LOS ANGELES — There is a short story by Margaret Atwood that is a kind of modern parable about why, though there is enough food in the world to feed everyone, there is still hunger. I have assigned “Bread” many times in my high school class, mostly because of the critical thinking required to understand it but also because hunger is something to which students can relate.

Youth is a time of great hunger for many things, not the least of which is food. Even kids who are well-fed and cared for in reasonably stable economic circumstances are hungry. Teachers have always had at least some students who are not fed because their economic circumstances are anything but stable ‒ more of them amid the government shutdown that paused the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. For the first time in the food stamp program’s 60-year history, a shutdown withheld federal funding for SNAP.

Nearly 42 million Americans rely on SNAP, including 16 million........

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