Food Insecurity and Risk for Obesity Among Children and Families: Is There a Relationship?
A Research Synthesis by Healthy Eating Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, April, 2010
The majority of U.S. households are food secure, meaning they have steady and dependable access to enough food to support active, healthy lives for all household members. Unfortunately, the remaining15 percent of U.S. households have limited or uncertain access to adequate food—they are food insecure.
Members of these food-insecure households use a number of coping strategies, such as eating a less varied diet, participating in federal food and nutrition assistance programs, and obtaining emergency food from community food pantries and kitchens. However, an increasing proportion of households (from 3.1 percent of households in 2000 to 5.7 percent of households in 2008) are unable to avoid periodic reductions in food intake and disruptions to their normal eating patterns. While most households are able to shield children from reduced food intake, in more than 500,000 households across the United States children as well as adults experience periods when their normal eating patterns are disrupted by a lack of adequate food.
