enlarge Jim Evans/Blethen Maine News Service

Harmonie Hagerman, at home in Augusta with her husband, Carlton Trott, and younger daughter, Delia, is determined to provide her two children a healthy diet.

That seeming contradiction really isn't one, though, when you consider what a limited food dollar buys.

Sitting on the front steps of her apartment on Augusta's busy Cony Circle, Harmonie Hagerman, 29, listens anxiously for her baby daughter to wake up from her nap. All's still quiet, so she leans back on the top step.

She speaks about how difficult it is to feed her two children good food on the limited wages she and her husband earn.

Her husband works full-time for a sandwich shop in Augusta, where he earns $10.50 an hour but gets no benefits. She works 15 hours a week at Lincoln Elementary School and in the city's recreation program.

Both went to college, but their wages are so low that they qualify for several assistance programs. They get both food stamps and vouchers for infant food from the federal Women, Infants and Children program.

"Fresh vegetables are important," says Hagerman, "but expensive. Junk food is cheaper. ... If you don't know how to cook, you end up buying frozen pizzas, two for six bucks. Of course these kids look porky, because fat is cheap."

Hagerman sums up what scientists and policy makers have also determined: Today's version of hunger in the United States is, as Dr. Sydney Sewall says, "nutritional deprivation, not calorie deprivation."

Sewall, a pediatrician and head of medicine at Augusta's MaineGeneral Health, says cheap food is nutrition-poor and calorie-dense.

So a child may feel full after eating doughnuts for breakfast, and will have consumed a lot of calories in the process, but two things result from that kind of diet: Children will get fat but won't get the nutrition they need to grow and function well. That's how obesity afflicts some of our hungriest children.

So providing good food for her family takes hard thinking and planning, Hagerman says.

"With the food stamps we get, a lot of people don't know how to spend them wisely. I buy large packs of chicken on sale to freeze, enough so there's at least enough to feed Maisie (her 4 1/2-year-old daughter) for a month."

Her family's intake of fresh vegetables is limited, says Hagerman. But, she says, "I am not going to feed my children canned vegetables and processed food." She's determined that even if she and her husband must go without, her girls will not - although it can cost up to $50 a week for fresh produce for her family of four.

But lack of money isn't the only reason many Maine children are malnourished. Teachers, social workers, government employees, even other parents will say that some parents don't care, know or do enough to feed their children adequately.

At Waterville's Alfond Youth Center, where hundreds of children are fed daily after school, Assistant Executive Director Chuck Karter tells of kids going home to fix their own meals: "a box of Pop-Tarts and 20 Oreos."

"The parents need to be able to take care of themselves before they can take care of kids," he says. "They're either working so hard or they're not doing anything."