a national level as well. About 21.4 million children receive free or reduced-price lunches at school on a typical school day, according to the USDA. Some of the nation’s neediest kids also receive breakfast, snacks, dinner and even backpacks of weekend food through school and after-school programs.

But last summer, only about 3 million kids were fed through the federal government’s Summer Food Service Program, which provides meals to kids though school and community organizations, according to the USDA’s Concannon.

Concannon and others say kids have trouble getting to feeding sites when school buses aren’t running, and parents aren’t always even aware that the programs exist. The groups that host the programs, in turn, are only paid by how many meals they serve. If turnout is low, it’s hard to justify the expense. Also, the program is mainly available only to high-need areas where half the kids were receiving free- or reduced-lunch during the school year. Experts say that when kids don’t have regular, nutritious meals, they learn more slowly and have more behavioral problems. They also can develop unhealthy habits, such as binge eating, that puts them at risk for obesity and diabetes.

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