Food insecurity affects 1 in 5 kids in Allegheny County

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The next time you see a group of children, consider this: One out of every five children in Allegheny County has food insecurity.
What does “food insecurity” mean? According to Danielle Cullen, MD, MPH, resident physician at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC (CHP), it is “the inability to get enough nutritionally adequate or safe foods to have a healthy and active lifestyle or the inability to get these foods in socially acceptable ways.” (“Hunger” refers more to when the body sends signals that it needs food.)
With a little more than 20 percent of our children who are food insecure, doctors in the emergency department, like Dr. Cullen, are seeing many children with problems related to nutrition. Many children are “failing to thrive”—a term doctors use for children who aren’t gaining the right amount of weight to grow or develop. Dr. Cullen says, “Some parents don’t have enough money to buy formula, so they add water for it to last longer. Children will also come in with sugar and salt imbalances from this ‘formula stretching.’ They can develop seizures from these imbalances. It keeps them from growing and developing the way they should.”
Food insecurity is about more than not having enough food. Dr. Cullen sees children who are overweight and developing type II diabetes. Yet, these children can also have food insecurity.

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