Full fridge a buffer against past poverty
Not knowing where the next meal is coming from can turn poor children into overweight or obese adults, a new study indicates.
The Australian and New Zealand study, which will appear in the journal Appetite, suggests that adults who had an economically-deprived childhood are driven to hoarding food and material possessions to improve their social status.
But climbing the social ladder could come at a grave health cost.
Lead author Dr Michael Allen from the University of Sydney says these adults tend to be comfort eaters.
Despite surrounding themselves with plenty of food, they tend to eat foods that provide less than the recommended daily nutrient allowance, usually have poor physical and mental health and are at greater risk of chronic illness like cancer and heart disease.
The researchers say they turn to food, whether or not they are hungry, as a form of escape to make themselves feel better.
The study suggests this may be a way of coping with going without as a child. In early adulthood, it says, such individuals want to move up the social ladder and they stockpile food and possessions.
When the researchers experimentally 'threatened' the survival of the study participants by telling them to think about their own death, they found participants reacted by increasing the amount of comfort food they ate.
The participants linked eating to emotional satisfaction and improved mood. And they agreed that food consoled them when they felt lonely.
The researchers say 'food insecurity', the lack of steady access to enough food, occurs when people don't have enough money to buy food, or when the food supply at a national level is cut off due to crop failures.
They propose that practical solutions to relieving food insecurity could include assistance from governments, nutritional education programs and finding ways to reduce poverty.
But before advocacy groups can be established, the researchers believe that a better understanding is needed of how children who grow up with insecurity about food become overeating adults with food and a full pantry as their central life goal.