Free Lunch Bunch meets over the summer

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/usda-to-try-new-summer-system-for-feeding-poor-students/19598805

According to this article, money is to be allotted to feed Free Lunch Bunch kids over the summer as well as during the school year. Advocates of the program claim that they'll go hungry otherwise, that their situation is "catastrophic."

Billions of dollars are spent EVERY YEAR on food programs in this country! I've read that 1 out of 8 kids/families are on a food program. What the hell? Don't tell me there are this many "poor" people. More likely there are this many shiftless people who want to be spoonfed. Meanwhile, Mrs. Obama's signature campaign is childhood obesity. Which is it, are America's kids fat or starving?

America's kids are starving. They are also fat. Those who are starving end up with the empty calories from white bread and starches that fill an empty belly but are high in carbs that create fat. Proteins and fresh fruits and vegetables are more costly.

Today's kids are fat because schools cut PE as a first cost-saving measure, serve soda and McDonald's for lunch, homework is another 4 hours sitting at home, working mothers have television babysitters, neighborhoods are not safe to play outside and the call of electronics keep them sitting, and many parents still show love with sweet foods.

I had a free lunch program privately funded grant at one of my schools - for adults. Since it was private money; we fed all the students who only had a 30 minute lunch and would often return late to class if they left campus.

There were about 150 students. We found they left school anyway and were still late even though we gave them box lunches. On the way from lunch one day, one of my instructors drove through a neighborhood from which many of our students came to school. There was our student, her lunch box open, feeding her children and elderly parents from her lunch. After that, we started watching our students leave at lunch time. Many just took the lunches home and still did not eat themselves. We cried.

The level of poverty required to participate in the free lunch program is pitiful. At my most recent school, the corporation paid for the lunches but collected the free lunch forms in case their corporate funding ran out and they needed free lunches from the system. Only a handful of our students did not qualify and they were needy.

I enrolled the students. The parents did not want to fill out the forms or have free lunch for their children; they did not want the stigma. They said since school was out at 2:00, they could eat when the got home or they would send food (which no parent did).
We eliminated the stigma by the corporation buying lunches for everyone. Many of our students carried their lunches home for their younger brothers and sisters to have when they got home from school.

Don't tell me, let me guess -these were mostly recent "immigrant" families?

BTW -fat people aren't starving. That's an oxymoron. Starving is swollen, distended bellies, not roll-filled ones.

No, in fact my most recent school had very few immigrant families. They were the children of working adults, adults who worked several low-pay jobs with no benefits. They were ethnically diverse and some of the poorest were from white families that had become unemployed as consruction died and the economy hit the toilet. $245 week unemployment for a family of any size doesn't cover much. The community was formerly a bedroom suburb of a bigger city where rent and housing was less than in the city. The jobs held were at the lowest end of the employment spectrum, the first to be laid off in a downturn, service workers for businesses closed etc.

Starvation Definition

Starvation is the result of a severe or total lack of nutrients needed for the maintenance of life.
Description

Adequate nutrition
has two components, necessary nutrients and energy in the form of
calories. It is possible to ingest enough energy without a
well-balanced selection of individual nutrients and produce diseases
that are noticeably different from those resulting from an overall
insufficiency of nutrients and energy. Although all foods are a source
of energy for the human body, it is possible to consume a seemingly
adequate amount of food without getting the required minimum of energy
(calories). For example, marasmus is the result of a diet that is
deficient mainly in energy. Children who get enough calories, but not
enough protein have kwashiorkor. This is typical in cultures with a
limited variety of foods that eat mostly a single staple carbohydrate
like maize or rice. These conditions overlap and are associated with
multiple vitamin and mineral deficits, most of which have specific
names and set of problems associated with them.

• Marasmus produces a very skinny child with stunted growth.
  
• Children with kwashiorkor have body fat, an enlarged liver, and
  edema—swelling from excess water in the tissues. They also have growth
  retardation.
  
• Niacin deficiency produces pellagra characterized by diarrhea, skin rashes, brain dysfunction, tongue, mouth and vaginal irritation, and trouble swallowing.
  
• Thiamine (Vitamin B₁) deficiency causes beriberi, which can appear as heart failure and edema, a brain and nerve disease, or both.
  
• Riboflavin deficiency causes a sore mouth and throat, a skin rash, and anemia.
  
• Lack of vitamin C (ascorbic acid)—scurvy—causes hair damage,
  bleeding under the skin, in muscles and joints, gum disease, poor wound
  healing, and in severe cases convulsions, fever, loss of blood pressure, and death.
  
• Vitamin B₁₂ is needed to keep the nervous system working properly. It and pyridoxine (vitamin B₆) are both necessary for blood formation.
  
• Vitamin A deficiency causes at first loss of night vision and
  eventually blindness from destruction of the cornea, a disease called
  keratomalacia.
  

• Vitamin K is necessary for blood clotting.
  
• Vitamin D regulates calcium balance. Without it, children get rickets and adults get osteomalacia.
  

Assumptions cause considerable wasted friction. However, even if those without food were recent immigrants, that makes their need no less important to me than a person in another country whose needs are also a concern.

In a world of sufficient resources, the fact that anyone is without sufficient nutrition should be a concern to anyone with a the proper nutrition and the capacity to help others meet their nutritional needs.

While I claim a spiritual perspective that encompasses the actualized prophets of many cultures, I can't envision Christ asking a starving child if they were an illegal immigrant. He was a worthy example of loving one another without boundaries.

Quote :

Assumptions cause considerable wasted friction. However, even if those without food were recent immigrants, that makes their need no less important to me than a person in another country whose needs are also a concern.

No, but it makes a lie of the oft-repeated statement that the richest country in the world doesn't do enough for its poor. It does plenty for its poor. Problem is, the poor from other countries keep coming, and then then get counted into our statistics.

And you can c/p all the definitions you want, if you're fat and getting to school for your free lunch, you're not starving. You've at least got enough nutrients to do that.

You don't get nutrients from cheap "food" that makes you fat. You get nutrients from fresh vegetables and healthy meats and whole grains which cost much more to buy and prepare than the people getting free lunches have available.

Ann

Take a drive through Appalachia if you believe everyone in America is prosperous. Even if you blame the adults for being "shiftless" (i.e. unemployed), the children are hungry nonetheless. It isn't their fault.

That drive will also show you that poverty and hunger affect Caucasion citizens, too. Just in case you're hung up on that "Illegal alien" category.

The poor are invisible to most of us. We don't go where they are, we don't relate to their plight. Out of sight, out of mind. But they're out there. In large numbers.

Al Stevens wrote:

Take a drive through Appalachia if you believe everyone in America is prosperous.

Where did I post that?

Re Appalachia, nice reference, I used to go there (around Berea, Ky, for a reunion on my late FIL's side every few years. What struck me was how well-kept all those small homes we passed on rural roads were, even as poor as the Caucasian occupants were. Loads of flowers on each doorstep. My FIL, who grew up as a poor Appalachian, would never have taken any kind of welfare, nor would his (rather fractured) family. They managed. You can't tell a lot of poor people that now, though. They'll riot.