Classes ending in June are boundless joy for children, right? Not if they are among the 30 million students who qualify for the federal nutrition program and who are now likely to face…summer famine” is the result of food-insecure families losing access to the free breakfasts and lunches their children rely on in school for the rest of the year, leading to more anxiety, health problems and poorer academic performance.
“We know that summer is the hungriest time of the year,” says Rachel Sabella, director No Child Hungry in New York City, a campaign aimed at ending child hunger nationally, which partnered with HelloFresh and YouGov to commission a survey on the topic. It found that 41% of parents are somehow struggling to provide food while school is closed, and that almost half (44%) of parents are more worried about feeding their children now than they were last year.
It also found that among parents who are struggling to provide for everyone in the family, 75% are at least somewhat concerned about being able to afford food during the school holidays, while almost half (42%) reported that they themselves skip meals to make sure their children are fed. Most said they are either budgeting more carefully (60%) or cutting other expenses (52%) to address summer food woes.
The survey, which was conducted in May and had his findings published On June 20, responses were collected from 459 parents of children under 18 in the United States.
He sought to obtain up-to-date information about the realities of the summer famine, which experts already know leads to physical, behavioral and mental problems in children, as well as poor academic performance after school resumes, known as the “summer slide”, which disproportionately influences low-income children, not to mention the impact on the mental health of parents who may experience depression and anxiety as they struggle to feed their children.
“We know that when children and families skip meals, it impacts both their physical and mental health. We know that children who start the day with school breakfast attend school more often, do better in school and have fewer long-term health problems,” says Sabella. Luck. “When they don’t have regular access to that food during the summer months, it sets them back. And that can lead to learning loss.”
It’s also “a real mental health issue,” she adds, “where a lot of families think, ‘I’m alone, no one else is struggling with this.’ They don’t want to ask for help because there is a stigma associated with it. And that’s what we really want to get out of it.”
The organization really wants to emphasize that “there is food,” Sabella says. “If you are eligible, you should take these meals.”
Where to find help
Sabella says her organization is advocating for two different types of federal programs that will be implemented this year: summer EBT, available nationwide to states that agree to participate, providing eligible families with $120 in summer food benefits, which has been found to reduce by a third the number of households with children who sometimes go hungry. (Even so, 15 states disagreed, including Alabama, Georgia and Nebraska, whose the governor said“I don’t believe in prosperity.”)
it’s the same unassembled Nutrition programs such as grab-and-go or home delivery for rural communities, where 48% of parents have a friend or relative who experiences food insecurity while away from school (compared to 36% of parents overall), both the study showed.
Additionally, among those experiencing hardship in rural areas, 92% said they were concerned about whether they would be able to afford food for their family during the school holidays, and 77% were concerned about whether they would be able to provide the food they needed. children usually get it at school. Similarly, in the South, 82% were concerned about being able to afford food over the summer, and 66% were concerned about being able to afford the meals they would normally receive at school.
Other solutions that require sufficient outreach, Sabella says, include local emergency food providers, whether community organizations or religious institutions, and food pantries, some of which partner with HelloFresh, which donates surplus food. fresh food for community programs weekly and developed meal kits for food insecure people, distributing 40,000 meals directly to several communities each week.
“I think many of us feel like we’re past the pandemic. Everything returns to normal. But the food security situation has not improved since the pandemic. it got worse” says Jeff Yorzik, senior director of sustainability and director of the Summer Hunger Report at HelloFresh North America. Luck. “And when we started getting into the details, we saw that there was a cost of living crisis brewing that really made it more financially stressful for parents. I think we were really surprised by how high some of these [food insecurity] there were numbers.”