'We would like to see strategies help improve food insecurity such as more healthy food outlets or other things like community and school gardens"
New research from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia show that 20% Indigenous children are food insecure.
Dr Stephanie Godrich a Lecturer from the School of Medical and Health Science in Perth has researched Child Food Insecurity' in regional and remote Western Australia, including fruit and vegetable consumption.
Her research team have conducted a mixed methods of studies, consisting of pictorial surveys, food diaries with children and parent’s and interviews with key stake holder across the state. Their findings include that 20% of children in their sample where classified as food insecure.
Dr Godrich says "The main concern for children in this study is that they were worried that food at home would run out or they needed to eat less, ' she says 'living in an area classified as a 'median socio-economic disadvantage' shows children were more than twice as likely to be food insecure, compared to people living in the really disadvantage areas."
“We need to be doing more advocacy to try to insure that we get more regional or local level food systems happening but also in Western Australia, local government authority need to develop public health plans”
The food insecurity research found that kids whose family receive income support from the government were twice likely to be food insecure compared to children in Families who didn’t.
An advocate for nutrition and healthy eating, Dr Godrich says "We need to be doing more advocacy to try to insure that we get more regional or local level food systems happening but also in Western Australia local government authority need to develop public health plans.'' She says "We would like to see strategies help improve food insecurity such as more healthy food outlets or other things like community and school gardens and things in the built environment that help support Families to be able to access better quality food".
With it's first ever known studies in Australia, child food insecurity research is based from an American tool that measures a range of different things around hunger and worry from the child’s perspective.
This is the first study in Australia to use this particular tool to measure child food insecurity.
