LONDON — Back in The New York Times newsroom on a recent trip to New York, I came across some children’s literature. The slim pamphlets, in bright colors and featuring beloved cartoon characters, were about subjects like teeth brushing and healthy eating, and I immediately thought I had to pick them up for my kids.

The little books were in an area where reporters and editors leave material they didn’t solicit. As you can imagine, we receive lots.

Whoever had received the little booklets featuring the characters from Sesame Street, an American and now a global children’s television show broadcast in 140 countries, had put them unopened on the discard shelf for anyone to take.

Since we had just started teeth-brushing with my 2-year-old twins and I didn’t think we were doing too well, I was ecstatic to see the Sesame Street tooth-brushing book.

I grabbed the three other pamphlets on healthy eating, too.

When I finally got around to opening the literature what I found shocked me. In the booklet entitled “Food for Thought: Eating Well on a Budget” there was a section called “Family Food Talk.”

In it, the writer, Leslie Kimmelman, advised parents: “You may notice big brothers or sisters making sacrifices without being asked. They may choose to skip meals or encourage their younger sibling to eat less food. Reassure them by saying: ‘Our whole family needs to eat and keep our bodies strong. You need to eat, too.’ Offer ideas for positive ways they can help the family. Older children can help make a shopping list, plan menus, and prepare meals.”

My happy feelings of having secured yet another learning opportunity for my boys dissolved into a heaviness I could feel in my chest and my stomach.

In a section of the book called “Let’s Talk About It,” the writer suggested ways to answer your children’s questions:

Why don’t we have enough food?

It’s just the way things are right now. But I’m getting help and I’m working hard to make sure we get the food we need. Should I eat less so you can have some food?

No, it’s important for you to eat and stay healthy. I’m finding ways to make our food last longer. If I need to, I will ask for more help. Will we have enough to eat?

We don’t have a lot of money right now, but I love you and I’m doing everything I can to make sure we have food to eat.

It was a cold dose of reality for me.

I grew up poor and our family was sometimes on welfare and food stamps, but my own children’s experience was the polar opposite: they had more food than they could eat, and they ate a lot. Organic everything. French cheeses … in France.

That Sesame Workshop, the non-profit educational organization behind Sesame Street, and their partners (UnitedHealthcare, an American health insurer, and Merck Company Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the drug giant) had created this literature meant that there was a need for it, a need so great that it had reached the corporate offices of these institutions.

There were that many children going hungry in America. Last year Sesame Street aired a one-hour special about a character, Lily, who sometimes went to bed hungry.

One of the other pamphlets I picked up featured Big Bird, arguably the most recognizable Sesame Street character (perhaps supplanted by Elmo for my children’s generation). In “A Delicious Day,” Big Bird visits his cousin Natalie and Granny Bird and they take a trip to a food pantry.

“What’s a food pantry?” Big Bird asked. “I’ve never heard of that.”

Natalie explained, “A food pantry is a place we go to when we need help getting food.”

Clearly, “Food for Thought” is meant to help parents (as much as children) who are worried about poverty’s effect on their children’s psychology as well as nutrition.

“A Delicious Day” seems to be aimed more at educating children about other children’s lives.

Surely, having this literature is better than not having it. But wouldn’t it be better not to need it?

Compared with other developed nations, the United States is an abysmal place to be needy, including for children.

Almost 1 in 5 American children are at risk of suffering from hunger, according to the foundation of ConAgra Foods, the huge food company. Nearly a third of children in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital, live in homes without “consistent access to food,” according to the foundation. Download a complete United States Department of Agriculture report on childhood hunger.

But what kind of society are we that there are millions of children asking their parents — or worse, themselves — whether they should eat? When will we decide that this is not who we are — or at least not who we want to be?