IRISH children are going hungry.

Despite all our wealth and all our food, one child out of every six in this country . . . regardless of social class . . . goes to bed with an empty stomach. It's a wholly unexpected statistic, considering that all the dietary furore in recent years has been focused on childhood obesity.

But running right alongside overfeeding, the problem of underfeeding in this country is now posing serious physical and mental health problems for Ireland's future.

According to 17-year-old Adam Bloch, who has been suffering from obesity since he was five years old, the same underlying social reasons behind obesity may well be responsible for food poverty in Ireland. "I think it's just a classic case of cash rich, time poor, " he said.

"People know what the right foods are, they know where to buy them, they just don't have the time to actually go and get them. And even then, they don't know how to use them."

Bloch, who currently weighs 21 stone, is in the process of filming a documentary about his struggle to find and eat the right foods.

"From a teenager's point of view, you're very unlikely to actually cook something from scratch, " he said.

"You just want to pop something in the microwave, or the oven. It needs to be easy."

This may well be the problem for many of the children who reported suffering from food poverty in the 'Health Behaviour for School-aged Children (HBSC)' study, which was conducted by the National University of Ireland, Galway.

According to the study's author, Michal Molcho, some of the teenagers who went to bed hungry did so not because there was no food in the house, but because it wasn't prepared for them.

"This is not about financial poverty, " Molcho told the Sunday Tribune.

"There is something different here.

This study certainly raises serious cultural issues. The results paint a picture that is unacceptable. But also it is very interesting. What kind of an effect are our lifestyles having on our children?"

A very negative effect, according to the unpublished report. The 15% of teenagers who admitted to sometimes going hungry were also the same children who were much more likely to have physical and mental health problems.

Children who reported food poverty were much more likely to miss breakfast and, when they did eat, their diet was significantly poorer in nutrition than their well-fed counterparts.

Compared with children who don't go hungry, food-deprived teenagers are less likely to eat fruit, vegetables and brown bread. Additionally such girls are more likely to eat crisps while affected boys are more likely to eat hamburgers and fried potatoes.

The boys reported having headaches, stomach-aches, feeling dizzy and being bad tempered, as well as having difficulties in sleeping and feeling exhausted.

Food-deprived girls also suffered significantly more from stomach aches, headaches, dizziness and exhaustion, as well as reporting feeling afraid on a weekly basis.

Twenty-two per cent of boys suffering from food poverty said they felt nervous weekly, compared with 13% of well-fed boys. Sixty-three per cent of food-deprived girls said they had 'emotional symptoms' weekly or more, compared with 45% of well-fed girls.

While 33% and 26% of non-fooddeprived boys and girls said they felt in excellent health, this number was significantly reduced among those teenagers suffering from food poverty, with only 24% of boys and 15% of girls feeling in excellent health.

When asked about general satisfaction with life, the study revealed even more worrying effects of food poverty. On all levels of life satisfaction, children reporting food poverty were significantly more likely to feel dissatisfied with their lives, and were less likely to report that they felt happy.

Twenty-eight per cent of food deprived boys never or sometimes felt they had a good life, compared to 16% of well-fed boys, with this figure increasing to 36% versus 22% among girls.

Thirty per cent of girls who suffered from food poverty said they always or often wished they had a different life, compared with just 15% of girls who never go hungry, with an equally significant difference in the corresponding male response of 21% versus 12%.

When discussing the results of the study, Molcho said that the risk of being hungry due to lack of food at home exists across all social classes.

She cited "matters of material circumstance, psychosocial support, work-life balance of parents, family (dis)organisation as well as personal and family nutrition knowledge" as being some of the reasons for this.

"I think there are two very significant results arising out of this study, " she said. "Firstly, the fact that food poverty spreads across all social classes, and secondly the very surprising high incidence of food poverty in western Europe."

Compared to 35 other countries in Europe and North America, Ireland is placed 12th . . . at the higher end of the middle of the group reporting food poverty.

When the same study was carried out in Spain, just 4% of children were found to be food-deprived, with Portugal and Hungary also reporting very low numbers, at 5%.

The Czech Republic was top of the table, at 26%, with Macedonia coming second, at 25%, and Italy coming third with 24%. The USA also reported a high level of food poverty, coming fifth in the table, at 22%.

England came just behind Ireland, at 15%, while Russia, Slovenia and Israel all placed low on the table, with 10%, 8% and 7% respectively.