Hunger's power impairs learning.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

When a car runs out of gas, it stops running.

When the human body doesn't get enough fuel in the form of food, it, too, will quit.

Children who experience food insecurity - who miss meals or get the wrong kind of food to eat - get sick more often, are more likely to have ear infections, have higher rates of iron deficiency anemia and are hospitalized more frequently, a comprehensive analysis of recent hunger studies found.

Children from hungry homes miss more school and are less prepared to learn when they make it to class, according to the analysis conducted by the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University.

"Undernutrition can limit a child's ability to grasp basic skills and diminish overall learning potential," the study says.

That translates into distracted, fidgety kids in the classroom who can't concentrate and can't remember what they've learned, said Maxine Proscurowski, a health resources coordinator at River Road Elementary School where 79 percent of the children qualify for free and reduced-price meals.

And those children are likely to have poorer mental health, be withdrawn or mentally disruptive and suffer greater rates of behavioral disorders, according to the Brandeis analysis, which was commissioned by ConAgra Foods.

"You can't learn when you're hungry," said Dr. William Connor, a professor specializing in clinical nutrition at Oregon Health & Science University. "When you're hungry, your main objective is to look for food to stay alive."

The body converts carbohydrates - sugars and starches found in grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables - into glucose, a form of sugar that fuels the body and brain. When the brain doesn't get enough glucose, learning becomes impaired.

Hunger also causes the body to boost the production of stress hormones, which tell fat tissues to release fat into the blood for fuel, Connor said. The liver as well as muscles, where glucose is normally stored, run out of the fuel, so the body begins burning fat.

Hormones produced by the thyroid diminish, so the body's metabolism slows down, making people feel cold and sluggish. "The fat tissue is the reserve supply of energy," he said. "The body knows this. That's why when people don't have certainty of food they will overeat to build up fat tissues to enable them to survive."

And that's why food insecurity, paradoxically, also may lead to obesity, Connor said.

"What happens when people don't eat regularly or at least feel deprived is that when they do have food, they overeat," he said. "The type of foods they're apt to overeat are fatty foods and ones that don't tend to be healthy."

The Brandeis University analysis of hunger studies, however, said evidence establishing links between hunger, poverty and obesity is still lacking and that research into the issue is in an early stage.

Dr. Naomi Neufeld, a pediatric endocrinologist and clinical professor at UCLA, said America's obesity epidemic is fueled by cheap, fatty, high-carbohydrate food.

"People who are poor tend to eat foods that are cheaper and those tend to be high fat, high carbohydrate foods," she said.

A $5 value meal at McDonald's, for instance - Big Mac, supersize fries and supersize Coca Cola - delivers a whopping 1,600 calories and 62 grams of fat. For a poor person, that's a lot of bang for the buck, but not very healthy.

"America is not blessed - it's plagued with very cheap, bad food," she said. "High fructose corn syrup" - a common food sweetener found in soda pop and sugary snacks - "is what we give kids. That's hog food."

Reporter Susan Palmer contributed to this report