COST TO CHILDREN

Ample medical evidence shows that chronic hunger, or food insecurity, has a powerful adverse effect on a child’s long-term physical, intellectual, emotional and social development.*

• Hungry children are sick more often, more likely to need to be hospitalized;
• Hungry children suffer growth impairment that precludes their reaching their full physical potential;
• Hungry children incur developmental impairments that limit their physical, intellectual and emotional development.

• Hungry children ages 0-3 years cannot learn as much, as fast, or as well because chronic under-nutrition harms their cognitive development during this critical period of rapid brain growth, actually changing the fundamental neurological architecture of the brain and central nervous system.
• Hungry children do more poorly in school and have lower academic achievement because they cannot concentrate.
• Hungry children have more social and behavioral problems because they feel bad, have less energy for complex social interactions, and cannot adapt as effectively to environmental stresses.

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*  Research reports from the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, Centers for Disease Control, Children’s Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program (C-SNAP), Community Childhood Hunger Identification Project (CCHIP) by the Food Research Action Council (FRAC), National Center for Health Statistics, Tufts University Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy, U.S. Public Health Service, and John Cook, Ph.D., nationally-recognized expert on child hunger at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine.

** Child Food Insecurity: The Economic Impact on Our Nation, released July 2009 by Feeding America, the nation’s food bank network, and ConAgra Food Foundation