The U.S. House will soon consider $16.5 billion in cuts to nutrition assistance programs, and I can’t help but think about hungry kids.

You know those “kids eat free” signs we see from time to time at area restaurants? Well, they could be tacked permanently to lunchroom walls in schools with high numbers of poor kids.

Which got me wondering: Do these very children lack for food in the summer months? Are kids out there going hungry or eating poorly because financial resources are scarce?

Nine months of the year when school bells sound some 375,000 Minnesota kids from low- income families receive either free or reduced-price meals daily through the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs, courtesy of the federal government and taxpayers, with numbers swelling.

Yet only about 20 percent of those hungry school kids sign on to the similar federally funded Summer Food Program.

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