Food poverty sees disadvantaged London children go hungry
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Disadvantaged children in London are going without meals or eating poor quality food because their parents are living in poverty, research suggests.
A study by the University of Reading found 71 per cent of families supported by south London charity Kids Company said they sometimes or often did not have enough food to eat.
The research, involving a survey and interviews of 72 families with children aged five to 11, also revealed that 86 per cent described their food security as “very low”, and 13 per cent as “low”.
Food security is a term used by the World Health Organisation to describe when people have access to sufficient food at all times to live a healthy life.
Lack of money to pay for sufficient amounts or quality of food was a concern for nearly all of the study participants, with 94 per cent of households regularly worrying about not being able to replenish food and 92 per cent saying they often or sometimes could not afford to eat balanced, healthy meals.
Although, in most cases, parents said they went without food before their children, more than four-fifths said their children were not eating enough because they were unable to meet the cost, while 60 per cent said they had been forced to reduce their family’s meal portion sizes.
For many children in the study, schools and Kids Company's after-school club were the only source of a nutritious meal.
The study said that food insecurity is linked to poor mental health as well as behavioural problems in children, while research has shown malnourished children struggle more in education.
A number of families in the study said poor-quality, often temporary, accommodation negatively impacted on their food security, and some relied largely on takeaway meals when eating at home.
The study, by Kate Harvey, states: “Many children reported having meals from takeaway food shops every week, and for some this was the source of most meals at home. Given the likely nutritional quality of takeaway food, it is possible that reliance on it is contributing to the increased incidence of obesity in Lambeth.”
Research earlier this year by the Children’s Rights Alliance for England shows that 32 per cent of children in the south London borough of Lambeth - where Kids Company is based - live in poverty compared with 20 per cent nationally. There is a higher incidence of underweight and overweight children in the borough than the national averages.
