Thousands In Fairfax County Don't Have Enough Food

Some 13 million American children aren't just hungry. They're suffering from real hunger. Real hunger is painful and can leave kids lightheaded and lethargic. When their brains aren't fueled, they're not ready to learn. They're kids like the boy who boasted one day to the cooks at his elementary school that his sister is the "best cook ever" because she made ketchup soup for him the night before.

One in six children in America suffers from real hunger. These kids live in every state and every county in the nation. Virginia is home to 249,170 hungry children, including 23,650 in Fairfax County.

School Nutrition Association President Gay Anderson, the child nutrition director for Brandon Valley Schools in South Dakota, said the story of the child who liked his sister's ketchup soup concoction isn't as isolated as some might believe. Similar — or worse — stories are told every day in America, in every city, she said.

"We're talking about really hungry kids — the ones who look forward to getting that backpack of food to take home for the weekend," Anderson said. "I've heard many times, 'Oh my gosh, look what we get,' and seen the excitement in knowing they're going to have some food to eat."

Many schools offer backpack programs to provide students with nutritious, non-perishable and easy-to-prepare meals on weekends and holidays when they can't depend on the school lunch programs. Even with these emergency food supplies, kids often come back with gnawing hunger on Monday, when schools go through more food than on any other day of the week, Anderson said.

"A couple of years ago, the mom of three boys called me on Monday morning and said, 'I don't have money to feed my kids,' " Anderson said, explaining the woman had taken her boys with her to the grocery store and showed them $1.91 and said, "This is all we have. What are we going to eat?"

Anderson said it's not uncommon for food-insecure students in her home district and others across the country to slip apples, bananas and whatever they can into their pockets at lunch so they can help out their families at meal time. Older siblings sometimes skip meals or short-shrift their servings so the little ones can eat. Parents may not eat at all for a day or days so their children have food.

"In households across the country, parents often work to shield their children from the fact there isn't enough food," said Christina Martinez, the child-nutrition manager for Feeding America, which provides food through a nationwide network of food banks. "But kids are really perceptive, and really do pick up on it."

Said Anderson: "We can see it in their eyes, wondering, 'What am I going to eat? When am I going to eat?' They have that fearful look."

Children Of Working Parents

Stereotypes abound about these hungry children. Some are homeless, but most of them aren't, said Martinez, adding: "In the majority of cases, they're going home with their brothers and sisters."

And in many cases, these hungry kids are the children of working parents.

While 13 million U.S. children are considered food insecure, even more families are "a $500 car repair or a broken arm away from food insecurity," said Erica Olmstead, a field manager for No Kid Hungry, a project of Share Our Strength, a nonprofit group that works to ease hunger and poverty worldwide.

In a 2017 report, nearly two-thirds of low-income parents said a single, unplanned expense of $1,500 would make it difficult for them to feed their children. Among respondents, 92 percent were working families — that is, at least one adult in the household worked full-time, part-time or multiple jobs. Among other findings:

* 62 percent worried that food would run out faster than money to pay for it came in.
* 59 percent said the food they bought didn't last and there wasn't money for more.
* 23 percent said they had limited the size of a child's meal because there wasn't enough money for food.

"Honestly," Olmstead said, "that's unacceptable."

'Hangry' Is Real

The problem isn't just that these nearly 13 million American kids are hungry.

Published research shows that children in families who don't know where their next meal is coming from are more likely than kids who have enough nutritious food to eat to have lower test scores and overall academic achievement. Hungry kids are more likely to skip school, have to repeat a grade or not finish school at all, limiting their chances of getting a good job. They're also more likely to suffer chronic health conditions such as anemia and asthma, require hospitalization and suffer oral health problems.

Hungry kids also are prone to fighting, hyperactivity, aggression, anxiety, mood swings and bullying.

" 'Hangry' is a real thing. Kids who are food insecure and hungry are more likely to act out, be discipline problems and find it harder to concentrate when a basic need isn't being met," said Annelise Cohon, who leads the Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom program for the NEA Foundation, the National Education Association's public charity. "The impact of hunger can be felt throughout the life cycle for a student."

Said Anderson of the School Nutrition Association: "We've got to nip childhood hunger. They're our future. We're feeding the future, and we do need to help them see where their next meal is coming from so they can learn and be prepared and ready to succeed."

How You Can Help Ease Childhood Hunger

Childhood hunger is "a completely solvable and fixable problem," said Feeding America's Martinez. "We don't have to live with this."

The easiest way to help is to donate to local food banks. In Fairfax County, reach out to the Capital Area Food Bank. It's one of 200 food banks across the country that work with 60,000 local agencies, from food pantries to soup kitchens, to make sure everyone has enough healthy food to eat.

Help can be offered in a variety of ways — by giving money or donating time to sort food and snack packs, assemble food boxes or help with distribution. People who work in the food industry can also work with their employers to provide direct donations.

