Posted on 06/12/2005 5:00:16 AM PDT by Libloather
More babies, young kids going hungry in US
Sat Jun 11, 11:00 PM ET
An American butcher. Increasing numbers of young American children are showing signs of serious malnourishment, fueled by a greater prevalence of hunger in the United States, while, paradoxically, two-thirds of the US population is either overweight or obese(AFP/File/Stan Honda)
BALTIMORE, United States (AFP) - Increasing numbers of young American children are showing signs of serious malnourishment, fueled by a greater prevalence of hunger in the United States, while, paradoxically, two-thirds of the US population is either overweight or obese.
In 2003, 11.2 percent of families in the United States experienced hunger, compared with 10.1 percent in 1999, according to most recent official figures, released on National Hunger Awareness Day held this year on Tuesday, June 7.
Some pediatricians worry that cuts in welfare aid proposed in President George W. Bush's 2006 budget will only exacerbate the situation. By contrast Bush plans to keep tax cuts for more affluent sectors of the population, they note.
In the working class port city of Baltimore, Maryland, Dr. Maureen Black, a pediatrician, sees numbers of underweight babies in her clinic specialized in infant malnutrition located in one of the poorer areas.
"In the first year of life, children triple their birth weight," said Black, "and if children do not have enough to eat during those very early very times, you first see that their weight will falter and then their height will falter."
"If their height falters enough and they experience stunting under age two, they are then at risk for academic and behaviour problems" at school, said Black.
Dr. Deborah Frank, a professor of pediatrics at Boston University's School of Medicine, who also runs a specialised clinic for malnourished babies, has similar concerns.
"We are seeing more and more very young babies under a year of age which is a particular concern because they are most likely to die of under nutrition, and also their brains are growing very very rapidly," said Frank, in a telephone interview.
"A baby's brain increases 2.5 times in size in the first year of life," she says, adding that if the baby fails to get the nutritional building blocks he or she needs for the brain to develop, a child can have lifelong difficulties in behaviour and learning.
But infant-child protection centers do not exist in the United States, unlike it other countries, such as France, which makes children below the age of three or four years old somewhat invisible to authorities, laments Frank. "They don't come to my clinic until they are already quite underweight.
"Recently I have been alarmed because we are getting more children who are so ill that they go to hospital rather than they come to the clinic first" a situation which, in 20 years of practising medicine, Frank had seen reverse.
Some children in the United States occasionally look like the malnourished children we see in some parts of Africa, however, welfare programs targeting society's poorest ensures that problem is generally avoided, the pediatricians say.
Paradoxically, malnutrition is not always due to lack of food -- rather to the quality of the food being consumed.
"People often ask me how many children go to bed hungry. The answer is the parents work very hard so they don't go to bed feeling hungry. The parents try to fill the baby up with french fries and soda pop," said Frank.
In some areas, green vegetables and fruit are impossible to buy -- even in a can, because there may be no supermarket. Moreover, such items are costly.
"What happens in America is -- what seems bizarre -- that some of the recommendations that we give to families to prevent underweight of children are the same as we give to prevent overweight," said Black. "We recommend families not to give their children junk food."
In some families, eating junk food will mean one child is obese while the other is underweight, said Black. "The first will eat junk food and nothing else, the second will eat junk food and everything else."
Unfortunately dumb people DO NOT read pamflets. They need to be shown what to do.
Probably he does.
I know how your mother must of felt. I breastfed my first son, no problems.... With my second son four years later I could not. I tried for three months, I noticed he was not doing well. When I took him to the doctor he said it was my milk... I had to put him on soy formula... Both of my sons now in their twenty's are very healthy.
Something else I should have mentioned -- don't know if it has anything to do with this, but ---
Mom had bouts of anemia. In fact, anemia seems to run in her family. I don't know why -- Mom always ate healthy and she took nutritional supplements, so I don't think it was anything she did or didn't do. And I have the same tendency.
Thank you. :)
Trust me, some believe that women who don't breastfeed their children are lazy (I guess that would include me), without hearing the circumstances of the individual. I am a huge proponent of breastfeeding, but I am not going to call a mother a bad parent if she doesn't breastfeed. FWIW, my three little ones are completely healthy, active, and bright children, and they were mainly formula fed.
Your mom sounds like she did the right thing :)
Yes, and the cost is the only argument for the individuals for whom the parent/child relationship has no inherent value.
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And thank you too. :)
My mom was the kind who, when she had a problem, she went to extraordinary lengths to try to solve it. She didn't give up after one feeble, half-hearted attempt. She was by no means lazy. I do remember that she said she was made to feel like a bad parent when she tried to breastfeed and couldn't, and I think she may have carried some guilt around with her for a long time afterwards. That was, in my view, entirely unfair.
Where do you live that you can get name brand beans and corn that cheap?
Should have known...from France!
There are no such thing as food stamps anymore. When welfare was reformed during the Clinton administration one of the things changed was the food stamp program.
You see, it is degrading for a poor person to be forced to present food stamps in front of other cash-paying customers! So what did the government do? It replaced food stamps with an ATM card. This ATM card can be used in certain locations to withdraw real, green, American cash.
So what do these people do? They withdraw cash and spend the money on drugs, booze, whatever and hit up the food banks for staples. I knew a young woman who regularly spent her "food-stamp" cash on crack and expected her parents to feed her two children (which they gladly did).
I imagine many of these undernourished kids in Baltimore are seeing their food stamp money spent elsewhere.
I am not. BTW, if I had a cat I would not feed him with the canned cat "food".
Guess who was a prime mover of the elimination of the "degrading" food stamps in favor of the ATM card?
John McCain!
"I always tell the hand wringers that there is NO poverty in this country - except by choice. If children are going hungry, then the parents are not working or availing themselves of federal programs. In either case, the children should be put into state care becuase the parents are unfit morons."
"Are there no Prisons? Are there no work houses? Those who are badly off should go there, and those that had be like to die, let them do it, and decrease the surplus population..."
The USDA sponsors the Child Nutrition Program, The Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Summer Food Service Program. http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/About/AboutCNP.htm Every child in America that is hungry is eligible to receive food.
>A. Pole, I don't think they were saying canned food was equal to fresh. The article said there was no canned food or that it was overpriced. I'm sure eveyrone knows canned food is not the same as fresh.<
Take note that nowhere in the article does this dishonest shill of a writer mention the availability of frozen vegetables in this country.
The writer harps on the problem of underweight babies. There are plenty of food programs in this country to supply formula and jarred baby food.
However, the parent must make some sort of effort to obtain the help, then must make an effort to see the child is regularly fed.
What does the author expect President Bush to do? Go to the homes of these irresponsible, ignorant people and stand over them to make sure they care for their children?
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