Young kids failing to get adequate nutrition in early childcare centres, research suggests

The first 2,000 days of life — from conception to age five — is when we go through the most rapid and extensive brain development that sets the foundation for ongoing life.

During this critical time, some children spend up to 10,000 hours in long day care, Karen Thorpe, who heads up the Child Development, Education and Care Group at the Queensland Brain Institute, said.

“A large part of their nutrition relies on what they receive in those centres, and brains don’t function without food.”

That’s the drive behind an extensive research program led by Professor Thorpe and her colleague Bonnie Searle investigating the quality of food and nutrition in Australia’s early childhood education and care sector.

Their research suggests there are serious deficiencies in the amount and type of food provided within the sector, especially in disadvantaged areas.

Impact of food insecurity and disadvantage

There are two sources of young children’s food in childcare centres. Some centres provide the food and some rely on parents sending it in with the child.

In a study of more than 1,600 centres in Queensland, Professor Thorpe and her colleagues found childcare centres in disadvantaged or remote communities were less likely to provide food.

“An alternate way of putting this,” Professor Thorpe said, “is parents are required to bring food from home, and these are the families least able to provide food and many are living in circumstances of food insecurity.”

Lack of food was a major issue, according to a recently published study by Dr Searle, who compared food quality, mealtime environment, and interactions in metropolitan childcare centres which provided food versus those which didn’t.

“What concerned us most was that there wasn’t enough food, although across the board the quality of food was poor and did not align with Australian dietary guidelines,” Dr Searle said.

“And the situation was worse when parents had to send in food.

“In the centres where the parents were experiencing the highest levels of disadvantage, the children were arriving hungry and the educators were asking the children not to eat their food all at once so it’d last the whole day.

“And we witnessed educators giving their own food to children.”

Childcare workers are low paid and often come from the same communities as the children so, according to Professor Thorpe, may themselves be experiencing food insecurity.

‘The good, the bad, and the ugly’

The research also found poor food supply affected the behaviour of toddlers and preschoolers through the day.

“The quality of emotional interactions was lower and conflict increased across the day,” Dr Searle said.

Professor Thorpe said the emotional environment in early education and care was very important.

“It is that which predicts children’s outcomes, not only as they enter school, but right through to their secondary school years.”

The findings match the experience of Tamika Hicks, an educator and former centre owner.

Ms Hicks, who has 23 years’ experience in the sector, said she’s seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.

“The bad is where children are just income earners, fed poor food that is low cost, high carbs, not a lot of protein, high saturated fat.

“Then their behaviour spikes, then they get labelled for different things.

“Then educators are getting burnout because they’re dealing with different behaviours at the end of the day and it’s a vicious cycle. That’s the ugly.”

The United Workers’ Union (UWU), which represents workers in the early childhood education and care sector, got similar findings when they surveyed their members.

“We found the system for providing meals for little children in long day care centres isn’t really set up to make sure children get all the nutrition they need,” said Helen Gibbons, the UWU’s executive director of early childhood.

“It’s really set up around profits, what’s affordable for those services and what’s easy to make.”

A core problem, according to Professor Thorpe, is that the quality standards by which early childhood education and care services are judged don’t directly address what and how much the kids are eating but are more focused on hygiene in food preparation, allergy prevention, and nutrition education.

In addition, she said, quality inspectors assessing a centre can’t necessarily rely on what they’re being told.

“We go into centres and observe and sometimes we will see menus that look very healthy, but that is not what the children eat.”

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has recently published its report into the market for the supply of childcare services.

The Productivity Commission is also investigating childcare, and has published a draft report.

But Professor Thorpe said neither reports directly addressed issues around food and nutrition.

So what are the solutions?

Professor Thorpe says there are two solutions which go together.

The first is to provide targeted food subsidies to centres in areas of disadvantage.

“Australia has a very good database which can indicate which services there are. If we can’t do it for all we can at least do it for our most disadvantaged,” she said.

The second solution, she suggested, was to ensure early childhood education and care’s national quality framework and quality standards against which these services are rated “look at the right things”.

A spokesperson for the Minister for Early Childhood Education Anne Aly, said there were requirements under the national quality framework to ensure that food provided by a service was nutritious and adequate in quantity.

“Services that choose to provide food are required to have policies and procedures relating to nutrition and dietary requirements. This is monitored by state and territory regulatory authorities,” they said in a statement.

“The government will consider the final recommendations of the Productivity Commission inquiry and the future of the early learning system as we chart a course to universal early childhood education and care.”

Hear more detail about the research project on the Health Report and subscribe to the podcast.