A Letter on Food Insecurity

Before I tell you how it went, I want to be honest: I feel wrong writing this at all.

Researchers who study poverty simulations describe exactly the problem I ran into before I’d eaten a single bite: these exercises give a taste of a situation without anything close to the full lived experience, because the mental state is fundamentally different when you know it ends Sunday night.

And plenty of public figures have done versions of this in ways that read as tone-deaf rather than illuminating. I didn’t want to add another one of those to the pile, and I’m not entirely sure I didn’t. But I fell far short of my goal, and the failure taught me more than success would have. 

At the grocery store, I started substituting my own preferences – oat milk for the dairy my stomach can’t handle, meatless proteins because I’m vegetarian, popcorn instead of chips because I liked it better.

Food insecurity isn’t a game or a challenge; it’s survival, and I’d already betrayed that before I’d eaten a single bite. By Friday night, I was treating the backpack like a Chopped basket, turning a can of peas into pasta sauce instead of sitting with what scarcity actually feels like.

But the real failure came Saturday, when I went to brunch with a friend and completely forgot I was in the middle of this at all. By the time I panicked and tried to recommit, it was too late – my body already had nutrients from outside the backpack, and there was no undoing it.

What that moment actually revealed was how privileged I was to be the one deciding what I ate in the first place. I had failed, but had I gained anything? 

MAZON, a Jewish organization that fights hunger* helped me better understand my experience. Their virtual Hunger Museum  tells a version of this history: hunger has long been treated less like a circumstance and more like a verdict on someone’s character. Even now, people criticize others for relying on SNAP and second-guess what they choose to buy with it, as though needing help, and having preferences while you get it, are two different failures instead of just being human. 

I recognized that instinct in myself, standing in the grocery store aisle, quietly judging my own choices before anyone else could. 

That’s the part of this weekend I can’t stop thinking about: what I ate, when I ate it, whether I could opt out entirely – all of it came down to choices I got to make.

Food insecurity takes that away. It isn’t just the absence of food; it’s the absence of choice, replaced entirely by the demands of survival. And even when people navigating food insecurity do get some say in what they eat, they’re often judged for it, as if wanting something instead of only needing it makes the choice less legitimate. But food insecurity doesn’t stop being survival just because someone occasionally chooses what they want alongside what they need. It’s still survival, either way. 

Every year, our CRS Feeds food drive falls during Yom Kippur, a day we’re already asking ourselves what we could be doing better. This year, I invite you to bring that same question to the drive: recognize the blessing of getting to choose what you eat and put it to use making sure someone else has enough. 

For more information about CRS Feeds, click here. 

To learn more and sign up for Backpack Buddies, click here.

*Mazon is the same organization that sent 47,000 postcards to the USDA last year demanding they protect SNAP benefits, each one representing 1,000 hungry Americans, of which CRS wrote 3,000.