Food security "refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Worldwide around 852 million people are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty, while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degrees of poverty".
The article "Household food insecurity contributes to overweight in children" According to the article: "Both household food insecurity and childhood overweight are significant problems in the United States. Paradoxically, being food-insecure may be an underlying contributor to being overweight. A study of almost 8,500 low-income children ages 1 month to 5 years, published in the October 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, suggests an association between household food insecurity and overweight prevalence in this low-income population. However, sex and age appear to modify both the magnitude and direction of the association."Is this a mental or physical problem? I'd be interested to obtain views on what other implications of food security/insecurity could be?
Regards,
Mehmet
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Coming from a country where the reverse of this phenomenon is true, children are underweight and malnuarished BECAUSE of food insecurity. this insecurity is multifaceted with issues of limited access to land to produce as one of the major ones, as women who are the main producers of food at household level, very rarely have control on or own the land they use, there is high chance that they cannot support their families adequately or longterm.
ReplyDeleteHIV/AIDS which affects the ability for one to work adequately also greatly affects household food security, with children bearing the brunt.
The fact that HIV/AIDS has affected the most productive age-group leaving elderly people, who are less able to produce to the maximum, to take care of orphaned children leaves homes even more food insecure.
Changes in climate affect the predictability of planting and leads to lower harvests.
All these seem to be physical challenges.
The example of the U.S seems to be more mental projection. It strikes me that there it is about 'eat now incase we cant tomorrow' is like a binge.