HALIFAX - A new study published in the October 17 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal suggests tens of thousands of Canadian children are going hungry, a problem that will have long-lasting impacts on their health.

The study concludes that 57,000 Canadian families have children up to 11 years old who go hungry on a regular basis.

Many of those children are in single-parent families, in families who rely on social assistance or in off-reserve aboriginal families.

The study used data from the 1994 National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, which included 13,439 randomly selected Canadian families with children 11 years old or younger.

Hungry children are four times more likely to suffer health problems than children who don't go hungry. And they're nearly twice as likely to suffer from asthma.

But poor nutrition leads to other problems, too.

"Lack of school readiness, lack of proper growth and development," said Dr. Lynn McIntyre, the Dalhousie University professor who led the study. "The family stress in these families is also going to affect these children."

The family stress is increased by the way parents often compensate for their children's hunger – by depriving themselves.

"There is times that I try to keep enough money out of my cheques to buy groceries and have food in the house for the children," one mother, who asked not to be identified, told CBC News. "I've seen myself go two or three days without to give my kids something to eat."

And despite the good economic times, highlighted by a large federal surplus, more people are using food banks – and a lot of them are families with children.

"We always see a lot of hungry kids," said Sam Rosenbaum at the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto. "And I think at the moment we're probably seeing more than usual."

Poverty activists say the government may have erased its deficit, but it's forgotten the poor.

"When Canada had a deficit, programs that helped the poor were extremely visible and they were cut and they were cut very much," said Julia Bass, who's with the Canadian Association of Food Banks. "Now that Canada has a surplus, the poor have vanished."