On Halloween, neighbors in the downtown Las Vegas area of Huntridge gave out bags of nonperishable meal bags along with the usual trick-or-treat candy. The bag contained ingredients to make a quick chickpea curry: cans of garbanzo beans, coconut milk, crushed tomatoes, chicken, Thai seasoning and jasmine rice. Child-friendly bags held shelf-stable milk, cereals, cheese and crackers, cups of mac and cheese and meat sticks. A fancied-up ramen bag came with tinned BBQ pork, stir-fry vegetables and crunchy chow mein noodles. There were six different dinners in all.
The neighbors knew that shelf-stable food wouldn’t replace Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) benefits, commonly known as food stamps, or food bank supplies.
Adriana Chavez, one of the meal bag volunteers, said: “It was important to me to physically pack up food bags and to be in the presence of those who came to get them. I’m not so different than they are. Two months of no income and I might need assistance too.” The idea was to send a message to their socioeconomically diverse community: we see you. You aren’t alone.
Chavez and her neighbors hoped a few extra meals could make a difference for some of the 196,000 Nevadans who get only a fraction of the Snap money on their Electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards in the following days. Families weren’t sure what aid they would get at the end of October due to the government shutdown. People were tense and worried – they didn’t know if they could provide for their families in November.
Many of the trick-or-treaters came from nearby Naked City, the nickname for a neighborhood flanked by the north end of the Strip and tucked behind the long shadow of the Stratosphere hotel’s tower. This was once an iconic Vegas neighborhood that, according to legend, got its name back in the 50s and 60s when showgirls, as the lore goes, flocked to the pools to sunbathe topless. Older men who have lived a lifetime here still swear they remember peering at the swimmers through mid-mod fencing.
Today, the area is crumbled and distressed, dismissed by locals who advise tourists not to venture over there late at night, with their jackpots in their pockets and handbags. Fentanyl sales and sex workers are common enough scenery.
Fifteen-year-old Lola* hovered near the ramen bags. When volunteers encouraged her to take whatever she liked, the rest of the children pushed in. A boy named Saul suggested they bring home meals for their mothers.
“We need this food,” Saul said. “My mom doesn’t know how she’s going to feed my sisters and me if she don’t get her stamps.”
“What’s a taco skillet with rice?” a boy named Andre grumbled.
“Tacos are gooood!” a girl dressed like the character Eleven from Stranger Things chimed in. “I want a bunch of those.”
“Y’all help your moms,” an adult named Kia instructed the crowd of kids. “This is a blessing.”
Volunteers ran to get reusable shopping bags to help the teens carry the meals half a mile home. The children took as much as they could – in the crook of their elbows, multiple bloated bags propped on their forearms, slapping their legs with every step.
“My mama’s gonna be so happy,” Lola said.
The children might not have understood the complex politics behind the government shutdown, the failure of the Trump administration to fund Snap for its most vulnerable people, or even how Nevada’s Republican governor, Joe Lombardo, said he couldn’t legally use state money to fill in for federal funds. But the children’s fear was real and palpable.
They weren’t strangers to empty fridges, hard times or struggling parents. Lola and her mom, Naomi, have been here before.
A season of want
The day after Halloween, in their one-bedroom home in Naked City, the food benefits don’t come in for Naomi, 34; Lola; and her two younger brothers, eight-year-old Andre and five-year-old Dion.
In Nevada, Snap benefits come sometime in the first 10 days of the month. Naomi was born in 1991, so she gets her EBT on the first day since her birth year ends in one. Naomi makes a good hourly wage above $18 an hour. But she often doesn’t get enough hours. She used to fill the money gap with DoorDash runs until her car died, and she is saving money to get it fixed. She is also saving up so Lola can learn how to play guitar. She saves to have a nest egg, some security, so the family can have the basics – and maybe some stability.
Most weeks, Naomi brings in less than $300 from the convenience store where she works. She receives less than $800 a month in EBT for her and her kids. No EBT in November means they will be paying for food with their rent money. This means their housing could be in jeopardy if she can’t save up enough for December rent. One emergency begets more emergencies.
Naomi sat on a park bench across from the Stupak Community Center, watching Andre and Dion flip upside down on the swings. She wore jeans, scuffed knockoff Crocs, and her hair in a bandana. Lola has her mother’s brown eyes and chestnut skin and a small gold hoop in her nose; Naomi has a tattoo of a crying Jesus on her forearm.
“I don’t like it when she doesn’t eat,” Lola said, referring to her mother, while picking at her nail polish. “She’s tired and angry at everybody and tells me to go to my room and I ain’t done nothin’.”
