Children need healthy food to grow, learn, and thrive. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, however, children in America went hungry at alarming rates. Institutional racism, low wages, and other inequities made it impossible for many families—especially Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous families—to put food on the table. At the same time, policymakers have refused to adequately fund nutrition programs to reach and feed all children in need. Millions of children entered this crisis without consistent access to nutritious food, leaving them especially vulnerable to hunger and harm. In 2019, more than 1 in 7 children—10.7 million—were food insecure, meaning they lived in households where not everyone had enough to eat (see Table 10 ). These households struggled to afford and access healthy meals, forcing them to rely on low-cost food to feed their children, skip meals, or even go hungry. Black and Hispanic children were twice as likely to live in food-insecure households as wh...