Low income mothers compromise their own diets

Community Action, April 14, 2003

OTTAWA -- The nutritional health of low-income, lone mothers, who compromise their own diets in order to ensure that their children's food intake is preserved, is grave and goes "beyond the nutritional risks associated with their reproductive role," says a report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. (Mar. 18)

The authors of the article "Do low-income lone mothers compromise their nutrition to feed their children?" call for increases in support payments for women with children living in poverty along with increased accessibility to affordable healthy food staples, such as milk, dairy products and fresh produce and the development of creative strategies "to help lone mothers become less dependent upon the social assistance system."

The report, comes out of a study of 141 women with a total of 333 children under the age of 14 years in Atlantic Canada. Their incomes were less than or equal to Statistics Canada's Low-Income Cut-Off for the province or region.

The limited financial resources of the families affected their ability to purchase food and their use of food banks was higher than the one-third of families that experienced hunger and reported food bank use in the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth.

While the mothers' food intake did not meet the requirements for total kilocalories along with a number of essential nutrients, their children's intakes "were consistently more adequate, except for folate and zinc."

The report noted that although the children's intake of some nutrients decreased significantly at intervals during the one-month period, overall their nutrient intake "generally exceeded recommendations for dietary adequacy." Periodic improvements in nutrition for the children correspond with the receipt of benefit cheques--e.g. the Child Tax Benefit or the Goods and Services Tax Credit.

The study suggests that this extra, monthly revenue for buying food was directed at meeting the needs of the children and not that of the mothers, whose nutritional needs continued to be compromised.

The report, produced by Lynn McIntyre, Faculty of Health Professions, Dalhousie University; N. Theresa Glanville, Department of Applied Human Nutrition, Mount St. Vincent University; Kim D. Raine, Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutrition Science, University of Alberta; Jutta B. Dayle, Department of Anthropology, Saint Mary's University; Bonnie Anderson, Public Health Services, Capital District Health Authority in Halifax, and Noreen Battaglia, Community Consultant in Halifax.