It can be easy to undervalue the importance of balanced nutrition in shaping the journey from infancy to adulthood. Lial, age 35 from Nazareth, suffered a painful childhood in a broken home without a mother. Married at 19, it wasn’t long before she realized the heavy physical and emotional price she would have to pay as an adult for her own parents’ absence and neglect during her formative years.“In my youth, I was severely anorexic,” Lial confessed in a recent interview. “I starved myself completely and reached a weight of 65 pounds. My anorexia led to fertility problems which—combined with the fact that I didn’t know how to cook, as I never had a mother to teach me—eventually led to my divorce and left me alone in this world.”
Lial eventually became a single mother, and she was determined from the start to provide her daughter with a better, healthier childhood than the one she experienced. “After my daughter was born, I didn’t want her to be scared of food like I was. But since I couldn’t cook, all I could do was buy her hot dogs and lots of fattening foods—things I couldn’t bring myself to eat.”
Lial and her daughter are not alone. Many of Israel’s 350,000 at-risk children are vulnerable to eating disorders, malnutrition, obesity, diabetes, tooth decay, and various nutrition-related diseases, largely because those in charge of their care lack the means and knowledge to instill good eating habits. Healthy living programs are limited in schools due to insufficient funding, which further compounds the problem and challenges children’s long-term development.
With the help of the JDC-supported Nutrition Enrichment and Healthy Living Program, parents like Lial can now take command of their family’s choices around nutrition.
