More bad news for kids in the Land of Enchantment. Not only is New Mexico the second worst state in which to raise your children (thank God for Mississippi!) according to Kids Count, but it’s the absolute worst in food security. Maybe we need a Department of Homeland Food Security – we’re not doing very well at protecting our children.
Food insecurity is a term that replaces “hunger,” perhaps a euphemism, but more descriptive of families that at least some of the time don’t know where the next meal is coming from. According to Warren Buffett-funded Feeding America, 30.6% of New Mexico children are subject to periods where meal sources are doubtful or non-existent.
“How can that be,” you ask, “I see fat kids all the time.” It may be counter-intuitive, but the two, food insecurity and obesity, run hand-in-hand. And both are most common in states and regions where people are poor. Hungry children chow down when they can get food, often on high-calorie, low-nutritive value foods. They become overweight or obese, but miss out on vitamins and minerals. When it’s not a choice between heirloom or hothouse tomatoes, but between white bread and nothing at all, white bread wins out.
Feeding Families charts the prevalence of food insecurity among children, showing that it hardly spares any part of the state. From Taos County in the north to Luna County in the south, from Guadalupe County in the east to McKinley County on the Arizona border, vast swaths of New Mexico are colored very dark green on Feeding America’s maps. We should be colored deep red – very embarrassed at allowing such a situation to occur.
Is malnutrition especially a problem for children? Unfortunately, the answer is yes – in the US as a whole, children are 37 per cent more likely to be hungry than the entire population; in New Mexico, children have a 52 per cent higher rate of food insecurity. We talk of children as “our future,” but it appears as if we’re looking the other way, neglecting that very future. Hungry children don’t learn well; “our future” is imperiled.
For hungry children, summer is an especially troublesome period: free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches that help children be ready to learn during the school year are shuttered with the last school bell in May. Many families can’t afford good food while their children are at home during the summer vacation.
There are a number of reasons why New Mexico children may be at a higher risk of being hungry than adults here: many families with only one or no wage earner; large families in especially impoverished populations, such as Latinos and Native Americans; lack of other supports such as Social Security, enjoyed by older Americans; a high proportion of teen pregnancies, where poverty is almost a given.
Partial remedies for child hunger exist, but in New Mexico they have not been shown to be adequate. Food banks are very important (Feeding America uses food bank data in part to generate its reports). Having observed the professional and high-minded Roadrunner Food Bank at work, for example, I laud their efforts to deliver needed food to families, using professional and volunteer labor very efficiently.
The federal government offers some very important stop-gap measures: The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) feeds many pregnant women and young children. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as “food stamps”, helps to provide food for poor families. Both programs are important to poor children, but recently both the United States Senate and the House have proposed cutting the program. The Senate would cut $4.1 billion over the next ten years, the House, a whopping $20.5 billion. What will our young eat; are we eating our young?
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