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."
Wouldn't a Williams-Sowell radio or TV show be great?
Love to listen to them together.
Something along the lines of Hannity and what's his face.
No, they are ignorant. The best proof how widespread such ignorance is even among Freepers are the recommendations of the canned vegetables posted on this thread.
Canned food CANNOT substitute for the real thing.
The left becomes more and more childish in their articles and statements as time goes on..I cant believe the number of morons in this country who fall for all of this crap..
Oh man. What a crock of crap.
First of all, the WIC program exists to supplement the foods for pregnant women, and children to the age of 5. I have needed WIC for years. You get milk, cereal, peanut butter, eggs, cheese, baby food, and formula (if you don't breastfeed. If you do you get tuna and carrots). In our state you also get checks for fresh produce in the summer.
The main problem with infant malnutrition is formula. A baby should be fed by his mother's breast. It is nature's perfect food. Breastfed babies are stronger, healtier, better weight, more intelligent, less prone to illness, more secure.
What I envision here are lazy, stupid welfare women to watch Jerry Springer and soaps all day, who are too ignorant to breastfeed and too indifferent to make the formula properly or feed their baby at proper intervals.
These women no doubt also get food stamps, and if they made healthy choice with the monies being given them, their children would be healthy.
There are also food banks galore in the country in almost every area that provide extra food if you need it. There is not a person or child in the US that goes hungry simply because there is no way to get food to them. Blame it on stupid, ignorant, lazy parents who do not work to care for their children and fee the right.
What gooner being put out by the media!!!!
Being obese can be a result of bad food (cans, junk food etc ...)
In other words, we need to teach them the basics of life, and how to fend for themselves. Wait a minute, I have a solution...what they need are more social programs, that'll help I'm sure.
Every Social Services Department has pamphlets on "good nutrition".
That, of course, is not to suggest that every poor person is on Welfare...but at least nutritional material is available there.
Additionally, most if not all areas have food banks to supplement food stamps.
On awakening this morning, 99.765% of Americans experienced hunger.
Meaningless garbage from those more experienced in Kabuki Theater than we.
Where do government and NGO statistics come from? Why they make them up specially for the occasion.
Yes, but the article says kids are going "hungry." It doesn't suggest malnutrition. You don't suppose the headline writer had an agenda, do you?
To be fair, there are some women out there who cannot breastfeed. My late mother told me she could not do it...what little she could produce did not have much nutritional value, so she had to put both my brother and me on formula. She told me there was great stigma put on her because she couldn't breastfeed (usually by male doctors).
But as you said...if you cannot breastfeed...there are formulas out there, usually at little or no cost.
Do share old wise one...
Every Social Services Department has pamphlets on "good nutrition".
***
I have been going through some of my mother's things since her passing last year, and one of the items I came across was an old decrepid cookbook from about the 1940's. Tucked in there was a rather worn magazine article from around that era, entitled "How to Feed a Family of Four on $15 Per Week."
So such information is available, and probably always has been.
"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."
Trickle-down Food-a-Nomics! ;)
I've lived at "poverty" levels myself in the past and I've never lacked for a thing, and I've always had food, clothing, etc. to share with others that have fallen on hard times.
One of the PROBLEMS with a lack of proper nutrition for children is that CHILDREN are raising CHILDREN and they, themselves have probably never been taught how to shop for food, or budget or any of those relatively important Life Skills that are so lacking in both their parents and in our schools.
I hate, hate, hate, to see little kids suffer (if indeed they are), but until they get to the root of the problem, it's never going to be solved. And then, the problem of hunger in the US or the world is never going to be solved anyway because:
a) There's money to be made off of poor people (Social Services; the UN, et al.)
b) We've always had an "underclass" and there will always BE an underclass. Unless Socialism/Communism wins, and then we're all going to be at the bottom of the barrel together and the Dems will peek over the edge from time to time to throw us scraps from their table.
Ignorance causes most breastfeeding problems.
I will only say that if something happened to your late mother then it was ignorance on her part, the doctors' part, and society's part. How did the doctor's know her milk was of no "nutritional value?" Did they have it tested and compared with the corn syrup-and-whey crap they call formula? Breast milk is thinner and bluish and does not resemble cow's milk. Yet is it superior in every way to milk from a cow, mixed with chemicals, which is given to human babies for food.. Cow's milk, is excellent, however, for growing the brains and bodies of baby cows. Breastmilk is also caused by the law of supply and demand. You need to nurse on demans, when baby is hungry. No supplements of water in bottles, no pacifiers, no nothing. Just the mother's breast. I can almost guarantee that your mother's failure had something to do with nurses giving her babies water bottles in the hospital (confusing the baby's sucking reflex), using pacificers, NOT nursing on demand, supplementing with formula. These are all recipies for nursing failire. I am sorry to have to be blunt but I have breastfed six children and have written professionally about breastfeeding.
Your mom should have gotten the service of a professional lactation consultant, or contacted La Leche League for a leader who would have personally come to her home and helped her learn how to breastfeed properly. Perhaps you and your family will do better in the future. There are many good books out today, one I like is "Breastfeeding: Pure and Simple" by Gwen Gotsch, and of course, the breastfeeding classic "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding."
I worked for a company that renovated HUD projects.
One couple and their teenaged daughter bragged about drinking three cases of beer a day. The proof was in our construction dumpster every morning. The beer they drank was $9.00 a case at the time. That's @ $800.00 a month in welfare money a month. The teenage daughter had a young child by the way.
With all due respect to your expertise....
My brother and I were born in the early 1950's in a small town without much in the way of medical resources. We didn't have breastfeeding consultants -- we didn't even have pediatricians. We had one old fashioned doctor (the kind who made house calls in the middle of the night) who did it all. I believe a nurse taught my mother what to do before she left the hospital with my brother, and my mother had sisters and friends who tried to help her. My mother was not by any means ignorant or lazy or stupid. Even though we did have just the one doctor, she did seek out advice from other doctors -- those are the ones who called her lazy and incompetent. She did try her best to breastfeed my brother (he's older than I) and even though she wasn't successful then, she tried with me when I came along 2-1/2 years later. It didn't work either time.
No, there was no nutritional analysis, but it became rapidly obvious that my brother and I were both malnourished. If I remember right from what Mom told me -- both my brother and me had severe colic caused by an allergy to cow's milk. I believe she wound up having to use some kind of soy-based formula.
Believe me, if my mother could have, she would have breastfed both of us. But it just didn't happen. And whatever was in that soy formula must not have been bad -- brother and I both grew up healthy.
This story is run under the AFP banner. Who is AFP? What news agency is that? Why no name of the author? How do I find the details on the owners, editors, etc. of the AFP?
Where was their concern for Terri Schindler?
Oh and I was very hungry yesterday when I had to skip lunch. Does that count?
Cost is less than turning the kids over to the state to support too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.