March 2, 2021

In the Straits Times article titled “Efforts taken to address nutritional gaps among children”, Minister of State for Education and Social and Family Development Sun Xueling commented on an NUS study led by Professor Jean Yeung (NUS Sociology and Centre for Family and Population Research) which found that poor nutritional habits in young children were significantly linked to behavioural problems.

In response to the study, Minister Sun highlighted the KidStart programme, an initiative led by the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), which equips families with the know-how to provide for their children’s developmental needs. She explains how KidStart practitioners would visit children’s homes, working in tandem with parents to ensure that their children’s financial and nutritional needs would be met. She also brings up the provision of breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks by childcare centres, and their adherence to dietary guidelines as outlined by the Health Promotion Board.

Prof Yeung’s study is significant in shining a spotlight on the dangers of food insecurity in young children, indicating that if nutritional problems were to directly cause behavioural problems, these behavioural issues would persist into their education journeys.

She cites several reasons as to why children, especially those from low socio-economic backgrounds, would encounter difficulty adopting healthy eating lifestyles, including lack of access to information regarding heathy eating and a lack of financial resources to procure sufficiently healthy food. Prof Yeung also states that a participatory approach was key to solving this issue, adding that the communities of such young children should be involved in policy planning, so that underlying impetuses of food insecurity can be resolved.

Read the article here.