As high food costs and cuts to food assistance squeeze families’ budgets, concerns are growing about whether low-income parents will be able to keep putting food on the table.
But these financial pressures threaten to do more than increase hunger. They also risk harming children’s diets and health in the long run — by making nutritious foods not only harder to afford, but also increasingly risky for parents to buy.
To understand why, consider the most universal of parenting frustrations: picky eating. Most parents experience it, but the stakes vary widely. For well-off parents, watching a child push away a helping of vegetables is annoying but manageable. A carrot left untouched one day can simply mean trying again the next.
But for parents living close to the bone, that same rejected carrot is more than frustrating. It represents money that could have been spent on something their child would have actually eaten.
Simply put: Children’s food refusals come at a cost — one that few cash-strapped families can afford.
Such financial risks profoundly shape how low-income parents feed their kids,…