Also, Martinez said, start a conversation in your community to determine if enough resources are being allocated to combat childhood hunger. "If you give food banks resources, they will expand the program," she said.

Some programs are more targeted to specific needs.

One of the big ones is Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom, a national initiative also supported by the Food Research and Action Center, the National Association of Elementary School Principals Foundation and School Nutrition Association. The program aims to make breakfast available to every child, regardless of income level, and serve it in the classroom after the opening bell.

Federally funded school breakfast programs are generally available for low-income children in U.S. schools, but Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom has awarded grants that currently serve more than 100,000 children in about 80 school districts in 27 states. Partner organizations have served breakfast to 14.4 million children, the majority of them from low-income families, since 2010.

Programs like Breakfast in the Classroom, Super Snack and the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program are available at certain Fairfax County schools. Here's information on how to start a Breakfast in the Classroom program. Programs like Summer F.E.E.D.S. (Food for Every Child to Eat During Summer) are offered to students throughout Fairfax County.

Bringing breakfast from the cafeteria to the classroom reduces some of the stigma of taking part in government-funded meal programs, particularly among middle or high school students. Currently, only about 56 percent of students who rely on free or reduced-price lunches are participating in school breakfast programs.

"They don't want to be seen as that kid who is different," Cohon said. "No one feels singled out or different."

Another great way to help is to start a school backpack program in your local school district. Here's how.

"We all need to look deep in our hearts: What can I do as a volunteer to pack backpacks, or time or a donation?" Anderson of the School Nutrition Association said. "We in America have always believed we want to help each other out and be successful.

"You and I may say we're hungry, but we know where our next meal is coming from. Not all of our kids do. And we don't know what those hunger pains feel like from the eyes of a child."

8 Quick Remedies to Avoid Heartburn

Heartburn can be an extremely uncomfortable situation. At one moment, you are enjoying a delicious meal and in the next moment you are left to deal with a painful burning sensation in your chest.  Despite the name, it has actually nothing to do with the heart and is instead is a symptom of an acid reflux where some contents of the stomach are forced back up into the oesophagus leaving you with a burning feeling. Simply put, heartburn is experienced when the stomach acid flows back up into the oesophagus – the pipe that carries food from the mouth to the stomach and this causes an uncomfortable feeling around that region and in the lower chest.

Some common foods may stimulate increased stomach acid such as foods that are acidic in nature like meat, dairy products and some citrus fruits, foods that have a high sugar content and even common foods like onions, garlic and tomatoes may allow acid reflux into the oesophagus. If you have a weak gut or suffer from poor digestion, you may be vulnerable to acidity and heartburn. What can you do to avoid it? Here are seven quick things you can do to prevent heartburn.

1. Add probiotic to your diet: Macrobiotic Nutritionist Shilpa Arora suggests that you must add some form of probiotics to your diet like a bowl of yogurt or a glass of buttermilk. These contain lice enzymes that support your gut bacteria and keep you digestive system healthy.  In fact, you should even replace cream used in some dishes with yogurt.

2. Check for the Ph level of the food: In order to keep acidity and heartburn at bay, the pH level of the foods you consume regularly should be kept in mind. A pH below 7 implies that the particular food item is highly acidic.

3. Chew your food properly: Another quick tip for an acidic tummy is to eat foods that require more chewing and produce more saliva. Your saliva helps in neutralizing the acid that comes up from the stomach.

4. Drink ginger and Tulsi juice before your meals:  "Drinking this concoction ensures proper absorption of food. Ginger is known to absorb excess stomach acid and thus, helps in digestion. It speeds up the process by pushing the food through bowels and so prevents the formation of gas in the stomach," says Shilpa.

5. Add more raw foods to your diet: Fresh, raw fruits and vegetables give you enough fiber to help the food in your stomach pass through easily. Avoid eating fruits after your meal as they will digest faster than your food and can cause acidity. Also, you should never eat citrus fruits or foods that are acidic on an empty stomach and this can trigger acidity and heartburn. If your body is prone to acidity, fruits such as prunes and plums should be avoided as they are high in natural sugars.

6. Grill or broil your foods: Avoid frying your ingredients and instead grill or broil them. Fried food is the biggest cause of an acid reflux due to their high-fat content.

7. Sip some water with your meals: Water will help in flushing out the toxins from the oesophagus. Natural drinks like coconut water are especially good in summers to relieve acidity as they have a soothing effect on your stomach.

8. Walk around after your meal: Don't lie down or hit the sack right after finishing your meal. This could force the food back up triggering heartburn. There take a quick walk for about minutes after you eat to help your digestive processes kick-in.

Stick to these basic diet rules and you'll be able to enjoy every meal you're served.

Tables for Snooker and Bhutanese Food at Weekender Billiard

It's Saturday night and every snooker table is taken at the Bhutanese pool hall in Woodside, Queens. The players are all men, most with roots in the Land of the Thunder Dragon, the young ones lanky in faded rock tees and track pants, their elders slouching in bomber jackets and bright white kicks. They rack the red balls, watch and wait.

