[Fasd_canadian_link] Inuit preschoolers often go hungry: study

[Elspeth Ross]

[nothing about alcohol]

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2010/01/25/inuit-children-hungry-mcgill.html?ref=rss
cbcnews
Canada

Inuit preschoolers often go hungry: study
Last Updated: Monday, January 25, 2010 | 12:20 PM ET
CBC News

Seventy per cent of Inuit preschoolers in Nunavut 
live in homes where there isn't enough food, a 
situation with implications for children's 
development, said a McGill University researcher.

Infant death rates higher among Inuit

The Inuit in Canada's North also have much higher 
rates of infant mortality compared with the rest 
of the country, a new study suggests.

Researchers looked at all births between 1990 and 
2000, including 13,642 among residents of 
Inuit-inhabited areas and more than four million births elsewhere in Canada.

The rate of infant death before one year of age 
was 3.61 times higher for Inuit areas compared 
with the rest of the Canada, the team found.

"These results highlight the dire maternal and 
infant health situations in the Inuit-inhabited 
areas," concluded Dr. Zhong-Cheng Luo of the 
department of obstetrics and gynecology at 
Sainte-Justine Hospital in Montreal and his colleagues.

A substantial part of the higher fetal and infant 
mortality in Inuit areas may be preventable, the researchers said.

The researchers called for:
    * Programs to reduce smoking, raise awareness 
about the dangers of secondhand smoke, and encourage breastfeeding.
    * "Back to sleep" campaigns to educate 
mothers to place babies on their backs to avoid SIDS.
    * Investments in improved socio-economic and living conditions.
    * More research to test whether there is a 
cause-and-effect relationship between exposure to 
environmental contaminants from eating marine 
mammals and fish and the elevated risk of infant death from birth defects.

The average Nunavut family with young children is 
paying close to $430 a week for groceries, double 
the price for a family of the same size in the 
south, says professor Grace Egeland of the McGill 
Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment.
Egeland and her team reported their findings in a 
study published Monday in the Canadian Medical 
Association Journal. Their study is based on 
face-to-face interviews with the mothers or other 
caregivers of 388 Inuit children aged three to 
five in 16 communities in 2007-2008.

"When a mother would get tears in her eyes when 
these questions are getting asked, we realized 
there are a lot of hidden problems that haven't 
really come to light," said Egeland.

Those problems range from adults skipping meals 
so that youngsters won't go hungry, to children 
sometimes not eating for a full day.

The study also showed that 29 per cent of 
children were obese and 39 per cent were overweight.

Egeland said it's not all that startling because 
parents buy foods high in carbohydrates, which tend to be cheap and filling.

The good news is 44 per cent of children still 
have access to traditional food ­ either hunted 
by family members or shared among friends and 
neighbours. Still, Egeland cautioned that despite 
such access, her team gathered reports of 
children going hungry and skipping meals.

"Food insecurity is all too prevalent in homes 
with Inuit preschoolers in Canadian Arctic 
communities," Egeland and her co-authors wrote. 
"The data suggest that support systems need to be 
strengthened for Inuit families with young children."

Those supports include food banks and subsidies 
for food with high nutritional value, the authors suggested.

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