The current economic environment has impacted American families and the schools their children attend. Families are dealing with joblessness, increased poverty and hunger, less access to medical care, increased mental health issues, and greater instability in the family unit. Schools work with more and more students from families dealing with…

In this article we interrogate neoliberal assemblages within the context of eating and feeding practices in early childhood education. We consider how neoliberal assemblages are enacted and created through multiple linkages between micro and macro regulations and policies, and everyday food routines. We attend to the embodied intensities, desires…

Service learning and civic engagement are playing an increasingly larger role in higher education. Unity College's Hunger at Home course could serve as a model for service learning in disciplines such as nutrition, sociology, and food and agriculture. The class worked with local partners to get a better understanding of hunger in the area, recent…

Implementation of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 will provide an opportunity for school nurses to intervene in the serious childhood obesity problem in the United States. Major changes in the management of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) will likely challenge schools yet may provide the impetus for a collaborative effort by the…

Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by hyperphagia and food preoccupations. Although dysfunction of the hypothalamus likely has a critical role in hyperphagia, it is only one of several regions involved in the regulation of eating. The purpose of this research was to examine food-related neural circuitry…

Over the past few decades, service-learning has surged in popularity. Although most programs are implemented in high school and college classrooms, service-learning has the potential for great impact in middle school. The present article evaluates a pilot service-learning program for fifth- and seventh-grade (N = 86) children in a large, urban,…

This paper focuses on issues of embodiment specific to the experiences of an asylum seeker represented in the play "Refugitive" (2003). The play was written and performed by Shahin Shafaei, an Iranian asylum seeker who spent a period of 22 months in an Australian detention centre. The narrative of the play emerges through a conversation…

Children in immigrant families are more likely than children in native-born families to face a number of risk factors for poor developmental outcomes, including higher poverty rates, lower household incomes, and linguistic isolation, (for example, when older children and adults in a household have difficulty speaking English). Previous research…

This article demonstrates Gamson's claim that behind the apparent agreement implied by "consensus frames" lies considerable dissensus. Ironically, the very potency of consensus frames may generate contested claims to the ownership of a social problem. Food security is a potent consensus frame that has generated at least three distinct collective…

Hunger, thirst and satiety have an enormous influence on cognition, behavior and development, yet we often take for granted that they are simply inborn or innate. Converging data and theory from both comparative and human domains, however, supports the conclusion that the phenomena hunger, thirst and satiety are not innate but rather emerge…

The recession has impacted American families and the schools their children attend like nothing in recent memory. Many families continue to struggle with the impact of joblessness. The number of homeless children and youth is staggering. Families struggle with access to health care, growing hunger and greater instability in the family unit.…

A full stomach and clear mind are prerequisites for learning. Many children who live in poverty have neither. And the number of children who might be considered "food challenged" is growing at an alarming rate. This economic reality translates into ever-growing challenges for the public education system, which already struggles to provide all the…

For 20 years, Advocates for Children of New Jersey has published the Newark Kids Count Data Book, a one-stop source for child well-being data on our state's largest city. Newark Kids Count includes the latest statistics, along with five-year trend data, in the following areas: demographics, family economic security, food insecurity, child health,…

The regulation of appetite relies on the integration of numerous episodic (meal) and tonic (energy storage) generated signals in energy regulatory centres within the central nervous system (CNS). These centers provide the pharmacological potential to modify human appetite (hunger and satiety) to increase or decrease caloric intake, or to normalize…

With her "head, hand, and heart," artist Betty LaDuke impacts the world as an artist, educator, and humanitarian. As a retired professor of art emeritus of Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon, LaDuke has pursued her art as a mission with passion and generosity of spirit. This article describes how LaDuke uses art as a conduit for…