Poverty and Hunger

I found the Fitchen article to be very enlightening on the different kinds of eating habits of the impoverished in our country.  I'm from Erie, which has a large poverty rate.  My experience and knowledge of poverty comes mostly from what I learned while in high school and what I've read in the newspaper.  I've talked to a lot of Erie school teachers about this and it's heartbreaking to think about.  Some of the children in the school district only have one meal and that's the school lunch.  Most of the kids I went to school with received a free lunch, but the full price of the meal was only $1 for those who had to pay.  Another indicator was that the school district would rarely call a snow day.  Instead they did what they called a "parental discretion" which meant that parents could keep their children at home and it would not be marked down as an illegal absence.  I wondered why they did this, why they would risk the lives of students who didn't have transportation and had to walk to school in the horrible Erie weather.  I asked around and figured out that it was because some of the children only had the opportunity to eat at school, where lunch and sometimes breakfast were provided for them.

One thing I never really thought about was the difference in eating habits of Americans in poverty.  In the Fitchen article she talks about how not all people buy their food in the traditional sense, but that they sometimes, particularly in rural areas, trade goods or services for food items, and that sometimes they grow their own food.  This article really explained a lot to me about this issue, but at the same time made me aware that the issue is much more complex than I initially thought.  How can we address this issue better?  How can we help everyone when the variety and habits of people in poverty are so diverse?