Impacts of child hunger run deep

Most of us don’t know what it’s like to be hungry. The kind of hungry where you don’t have any food and don’t when or where your next meal will be.

It should be counted among our blessings that so many of us do not know the real pain of hunger. If anything, most of us would be healthier if we did skip a few meals.

If you’ve never been to a food bank to ask for help feeding your family, count that among your blessings, too. Many of us are only a paycheck or two away from needing the food bank’s help.

A big group of the Mat-Su Borough’s hungry neighbors are kids under the age of 18.

Hunger is unfortunate when it happens to adults, but when kids are chronically hungry the impacts run deep and can be lifelong.

According to the nonprofit group Feeding America, health risks include anemia, impaired cognitive development, and stunted growth. Child hunger also may be linked to behavioral problems, delayed social development, anxiety and other emotional issues. School attendance and academic performance both suffer due to student undernourishment, Feeding America says. And undernourished children face an uphill battle to succeed academically, as hunger diminishes a child’s ability to retain knowledge, concentrate and develop language and math skills.

It’s uncomfortable knowing our youngest neighbors could have their futures permanently curtailed by a lack of food. It should weigh on our minds while we scoop up seconds that some among us have no food on their tables, in their freezers or in their cupboards.

During the school year, the Mat-Su Borough School District plays a central role in feeding hungry kids by providing free and reduced-price lunches to income-eligible students. For some, it’s their only sure food.

Since December 2011, the Mat-Su has had fewer hungry kids thanks to Children’s Lunchbox. The nonprofit began in Anchorage in 1998, and in 2010, fed 96,467 meals to youth there.

The Mat-Su kitchen is complete, and the Children’s Lunchbox now serves three meals a day at the Wasilla Boys and Girls Club to any hungry child, 18 or younger.

More than just nourishment, the program also provides good role models for children. Director Lynette Ortolano said participants are required to volunteer for the program, which teaches them to prepare food, plan meals and measure portions.

Ortolano said the push to expand the program to the Mat-Su was personal — she lives in the Valley and has seen the need grow exponentially.

We dream of a day when all children are loved, safe, have warm homes and enough to eat. Until then, we are grateful for nonprofits like Children’s Lunchbox and the federal funding and donations that make the program possible.