Food Insecurity During Early Childhood: Marker for Disparities in Healthy Growth and Development

Food insecurity is an important social determinant of health,1 a key indicator of limited resources and material hardship,2,3 and a source of significant stress as parents and other caregivers seek to provide healthy child nutrition.4 As such, food insecurity would be expected to adversely affect child growth5,6 and health and development more broadly.7,8 However, there has been limited study of associations between food insecurity and child outcomes during the critical period of early childhood.9–11 The authors of “Food Insecurity, Health and Development in Children Under Age Four Years” aim to address this gap by using a large sample of families at high risk for both food insecurity and child health disparities.12 Contrary to the authors’ hypotheses, limited relations between food insecurity and child obesity or other growth parameters were found in the study. The only significant associations were for children between 25 and 36 months old, for whom household food insecurity was associated with increased adjusted odds of obesity. In contrast, no significant associations were found after adjustment for … Address correspondence to Rachel S. Gross, MD, MS, Division of General Pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics, New York University School of Medicine, 462 First Ave, New York, NY 10016. E-mail: rachel.gross{at}nyulangone.org