Buying Food for Kids from Economically Challenged Families

Ryan’s company has held a month long food drive for North Carolina’s kids who eat school sponsored breakfast and lunch and have no food to eat on the weekends. It is deeply saddening to me that in the United States of America this kind of food problem exists. This program especially hits home for Ryan and I because he was one of those school food sponsored kids and my Grandma kept me fed.

Excited to help with the food drive, yesterday we (Ryan, Colson and I) went to a mainstream grocery store and shopped. It has been years since I have been in a grocery store and ventured into the center of the store, away from the produce. Talk about perspective. It drove me nuts to buy those kids canned chili, chicken, spaghetti and noodles – all with pull tops so the kids could just open the cans and eat. Quantity, not quality, was our mission. For these kids it is just about the full belly. We tried to pick foods with high protein and low carb ingredients, and that was the best we could do. Additives, preservatives, BPA, hormones, antibiotics didn’t matter as we made our selections.

What really bothers me is that through all of the very difficult times economic times my family has had in the last four years, I was always able to use quality ingredients to make our food from scratch. I was buying junk for these kids. That just wasn’t fair, but it boiled down to filling as many bellies as possible. Quantity has a bigger impact than quality.

Colson’s Halloween Candy – For even great perspective, Ryan took Colson’s Halloween Candy to work and gave it to a co-worker who is traveling to Haiti to build houses in an effort to help the recovery from the earthquake. She was so excited to bring the candy. For those kids, any calories are good calories.

Again, kids are eating things I would never feed my son unless I had no other choice. Being forced to think about the food hardships that face our North Carolina kids and Haiti’s kids, I am at a loss. To them the food we have donated will be fantastic, and I guess I should just celebrate that.