This is largely due to food insecurity during the critical window of development in the first two years of life, beginning with the nutritional deprivation of their mothers during pregnancy. For these children, the effects of malnutrition have taken hold by the time they enter Kindergarten. Some children arrive in classrooms already experiencing the cognitive consequences of stunting, others face illness associated with wasting, and still others struggle with the early effects of obesity and poor metabolic health (Prentice, 2023). These biological inequalities can quietly become learning inequalities. 

Nutrition is not the first thing we consider when we think of education, but it is the hidden infrastructure of learning. What children eat shapes their attention, energy, and ability to engage in school long before any lesson begins. At a time when our education systems are geared towards remediation to arrest the decline in learning proficiencies, all students need to be in condition to reap the benefits of these interventions.