Kids hiding their hunger at school is shaming us all
AS a kid in the Seventies, I’d see my parents often go hungry rather than letting me, my brothers and my sisters starve.
You’ve probably done the same yourself for your kids or your grandkids.
If you haven’t, you’re one of the lucky ones.
Half a century on, it remains shameful that the UK, one of the five largest economies in the world, still has children hiding in playgrounds during school dinner breaks because they can’t afford their lunch.
It is heartbreaking to hear of kids pretending they are not hungry to avoid the stigma of others seeing their noses pressed up against the metaphorical glass.
It is disgusting to know that some are “pretending to eat out of an empty lunchbox” because they don’t qualify for free school meals and don’t want their friends to know there was no food at home.
We’ve heard, read and seen the stories. More of them, from healthy eating charity Chefs in Schools, will be published next month.
But how on earth did we get back here? And how can this country even claim to be doing right by our children if, in the 21st century, we still can’t even feed them?
How is it that we still have heartbroken school dinner ladies, forced to turn away youngsters who could easily be their own children, because they don’t have enough money in their accounts.
The truth is, as a nation we tend to get lazy about the efforts to change all that. Complacent because Marcus Rashford, Jack Monroe and others are doing it.
We move on because a national newspaper like the Daily Mirror is doing it with our free school meals campaign.
Suddenly as a public, people believe it isn’t their problem any more.
So we quote tweet links and hand-clap emojis to make ourselves feel better, post a barb aimed at the Government then go about our business.
But if kids are still suffering in silence at school then it shames us all.
If we still don’t have a handle on this as we approach 2023 then it embarrasses us all.
If we are still relying on Rashford and Monroe and the teachers who spot and often pay out of their own pockets to feed their youngsters then, in this uncertain world, we are ignoring a crisis that could so easily happen to us.
Even now, Mrs Lewis hammers me for eating food a day or two out of date (within reason) - but I’m used to it.
The experience of doing it as a kid, fully aware that I didn’t have the privilege of simply chucking it away, has never left me. I’ve been that kid in the playground, pretending it’s not my stomach you could hear rumbling during a lesson.
Swallowing my pride to jokingly ask a mate if he was eating that – when I’ve been deadly serious.
I’ve sat in candlelight at home when my parents’ decision was to eat boiled rice and corned beef rather than meet the electricity bill that would have wiped them out.
So I’ll be volunteering at my local food bank, in east London, to do my bit.
I’ll be donating, working and using this platform to continue talking about the scourge of our society right now.
With its bonuses for the bankers, we already know the Government has its priorities all wrong.
The onus is on us to get ours right.
‘‘ Some pretend to eat out of lunchbox as they don’t get free meals