This year, Anti-Poverty Week 2024 (13-19 October) continues its campaign to end child poverty in Australia. Dr Bonnie Searle (@BonnieSearle3) from The University of Queensland (@UQ_News) and the Life Course Centre (@lifecourseAust) has been examining meals in early childhood centres for children experiencing poverty, and how ensuring the quality and quantity of the food can help children thrive from an early age.
Mealtimes at Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) are more than simply filling hungry tummies. It provides opportunities to serve good nutrition to support healthy brain growth and, through interactions with educators, to learn about new food and food preferences. With around 95 per cent of Australian children attending ECEC services, these centres are ideally placed for interventions to support child development, and especially for those who live in circumstances of disadvantage.
We assume we don’t have a hunger problem in Australia because we’re a developed country, but today around one in six children in Australia are living in poverty and 27 per cent of families with children at home experience severe food insecurity. A recent Foodbank Report illustrated the extent of worsening hunger and food insecurity in this country. Multiple risk factors place children experiencing food insecurity at a high risk of sub-optimal social-emotional, physical, and academic development (Shankar 2017).
Roadblocks to nutritious meals
Recent research which focused on meals consumed by children in ECEC services in communities experiencing high levels of developmental vulnerability in Queensland demonstrated that the food did not meet national dietary recommendations. This research found that the quality and quantity of food across the board was low. In the ECEC centres with families experiencing lowest incomes and highest levels of food insecurity, meals often were not provided by the service. Typically, children with home-made lunches were reminded not to eat too much in the morning, to ensure their lunchbox food lasted all day.
The capacity of a family experiencing poverty to pack a nutritious lunchbox can be constrained for many reasons. For example, freshly prepared lunchbox food is often highly perishable, requires time and mental energy to plan and prepare, and may not fare well in a lunchbox environment, making it more likely to be wasted. Meanwhile packaged foods such as crackers and chips, which have a longer shelf life, are often highly palatable to children and can be repacked if not eaten, are often less nutritious. Additionally, many remote and rural locations in Australia have limited access to fresh food at affordable prices.
Well-intentioned attempts to address a lack of nutritious food in lunchboxes and promote health has resulted in the practice of ECEC services regulating the order in which food should be eaten, with ‘healthy choices’ eaten first. This may decrease nutritious food preferences and increase liking for restricted foods (Boots 2019) and place shame and stigma on children whose lunchbox do not meet ‘healthy’ standards (Karrebaek, 2012). Families experiencing poverty are often under considerable stress, managing limited resources (time and money) and this needs to be considered when planning interventions for food in ECEC.
How to improve nutrition for Australian children
Early Childhood Education and Care services are a policy investment that have been shown to avert developmental risk and promote optimal development in the crucial early years before formal schooling (White 2015).
Government policies in countries such as Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States provide universal or subsidised meals to ECEC and schools, providing a safety net for children and reducing the financial burden of food for families. For example, Head Start and Child and Adult Care Food (CACFP) Programs in the United States provide subsidies directly to ECEC and have demonstrated effectiveness in reducing family food insecurity (Drennan 2019).
A food subsidy system in Australia would reduce burden on families and ECEC services and support child development and health. Robust support systems and monitoring would also make certain children are provided with good quality and nutritious food. As the cost of living continues to rise, this would ensure that the most vulnerable children are assured equitable access to nutritious food in the developmentally crucial years before school.