‘Third World’ poverty and hunger conjures up certain conventionalised images: thin children, with or without their mothers. This paper explores the genealogy of such images in the mid‐twentieth century, and shows how they mobilise ideologies of ‘rescue’ while pointing away from structural (political, military and economic) explanations for poverty, famine and other disasters. These images had a counterpart in practices of transnational and transracial adoption, which became the subject of debate in the USA during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and were at least as much about symbolic debates over race as the fate of particular children. Together, these visual and familial practices made US foreign and domestic poverty policy intelligible as a debate over whether to save women and children. When they cast the USA as rescuer, they made it all but impossible to understand what US political, military or economic power had to do with creating the problem.

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Objective: To use an innovative mixed-method approach to analyse and describe 8-10-year-olds' home and school food environments. Design: A mixed-method approach to collect qualitative and quantitative data was used, in which pupils took photographs over four days to record their food intake and food environment. The photographs were discussed in focus groups. A combination of lunchtime observations and questionnaires completed by parents were used to build up a picture of the children's home and school food environments. Setting: A primary school in a suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Subjects: Twenty-seven children aged 8-10 years consented to take part in the study. Twenty-four returned cameras, and eighteen parents completed questionnaires. Results: Photographs illustrated a range of locations throughout the home where children consumed food. Children's photographs revealed they ate less often with family and more often in front of the television than reported in parental questionnaires. Emergent themes during focus group discussions revealed a strong preference for packed lunches and dissatisfaction with school dinners. In this small sample, children's eating habits and preferences showed few associations with either gender or the deprivation level of the area in which they lived. Conclusions: The children's home food environments showed a great deal of variation, with parents being key moderators of food availability and consumption. While the school's food provisions met national nutritional standards, the social aspects of having a packed lunch appeared to be a positive aspect of eating at school.

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