Column: Nobody should be food insecure

Do you know what it is like to be hungry? I mean really hungry and not just a little growl in your stomach. I do and so do over 49 million Americans who are what we call “food insecure.” It is a feeling that can best be described as a fist inside of your stomach ever-so-slowly tightening until you are writhing in pain.

Having a nutritious diet has a direct correlation in academic success, psychological well-being, growth, and overall health. A lack of proper nutrition is estimated to cause 678, 000 deaths in the US each year.

On a local scope, during the 2018/19 school year, over 260 kids are considered homeless by McKinley Veto standards. Approximately 55 percent of the students enrolled in the Lake Tahoe Unified School District qualified to receive free or reduced cost meals while at school which included breakfast and lunch.

Food insecurity is best defined as the state of not having access to consistent nutritious and affordable food. It is a problem that touches the lives of many people on a national level and a local level as well.

I was a child that was affected by food insecurity. As an adult, the food insecurity I experienced as a child still affects me to this day.

Let me tell you why.

When I was 13-years-old my mother and I became homeless in South Lake Tahoe. We were couch surfing, I wasn’t enrolled in school, and my mother wasn’t working. There were days where I would go without eating and days where all that I had to eat was a 50 cent Cosmic Brownie from the Shell gas station on Lake Tahoe Blvd.

I remember going to my mother, telling her how hungry I was and her only giving me 50 cents because that was all she had and I would go and buy that brownie. In my 13-year-old mind, hunger began to become my only friend and it led me to believe that no one cared for me. I became withdrawn, afraid and angry. I didn’t go down the wrong path, though. At that time, I was the only person that believed in me and I strived to cure my own food insecurity. It was hard. The hardest thing I have ever done, in fact, because I was a child hitting the streets of South Lake Tahoe begging for change on a day-to-day basis so that I could get a nutritious meal.

As an adult, the feeling of hunger still haunts me, because it is a feeling that I never want to know again.

There are hundreds of children, adults, and elderly people in South Lake Tahoe that have, and currently are, experiencing food insecurity similarly to what I experienced as a young child.

Now I want you, Reader, to imagine yourself hungry, and having gone two to three days without food. How would you feel? Now, my dear Reader, I want you to imagine yourself devoid of all of the things you have earned in life --- your family, your home, your job, and or all of your possessions. How would you feel? Now imagine yourself sitting on the street corner and haven’t bathed in days and your insides feel as if they are eating you from the inside out… How would you want someone to treat you?

Now ask yourself: Are you okay with your friend, daughter, son, brother, mother, sister, father or your neighbor sitting on the street corner experiencing the food insecurity you yourself don’t want to experience?

Paula Peterson, a local journalist and humanitarian, started Bread and Broth for kids, as well as a room at the local high school where students can come and get food, for the purpose of combating food insecurity in South Lake Tahoe. Former Mayor Wendy David helped start Bread and Broth to combat food insecurity in adults in our community but more can be and should be done.

It’s 2019. People shouldn’t be hungry.

Join me April 2, 2019, when I make a presentation to the South Lake Tahoe City Council about food insecurity and how they — as our council — can make a lasting, effective change towards abating food insecurity in our community — if they choose to do so.

(Author Blue Marie Balcita is writing for South Tahoe Now on a myriad of subjects. Blue, a 19-year-old student at Lake Tahoe Community College, is the author of five books, a contributor to three more and recently started the college's new newspaper, 1974.)