Children's autonomous food acquisition in Mexican shantytowns

Children's independent food-acquisition behaviors have been rarely studied outside of hunter-gatherer contexts, yet millions of children worldwide search, work, trade, or beg for food. This study uses observational, anthropometric, dietary, and ethnographic data to understand preliminarily the nutritive and possible social contexts of autonomous middle childhood food-gaining behaviors in Mexican shantytowns. While we find children forage, work for, and share considerable amounts of food outside the household, this is not associated with significant variation in their anthropometric status or dietary quality; some possible social benefits of food-getting are, however, evident.