Naomi chuckled at Lola’s whiny tone. She has a sweet way with her daughter. Lola doesn’t say out loud what Naomi has told me: that Lola has rages, has thrown lamps, pushed her brother Dion so that he fell back and smacked his head against the bathroom tile.
This is the young brain on hunger
This is not just Lola, teen angst or a one-off tantrum. Stress does catastrophic things to the young brain.
Two separate studies, one in South Carolina that looked at children between nine and 16 years old, and another in the UK with children between five and 11 years old, found that children were deeply aware of household food insecurity and that awareness brought feelings of sadness and anxiety. Children as young as five had a clear understanding that food was not available, was barely available or might not be available in the future. This knowledge affected their cognitive functioning, emotion and behavior.
To explain why this happens, we can look to Stanford neuroscientist and primatologist Robert Sapolsky. His book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: A Guide to Stress-related Diseases and Coping connects the stress of potential socioeconomic catastrophe to significant changes in the brain. Even the possibility of hunger or eviction, Sapolsky says, can create profound and lasting changes in the brain.
Think of it this way: a human’s stress response is designed to be intense and short. The lion wants to eat us. Our amygdala, which processes emotions, is particularly good at generating fear. When we get scared, that triggers the nervous system, which drives us into a “fight or flight” response. We take off into the thicket to escape the lion. Yay! Our nervous system saves our lives.
During this process, Sapolsky said, stress hormones get released and these chemicals flood the brain and make us hyper-focused on the problem at hand. Our heart is racing; our lungs take in extra oxygen. Nothing is more important than getting away from the lion. But Sapolsky reminds us that while our bodies are highly effective at helping us escape a lion attack, they are not so great at managing chronic attacks.
Let’s say someone needs Snap to feed their family. They look at their EBT balance and it’s at zero: the amygdala is triggered and fear sets in. But this is not going to be a quick chase and done. Once they figure out lunch, they have to figure out dinner and breakfast after that – again and again. It’s a lot of lions lying in wait. The lions are still there now because although the Senate has reached a deal to end the shutdown, it’s unclear just how that will affect Snap benefits.
The worst part is that we lose the full effectiveness of our prefrontal cortex, the reasonable part of us that makes us who we are. This part of the brain makes good, sound decisions; plans things out long-term; and helps us feel in control and competent.
The result? We become stingier, focused on our own survival. We are more prone – no matter our sense of ethics and our upbringings – to shoplift, take risky short cuts, or cheat to get ahead of the lion. The adage “desperate times call for desperate measures” becomes a way of life. Our brains in poverty, hunger, financial crises, are not thinking things through or analyzing situations with complexity.
And this is the adult brain with its fully grown prefrontal cortex, which reaches maturity around 25 years of age. Children and teens, with their still-growing brains, carry the brunt, and most destructive and long-lasting repercussions, because their brains are still developing. If you’re a child worried your parents might not be able to provide food for your family, your brain isn’t focused on the usual tasks: growing, creating new neural pathways, mastering new skills, maintaining emotional regulation or keeping you well.
Instead you are malnourished and compromised. And the effects could stay with you for a lifetime.
‘I sometimes worry’
Lola helps her brothers with their homework and puts them to bed when her mom works nights. Naomi said Lola is a good helper, and the compliment made the teen light up with a smile.
“What do you think will happen now that your family didn’t get food stamps this month, Lola?” I asked. They don’t know it yet, but the half payment won’t hit their accounts for a few days.
“She’ll work more to make money for food,” Lola looked out to the sun setting slowly over Mount Charleston. “I sometimes worry someone will rob the store or shoot her, or she won’t come home.”
Researchers in the Journal of Nutrition and Dietetics’ study talked firsthand to kids, teens and their families about food insecurity. They discovered kids worried about how much the family had, that their parents were working too hard. Some children took it out on people around them by being aggressive. Others were embarrassed for their friends to find out their family struggled and felt that hiding their situation protected their caregivers. In school, these kids could be hyperactive. They may talk back, have trouble concentrating, and experience much higher rates of absenteeism and lost learning. Others were argumentative and oppositional with teachers and students. Some children internalized their stress and have bouts of anxiety and depression.
For Lola, it shows up in her everyday routine – and insomnia.
“She can’t sleep until I get home,” Naomi said as she caressed her daughter’s hair.
Lola said she worries mostly at night – when the boys are asleep and she is alone with her thoughts, stove light on, dishes cleaned and drying in the rack, couch bed pulled out, waiting for her mother to come home to her and make it all better.
* Names have been changed
