Child poverty and lack of good food are everyday occurrences for millions of children in the UK. When such children reach adulthood, the implications of childhood hunger can live on as eating disorders, as El, 17, from Huddersfield New College explains.
In 2024, ITV reported evidence of “child poverty and food insecurity all across the UK”, with schools in disadvantaged areas running food banks to support students and their families.
I firmly believe that no child deserves to grow up familiar with the feeling of hunger and that we should be able to take the provision of food for granted.
But scarcity of nutritious food is the reality for as many as four million children in the UK. Have you ever wondered what happens to these children when they are no longer children?
Children who grow up not being fed daily by their parents learn to manage hunger. They stop expecting meals and with that their stomach capacity decreases.
When they reach adulthood, they might develop a binge-eating disorder, because they have a new-found control over what they eat, yet no experience of good eating habits. Or they might develop anorexiaAn eating disorder and serious mental health condition. It causes sufferers to attempt to keep their weight as low as possible., because they are not used to providing for themselves consistently.
What usually goes unnoticed is a complex array of other possible eating disorders. Few of us have heard of OSFED (other specified eating disorder), or EDNOS (eating disorder, not otherwise specified), and their disproportionately high incidence in low-income households.
A recent study in the US found that the severity of food insecurity — not having access to enough food to meet basic needs — correlates directly with eating disorders and internalised weight bias, where people perceive themselves as less worthy or flawed, because of their size or weight.
A lot of people who grow up unprovided for, in terms of regular, cooked meals, learn by necessity the skills to cook and provide for themselves. But owing to a lack of income or attentiveness from parents who are responsible for restocking the fridge, they cannot do this consistently.
By the time they reach adulthood, such individuals, left to manage their own finances and eating behaviours, generally experience feelings of liberation and excitement, but also a lack of restraint which can lead to binge eating and other eating disorders.
These are diagnosed using a list of expected behavioural, psychological, and physical symptoms. Sometimes a person’s symptoms might not exactly fit the expected symptoms for any one of these disorders. In that case, they might be diagnosed with an “other specified feeding or eating disorder” (OSFED).
As a society, we are perhaps more self-aware and mental health-savvy than ever before. Yet at the same time, social media provides an unhealthy environment, including dangerous pro-eating-disorder communities, on various unmonitored platforms.
Such unhelpful distractions can lead to complex cycles of behaviour, between periods of anorexia, for example, and periods of binge eating, or any other irregular eating behaviours.
To be healthy, we need to be well informed, as well as self-aware.
You might be reading this article out of curiosity or compassion, but if anything feels familiar, then research the symptoms of eating disorders on the website of a reliable organisation, such as Mind, NHS UK, or the eating disorder charity BEAT.
These organisations will be able to guide you to the best advice and support, which could help you to avoid health problems in later life.
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Keywords
Anorexia – An eating disorder and serious mental health condition. It causes sufferers to attempt to keep their weight as low as possible.
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