More children from middleclass families are suffering from food poverty, and 16% of all Irish children under 18 have no food available to them when they are hungry, according to an unpublished report.

The study was carried out by the Department of Health promotion in NUI Galway and is due to be published in the journal Public Health Nutrition next month. It found that 15% of 8,424 children between 10 and 17 years from both public and private schools in Ireland suffered from food poverty, while the figure for all children under 18 was actually 16%.

The report comes just months after a major survey announced that Ireland is now the second wealthiest OECD country in the world, with every Irish citizen worth an average of 150,000.

"This is not about financial poverty, there is something different here, " Michal Molcho, author of the report and lecturer in NUIG, told the Sunday Tribune. "We made sure children understood that if there was a dinner prepared for them and they didn't like it, this didn't mean there was no food available to them. Some of the children's responses were that their parents were 'too busy to make food' or 'too busy to go shopping for food'. This raises serious cultural issues."

In the lower social classes, 15.3% of teenagers reported food poverty, with this figure rising to 15.9% among middleclass children and 14.8% in the higher social classes. Children suffering from food poverty are also much more likely to eat a poor diet, and suffer from ill health and low moods.

According to Marie Murray, clinical psychologist from UCD, the report throws an "additional lens" on the pressures society is placing on parents. "Has the demise of the family meal changed not just the manner in which children are fed, but how, when and if they are fed in a regular, routine, healthy way?" she said.

"Does commuting and the pressure on parents make mealtimes an added stress rather than a relaxing family event?"

The children who reported suffering from food poverty were more likely to miss breakfast on weekdays and have a poor overall diet, eating less fruit, vegetables and brown bread and more crisps and hamburgers than those children who never went hungry.

The study was part of the World Health Organisation's International Collaborative research, and was carried out among 35 countries in Europe and North America. Ireland was placed 12th highest in the table, with Portugal reporting the lowest levels of food poverty at 5% and the Czech Republic topping the table at 26%.

Food poverty was defined as those children who responded "always, often or sometimes" to the question: "Some young people go to school or to bed hungry because there is not enough food at home. How often does this happen to you?"