The rising cost of being in the National Guard: Reservists and guardsmen are twice as likely to be hungry as other American groups

In some cases military families don’t take advantage of food assistance programs. Even before the pandemic, perceived stigma deterred military families who qualified for free or reduced-price school meals from taking advantage of such programs, said Josh Protas, vice president of public policy for MAZON, a Jewish hunger organization that works with military families. The past year exacerbated the problem, he said, with many low-income military families not availing themselves of, or even aware of, Pandemic EBT, a debit card system that replaced school meals when schools went remote.