Regardless of what you think of the parents, it's certainly not the kids fault their parents failed to provide them food, for whatever reason. I don't care if the reason their parents couldn't afford the time or money to pack a lunch is because they spend it all on collecting nazi memorabilia and kicking orphaned puppies. I still want their children to be appropriately fed.
You are right it's not the kid's fault, and that they should be properly fed by the state since their parents are bad parents, but that doesn't mean you can't blame and call out the parents.
I refuse to indulge in the false fantasy that a household where each parent(s) works multiple minimum wage jobs is “lazy” for not preparing homemade lunches for their children. Also, in the US, many lower-income households are in “food deserts”, where there is a lack of grocery stores selling fresh food and a preponderance of convenience stores selling processed foods. In a country where the top 1% of households possess a third of the country’s wealth and the bottom 50% of households only possess 2.5%, poverty, malnourishment, and undereducation are choices made for the poor by the rich ruling class.
USA is the richest country in the world, people there, even the ones at the bottom of the work ladder, have access to riches that for most of the people on the planet are only dreams. You have no idea what it is to be poor or to live next to actual poverty (even I have no idea, and I live in a country that's poorer, and that when I was younger much poorer than the USA).
94% of adult Americans drive a car. Anyone there can go to a store that sells vegetables and raw meat, buy it, and prepare a proper meal that's cheaper than some deep-fried, frozen processed crap.
Enough with the performative virtue signaling. It's all so tiresome. Nobody in the USA goes hungry unless they really choose too at every single step in their lives.
Please explain to me how advocating for material policies for the poor, funded by taxes that come out of my pocket, is "performative virtue signaling." Does this phrase just mean "any kindness whatsoever" at this point?
The taxes come out of every taxpayers' pockets - forcibly - not from your pocket, as you seem to think. If you want to do charity, do it with your own money, your own time and your own effort.
Wanting to redistribute other people's private property doesn't make you a good person, it makes you a tyrant, the degree of which is only limited by your power.
Healthy food actually costs less than pre processed crap. But it does take a lot more time and effort to prepare.