Pema Gyeltshen, from Mongar in eastern Bhutan, opened Weekender Billiard in the fall of 2014 with his cousin Lhendup Zangmo and her husband, Jamyang Tsultrim, a native of Tibet. The name on the awning is printed in English and Tibetan — not Dzongkha, Bhutan's national language, although they share the same script. (This may be because Tibetan immigrants in Queens outnumber Bhutanese, or because, as Mr. Gyeltshen explained, there is no word for "weekender" in Dzongkha.)

The chef, Norbu Gyeltshen (no relation), was born in Tibet and grew up in Bhutan. Pema Gyeltshen, too, can trace his ancestry to Tibet, centuries back. "We're all mixed up," he said. In a corner, portraits of the Dalai Lama and the astonishingly beautiful king and queen of Bhutan, flanked by their countries' flags, tilt over a huddle of glossy black tables.

Under their gaze, the waiter brings plates of ema datse, the Bhutanese daily meal. This is often described as soup, stew or curry, none of which seem to fit its texture here: fresh green chiles, split and still armed with seeds, under a sheen of mollifyingly mild cheese.

The ingredients might suggest some cross-cultural kinship with Tex-Mex chile con queso. But in ema datse the chiles are dominant, meaty strips meant to be appreciated as both vegetable and firestarter. At Weekender, they are Italian long hots, always a gamble, erratic in heat; some are merely sweet and fleshy, others a silent shriek.

They're simmered with butter and slices of white American cheese, a surprisingly successful stand-in for traditional Bhutanese farmer cheese made from curds, minus the tang. Other versions of the dish temper the heat with mushrooms, potatoes or hard, nearly fossilized beef, dried in-house for days — delicious, once you revive your animal within and break it with your teeth.

Momos (dumplings) are smaller than some of their Tibetan counterparts in the neighborhood, dainty pleated buns disclosing beef or cabbage and mozzarella. The latter are best eaten at once, before the cheese sets. All come with eze, a hot sauce powered by ema kam, dried red chiles that in Bhutan are laid on rooftops and hung from windows to drink up the sun. One night a woman at the next table pulled a giant Ziploc bag of them out of her purse.

Ema kam is the background thrum in jasha maroo, a soup red-orange like a late stage of sunset, with a lacy veil of fat on the surface and diced chicken and crushed garlic and ginger in its depths. And in kakgur, a soup with hunks of butternut squash broken down but still tasting bright, and cheese half vanished in the broth.

Bathup is the heartiest, a great bowl of soup heavy with hand-torn dough and defiance of winter. The first spoonful is plain-spoken, but stir in the pinch of spice at the center — thingay, Sichuan pepper — and the mouth goes numb.

It would not be a meal without Bhutanese red rice, grown at high elevations in the Paro Valley, earthy and fluffy, with a slight blush. You will want, too, chewy buckwheat noodles doused with hot oil to sear in the flavors of red chile and garlic chives. And Bhutanese black tea, which in its dry state is almost more twigs and bark than leaves. This is boiled for hours, then churned repeatedly with salt and a pat of butter. It tastes deep, like being privy to someone else's memory.

Eating healthy fake versions of your favourite food could be making you eat more

Throw out your carefully spiralised courgetti. Stop replacing your bread with thinly sliced bits of sweet potato. Get rid of the avocado and give your burger a proper bun.

All your healthy versions of your favourite foods might not be doing you any good.
It turns out that taking healthy foods like vegetables and dressing them up so they can masquerade as junk food could be a massive mistake when it comes to getting fit.
Why? Because the mental gymnastics required to eat courgette ‘pasta, avocado ‘ice cream', and the avocado ‘bun' could end up backfiring on us.

You see, every time we eat courgetti or similar healthy fake foods, we have to trick ourselves into pretending that a big bowl of vegetables is actually a big bowl of pasta.
But when we do this, we're always aware that what we're eating – as good as it may taste – is still the ‘healthy' option. And this can cause problems.
Kathleen Keller, a professor of nutritional sciences and food science at Penn State University, explained to The Atlantic that eating these healthy substitutes could lead to the Snackwell effect – when we know we're eating something healthy, so let ourselves eat a larger portion than we usually would.

And because vegetable pasta isn't actually the same as regular pasta in terms of taste and texture, our pasta cravings and expectations when we eat them aren't fulfilled, leading us to compensate by eating more or adding unhealthy topping to satisfy our foodie needs.
It's simple. When we tell ourselves we're eating pasta when really we're eating courgette, we're going to feel like we're missing out. And so we'll eat more to make up for it.

The solution? Stop pretending that courgettes taste like pasta. They don't.
Just enjoy a nice bowl of courgettes for the sake of courgettes. If you're having serious spaghetti cravings, eat the damn spaghetti. ‘Kay?