Effects Of Food Insecurity On Early Childhood Development

Food is a basic necessity for human sustenance and therefore impacts the conditions into which we are born, grow, live, work, and age. Food insecurity is a major issue for approximately 9 percent of the Canadian population, where individuals experience scarcity of an adequate diet (Mikkonen & Raphael, 2010). On the other hand, the abundance of cheap and nutritionally poor foods poses the detrimental health threat of obesity and shorter life expectancies in both children and adults (Pollan, 2003). Agriculture and food related issues such as household food insecurity and obesity are damaging to public health and can be prevented by altering socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental policies. Therefore, agriculture and food industries play a

Agriculture and food industries are central to experiencing excellent or deteriorating functional health. Household food insecurity is a barrier to maintaining good physiological and psychological health. Health concerns such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and food allergies are more likely to occur in food insecure households (Mikkonen & Raphael, 2010). Thus, a main detrimental impact of food insecurity can be on early childhood development. A poor diet consisting of mostly processed foods can lead to many physiological and psychological issues in children (Mikkonen & Raphael, 2010). In a similar manner, childhood obesity can also play a negative role in healthy early brain development. Obstacles in sensitive periods can negatively impact the biological embedding of the child and therefore lead to difficulties in later years (Hertzman, 1999). Food insecurity is mostly prevalent in low-income families, where nutritious foods are inaccessible and can therefore put a child at a higher risk of childhood vulnerability. Consequently, growing up in a food insecure household where

In simpler words, our food production and agricultural practices has an impact on our climate change and climate change plays a critical role in providing food security. The foods we consume and how we attain them are responsible for greenhouse emissions and temperature changes. Livestock and grain production is an energy consuming cycle that is responsible for 10 to 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (Khasaya Oniang’o, 2018). On a local level, Canadian agriculture is responsible for 10 percent of GHG emissions as a percent of total Canadian emissions (Potvin et al., 2015). Furthermore, approximately 80 percent of the forests that are cleared-cut are for the purpose of farming, and quite astonishingly 30 to 40 percent of the food produced worldwide is not consumed (Khasaya Oniang’o, 2018). Despite the overproduction of food, world hunger is still at large, even in OECD nations. Thus, it is crucial for farmers to adopt productive and sustainable agriculture practices to restore the ecosystem. Climate change poses the greatest risk to human health and can have adverse effects on food security and food production in the event of catastrophic events (Watts et al., 2015). The effects of climate change on the air, land, and oceans can cause respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, undernutrition, allergies, and mental illnesses (Watts et al., 2015). Therefore, it is