ABSTRACT
Childhood hunger in the United States is a consequence of political choices embedded in the complex social meanings of food, charity, and poverty. The problem is complicated because childhood hunger, like childhood poverty, disproportionately occurs among children of color. Fatal starvation is mercifully rare among American children, but nutritional deprivation sufficient to impair health and educational competence is common. Even traditional preliterate cultures recognize that food of insufficient quality or quantity affects the health and survival of all members of the society, but particularly of children and the child in the womb. Feeding people is a lot cheaper than paying for neonatal intensive care for low birth weight babies or than dealing with a generation that is prevented from participating in the information economy for want of adequate nutrition in childhood. Paradoxically, the scientific perspective is experienced as empowering by emergency food providers, many of whom have little formal education.
