Newly Poor Swell Lines at Food Banks

“A deadbeat husband and a loss of a job,” said one woman in her 20s, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she did not want her friends to know she had been visiting the pantry.

It was her second visit. The first time, she could barely get out of her car. “Let me put it this way — it took me a long time to come here,” she said as she added a bag of lentils to her cart. “I felt like a loser. I felt like a total lowlife.”