Is food insecurity related to overweight and obesity in children and adolescents? A summary of studies, 1995-2009.

In the USA, several nutrition-related issues confront the normal growth, maturation and development of children and adolescents including obesity and food insecurity. The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the concept of food insecurity and a summary of studies that have examined the association between food insecurity and overweight/obesity in children and adolescents. Besides the initial case report, we review 21 studies (16 cross-sectional and five prospective studies) that have been published on this topic as of December 2009. As there is limited literature in this area, we review studies that sample children and adolescents in the USA. The results are mixed with positive, negative and null associations. The reasons for the mixed results are difficult to disentangle. Among earlier studies, small samples hampered definitive conclusions. More recent studies with larger samples have overcome these limitations and tend to find no associations between these constructs. Nonetheless, all of the studies to date have shown that food insecurity and overweight co-exist - that is, even though there may not be statistically significant differences in overweight between food-insecure and food-secure children, the prevalence of overweight remains relatively high in food-insecure children.

Linking psychosocial stressors and childhood obesity.

Research has established a wide array of genetic and environmental factors that are associated with childhood obesity. The focus of this review is on recent work that has established the relationship between one set of environmental factors, stressors and childhood obesity. These stressors are particularly prevalent for low-income children, a demographic group that has high rates of obesity in the USA and other developed countries. In this review, we begin by summarizing the psychosocial stressors faced by children followed by health outcomes associated with exposure to these stressors documented in the literature. We then summarize 11 articles which examined the connection between psychosocial stressors in the household and obesity and eight articles which examined the connection between individual psychosocial stressors and obesity. Policy recommendations emerging from this research include recognizing reductions in childhood obesity as a potential added benefit of social safety net programmes that reduce financial stress among families. In addition, policies and programmes geared towards childhood obesity prevention should focus on helping children build resources and capacities to teach them how to cope effectively with stressor exposure. We conclude with suggestions for future research.

Reconsidering the increase in father-only families.

Previously reported estimates of rapid growth rates among father-only families did not account for cohabitation. An explicit treatment of cohabitation removes about half of the presumed growth. Nevertheless, we find that the number of father-only families grew at more than double the rate of mother-only families during the 1980s. Decomposition analyses show that the largest factor associated with the increase is that fathers now head a greater proportion of all formerly married single-parent families with children. Although the share of single-parent families headed by fathers is larger in 1990 than in 1980 even after controlling for cohabitation, it is smaller than in 1970.