MAJOR FOOD INEQUITY

It’s ironic that the day the Health Quality Council of Alberta released a report revealing that almost six out of 10 Albertans are obese or at least overweight, a different Alberta group also released statistics showing that about two-thirds of principals in this province report that schools are feeding kids emergency snacks and food purchased or shared by teachers.

In this province of plenty, where supermarket shelves are stuffed with thousands of food items, children continue to go hungry. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale — literally — Albertans have a weight problem, and more so, the numbers show, than the rest of the country, where the figure is five in 10 Canadians.

The information about schoolchildren came from a survey done by the Alberta Policy Coalition for Chronic Disease Prevention, in conjunction with Alberta Food Matters and a University of Alberta School of Public Health Program called Promoting Optimal Weights Through Ecological Research.

Research through the years has made it abundantly clear that hungry children can’t learn. When their stomachs are empty, their minds can’t focus on the lesson before them, and they have a much harder time retaining information. These kids are not hungry because their parents are too lazy to make breakfast or lunch for them. They’re hungry because their parents can’t afford to feed them properly. Child hunger is not exclusively a problem belonging to the Third World. It can be found everywhere, including in affluent Alberta.

The provincial government needs to make good on its campaign promise to provide a school lunch program for needy children. Education Minister David Eggen is slated to talk about the issue when he meets with school board officials from around the province this autumn. The government shouldn’t delay, however, in putting a program in place that is based on best practices elsewhere. Hungry children can’t wait. The problem is probably more prevalent than the survey revealed, since of 1,350 principals across Alberta who received it, only 363 bothered to reply.

Meanwhile, the government also needs to focus on initiatives to encourage people to eat a healthy diet, exercise and lose weight, as the other report indicated the incidence of obesity hasn’t changed in Alberta for three years. Obesity puts increased strain on the health-care system because it leads to chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. The latter two especially are among the top health problems of a demographic in the study which had the highest incidences of obesity — people aged 45 to 64.

There is much food for thought in both these reports.