Food Insecurity in Children: Impact on Diet Quality and Academic Achievement

BACKGROUND: Food insecurity can affect children's diet quality and academic achievement. This study was conducted to determine children's experiences of food insecurity and to examine its impact on diet quality and academic achievement in a public secondary school. METHOD: The study was conducted from October 2023 to February 2024 with 168 volunteer children. Descriptive information, food consumption frequency and retrospective 24-h food consumption records of the children were obtained by the investigator. Anthropometric measurements (height, weight, waist and mid-upper-arm circumference) were also recorded. The children were asked to complete the Child Food Insecurity Experiences Scale. Their end-of-semester grades were obtained from the school principal. Diet quality was determined according to the Healthy Eating Index (HIE-20). IBM SPSS Statistics 22 was used for data analysis and the significance level was set at p < 0.05. RESULTS: At the end of the study, 76% of the children were found to experience food insecurity. No child had good diet quality according to the HEI-20 score. Saturated fat consumption was higher among children experiencing food insecurity than among those with no experiences of food insecurity (p = 0.042). Among the girls, intake of added sugars was significantly higher in those experiencing food insecurity. The mean mathematics and science scores and end-of-semester grades of children experiencing food insecurity were significantly lower than those of children with no experiences of food insecurity (p = 0.005, p = 0.0013, p = 0.007, respectively). An increase of 1 point in the food insecurity score caused a decrease of 1.877 points in mathematics, 1.094 points in science, 1.373 points in social sciences and 0.918 points in the final grade (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Increasing children's access to healthy diets is critical to support their academic success. Therefore, school feeding programmes need to be improved and policies and interventions to reduce food insecurity need to be implemented.