[IanCal]

There are fundamentally two different things going on here.

One is whether kids should get fed.

The other is how this is paid for.

The approach of "the child is charged like anyone else buying a thing and hopefully their parents have given them money" is easy but has obvious problems that we're talking about.

However we can split these problems up, one is saying that we will just feed the kids as a flat statement. Then the problem is how to pay for it.

You could have state level taxes, but that's not the only option. On the other end of the spectrum you could send a bill to the parents - this is at its core the same as charging the kids in the best case but avoids issues where people don't give the kids the money. You could do that but have programs to only charge the more fortunate. You could do it by taxes on income, you could do it by income but only if you have kids. You could do it with property taxes.

All have various benefits and drawbacks, as what's "fair" is arguable.

However that is all distinct from whether the kids get fed.