Collective Weekly

The first time I learned about food stamps, I was six years old and starting the first grade in a new state. Our family, having just moved from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, was gradually becoming accustomed to the grocery store “giants” of the south. I formed a list in my head of all the new company names—Lowes Foods, Harris Teeter, Kroger, and Food Lion. The list sounded more like an inventory of foreign animals, set with their respective genus and species, than a compilation of grocery store names. Among the disarray of learning new street names and retail shops, I overheard my parents discussing another unfamiliar word, food stamps. I asked my father if grocers stamped our food and if the ink would get into our mouths when we ate it. Though my father laughed and assured me that we weren’t eating ink-saturated food, there were other hidden dangers in the food we purchased. We were just unaware of them at the time.