Nutrition and malnutrition are ongoing issues all over the world. The longer I am involved in the early childhood field, the more concerned I am about nutrition. I create the menus for my center and have to make sure they are healthy and child friendly. I cringe when I see all the wasted food, especially when I introduce something new. Last week we had veggie burgers that actually had bits of carrots, peppers, and potatoes that could be seen in the burger. My younger children ate them without a problem, my four and five year olds asked many questions and were very cautious about these burgers. At the end of lunch, there were a lot of veggie burgers to throw away. I know that I have to offer new foods to children at least three different times before children get to know the new foods. I will not give up on the veggie burgers, but I did give up on brussel sprouts. Good nutrition is important for children to learn at an early age because it lays a foundation for healthy eating later in life.
I personally have not seen anyone malnourished, only in pictures and on television. I have seen what food insecurity does to children because of some the foster children that have passed through my center. I had one foster child who had food withheld from her as punishment and in turn, she would shove everything in her mouth as fast as she could, making herself throw up. I "raised" her in my center from the age of twelve months to five years. We had to constantly monitor her while she was eating and just give her a little food at a time. Her foster family was in the process of adopting her and were very helpful as they had the same problem at home. By the time she was four, we tried a new technique with her eating habits. From the age of three, my teachers let the children serve themselves and pour their own milk, so of course she filled her plate full. We taught her to slow down her eating by putting her fork down after taking a bite and when she swallowed everything, she could pick up her fork and go for another bite. This helped quite a lot. I had another foster child that never knew where her next meal was coming from so she hid her food. Her foster parents would find cookies and crackers in her pockets when they picked her up from the center. They even said that they found a whole loaf of bread under her pillow one morning. I do not know what became of this child, but the other girl I wrote about is happy, healthy, and still eats fast.
Nutrition is important to me because of all the children that I have been exposed to. Parents think that their little roly-poly child is so cute, but after a few years, this child is very overweight and has a difficult time participating in activities with other children. These are the children that come in the center in the morning eating hash browns or cookies. There was one five year old in my center that was so obese that he could not cross his legs when he sat down, so my teachers had to make sure there was extra space in front of him so he could sit with his legs straight out in front. Situations like this are very sad. Obesity leads to a lot of physical issues and hurts a child's self-esteem.
"Malnutrition is directly responsible for 300,00 deaths per year in children younger than 5 years in developing countries and contributes indirectly to over half of all deaths in children worldwide" (Shashidar, 2013, p.1). The Horn of Africa experiences many droughts during different years which leads to malnutrition for a large population of people. World Wide aid workers help to treat malnutrition by giving out "ready-to-eat foods" which they call therapeutic foods. These foods produce the greatest weight gain in the shortest times. Some of the foods offered are items that contain vegetable fats, dry skimmed milk, powders that can be cooked as porridge, and biscuits. Toxic stress, which includes malnutrition, for these children give them a greater risk of developing cognitive, behavioral, and emotional issues. "In the Horn of Africa, some 566,000 children are currently facing severe malnutrition and their survival is at risk" (Early Childhood Development in the Horn of Africa, 2011, p. 1). Clean water is also a problem for the countries in the Horn of Africa causing diseases complicated with the malnutrition.
Nutrition and malnutrition is not just in the poor countries, it is also in the United States; in our own city. I am grateful that I provide two nutritious meals and a snack to all the children who come through my center as I know that some just eat junk food at home. The food bank here in Wichita, Kansas has a program that my director's organization supports that is called "Food 4 Kids." Teachers in the low income schools identify children who has food insecurities knowing that this child will probably not have food during the weekend. A backpack is given to a child on Friday after school with easy to open foods that he can eat over the weekend. Some children depend on these backpacks or would be forging for food elsewhere. My surprise is how many high school students receive these backpacks with food. Like the commercial with the snicker bar who turns the "divas" back to regular people, these backpacks help keep children's hunger at bay.
Shashidar, H.R. (2013). Malnutrition. Medscape. Retrieved from,
http://www,emedicine.medscape.com/article/985140-overview
Early childhood development in the Horn or Africa. (2011). Relief Web. Retrieved
from, http://reliefweb.int/report/somalia/early-childhood-development-horn-africa
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