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Many poor children rely on school lunches for their only square meal a day.

“There isn’t a long history of famine here. But most other places in the world, across Europe and China, people know how to eat well with less,” said Andrew Coe, a food historian and co-author of “A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression.”

But when I was there, conditions were such that only one square meal a day was assured - and please do not ask how the sauce tasted.

Although Coe and Ziegelman once co-wrote a history of foie gras, their latest project is “A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression,” a thick volume that examines a complex decade in American dining.

Going by the utterances of the politicians and economists, the poor are meant to be unequal even when it comes down to basic necessities like one square meal a day.