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Child food insecurity is measured using parental reports of children's experiences based on an adult-generated conceptualization. Research on other child experiences (e.g. pain, exposure to domestic violence) cautions that children generally best report their own experiences, and parents' reports of children's experiences may lack adequate validity and impede effective intervention. Because this may be true of child food insecurity, we conducted semistructured interviews with mothers, children (age 9-16 y), and other household adults in 26 South Carolina families at risk for food insecurity. Interview transcripts were analyzed using a constant comparative process combining a priori with inductive coding. Child interviews revealed experiences of food insecurity distinct from parent experiences and from parent reports of children's experiences. Children experienced cognitive, emotional, and physical awareness of food insecurity. Children took responsibility for managing food resources through participation in parental strategies, initiation of their own strategies, and generation of resources to provide food for the family. Adults were not always aware of children's experiences. Where adult experiences of food insecurity are conditioned on inadequate money for food, child experiences were grounded in the immediate household social and food environment: quality of child/parent interactions, parent affect and behavior, and types and quantities of foods made available for children to eat. The new, child-derived understanding of what children experience that results from this study provides a critical basis from which to build effective approaches to identify, assess, and respond to children suffering from food insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food insecurity has been associated with overweight status in women. A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain this association, some of which assume that household food insecurity is a cause of overweight. Similar to food insecurity, Food Stamp Program (FSP) participation has been associated with overweight status in women. One longitudinal study has also found a small effect of program participation on obesity status in women. Modeling FSP participation without accounting for the effect of need to participate in the program, as estimated by household food insecurity status, may lead to confounded findings. To estimate the direction and timing of the relation between food insecurity, this study reports on recently available longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The major finding of this paper is that persistent food insecurity was associated with a smaller weight change, controlling for other income and health-related risk factors for weight change. Among persistently food-insecure women, full participation in the FSP offset the weight change. There were no significant associations between change in food insecurity status and weight change in these data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Household food insecurity is associated with multiple adverse outcomes in children and adolescents, including poor school performance. U.S. federal food assistance programs such as the Food Stamp Program (FSP) aim to help prevent household food insecurity and its outcomes. Program participation may act as a resource either to counteract the effects of constraints such as food insecurity or to modify the effects of food insecurity on outcomes. This study aimed to determine whether FSP participation was associated with child reading and mathematics learning, weight gain, and social skills and whether these associations depended on degree of estimated need for the program. Data used were from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten cohort, a large nationally representative sample. A difference (i.e., fixed-effects) model was used to minimize bias in the estimation of association resulting from unmeasured covariates. Starting FSP participation during the 4 years from K to third grade was associated with about a 3-point greater improvement in reading and mathematics score as compared with stopping FSP participation during that period. But it was for female students only that this association was large and significant. Children in households starting FSP participation had slightly but not significantly less weight gain compared with children in households stopping FSP participation. This study provides the strongest evidence to date that FSP participation plausibly has beneficial effects for children on nonnutritional outcomes, specifically academic learning. The mechanisms for this relationship are not well understood and may be through both dietary intake and stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food insecurity has been associated with diverse developmental consequences for U.S. children primarily from cross-sectional studies. We used longitudinal data to investigate how food insecurity over time related to changes in reading and mathematics test performance, weight and BMI, and social skills in children. Data were from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort, a prospective sample of approximately 21,000 nationally representative children entering kindergarten in 1998 and followed through 3rd grade. Food insecurity was measured by parent interview using a modification of the USDA module in which households were classified as food insecure if they reported > or =1 affirmative response in the past year. Households were grouped into 4 categories based on the temporal occurrence of food insecurity in kindergarten and 3rd grade. Children's academic performance, height, and weight were assessed directly. Children's social skills were reported by teachers. Analyses examined the effects of modified food insecurity on changes in child outcomes using lagged, dynamic, and difference (i.e., fixed-effects) models and controlling for child and household contextual variables. In lagged models, food insecurity was predictive of poor developmental trajectories in children before controlling for other variables. Food insecurity thus serves as an important marker for identifying children who fare worse in terms of subsequent development. In all models with controls, food insecurity was associated with outcomes, and associations differed by gender. This study provides the strongest empirical evidence to date that food insecurity is linked to specific developmental consequences for children, and that these consequences may be both nutritional and nonnutritional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts are needed to improve U.S. children's poor diet quality. Our purpose was to examine whether a policy that restricts the availability of snack foods in the schools is associated with greater fruit and vegetable consumption in a nationally representative sample of 5th grade children. Children in schools with restricted snack availability had significantly higher frequency of fruit and vegetable consumption than children in schools without restricted snack availability. Our findings suggest that a restrictive snack policy should be part of a multi-faceted approach to improve children's diet quality. J. Nutr. 139: 142-1 44, 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abstract of the article "COPASCities: Building Capacity for Food Systems Change in South Carolina Communities" by Sonya J. Jones and colleagues is presented.

The article overviews the symposium titled "Food Assistance and the Well-Being of the Low-Income Families" in the U.S. The author stressed that since the enactment of the 1997 welfare reforms, the act of examining closely on food assistance programs were given due attention. However, due to lack of longitudinal data sources and ethical concerns, systematic examinations of the causal relation between food assistance participation and well-being are limited. With the funding of federal agencies engaged with nutrition, nationally representative longitudinal datasets have become accessible. The symposium then, enables community and public health nutrition researchers present, discuss, and interpret findings in relation to these studies.

Objective To examine the strategies and behaviors caregivers use to manage the household food supply when their children experience food insecurity as measured by the US Department of Agriculture's Household Food Security Survey Module. Design Cross-sectional survey with open-ended questions collected in person. Setting Urban and nonurban areas, South Carolina, US. Participants Caregivers who reported food insecurity among their children (n = 746). Phenomenon of interest Strategies and behaviors used to manage the household food supply. Analysis Emergent and thematic qualitative coding of open-ended responses. Results The top 3 strategies and behaviors to change meals were (1) changes in foods purchased or obtained for the household, (2) monetary and shopping strategies, and (3) adaptations in home preparation. The most frequently mentioned foods that were decreased were protein foods (eg, meat, eggs, beans), fruits, and vegetables. The most frequently mentioned foods that were increased were grains and starches (eg, noodles), protein foods (eg, beans, hot dogs), and mixed foods (eg, sandwiches). Conclusions and Implications Caregivers use a wide variety of strategies and behaviors to manage the household food supply when their children are food insecure. Future work should examine how these strategies might affect dietary quality and well-being of food-insecure children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To explore how a sample of Mexican American mothers with preschool-aged children recruited from a Midwestern Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinic obtained information about 4 behaviors associated with childhood obesity risk: eating, physical activity, screen time, and sleep. Design One-on-one structured interviews in which participants were asked how they communicated with family, learned to take care of their first infant, and obtained information about the 4 targeted behaviors for their preschool-aged child. Setting An urban WIC clinic in the Midwest. Participants Forty Mexican-descent mothers enrolled in WIC with children aged 3–4 years. Phenomenon of Interest Exposure to information about the 4 targeted behaviors among Mexican-descent mothers participating in WIC. Analysis Quantitative and qualitative data were used to characterize and compare across participants. Results Participants primarily obtained information from their child's maternal grandmother during their first child's infancy and from health professionals for their preschool-aged child. Participants typically obtained information through interpersonal communication, television, and magazines. Participants were most interested in healthy eating information and least interested in screen time information. Some participants did not seek information. Conclusions and Implications Participants engaged in different patterns of information seeking across their child's development and the 4 behaviors, which suggests that future research should be behaviorally specific. Findings from this study suggest several hypotheses to test in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]