I'm working on a horror story and need to figure out how long it would take for a toddler to feel the severe effects of starvation. Currently the timing is set around 48 to 72 hours, which after a bit of Googling on the subject appeared to be within the realm of possibility. Does anyone know a more accurate range, or know where I might find it? When I Google it generally all I find are mommy sites telling how kids will eat when they eat. Not very helpful. EDIT: More details, he has access to water, just not food.
One place where I would start looking is accounts of disasters in which children were the victims (the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma, several earthquakes around the world, and such). IIRC, there was much discussion about how much time the rescuers had before the children's survival was jeopardized (assuming that the children weren't injured, in which case there'd be a lot less of a safety margin).
https://www.themarysue.com/hunger-strike-effects/ "Still, the first two weeks of a hunger strike are, while profoundly unpleasant, generally not life-threatening." Edited to add: Of course, this is about adults. Which you may already know.
This part of your question is going to be a relative shot in the dark. From what I can tell on a quick Google search, even infants will survive a number of days without food, but the article I read talks about the infants being medicated as to not feel anything. Link below. https://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/how_long_does_it_take_to_starve_a_baby/9256 So, 48 to 72 hours seems totally reasonable for a toddler to survive. That said, I think the effects of that time without food would depend a fair amount on the mental state of the child. If he is panicking, I think the effects would feel quite severe. However, they may not be as medically severe as the child might feel. For what it's worth, my almost-six-year-old becomes convinced of his imminent death approximately 90 minutes after he's consumed food.
It depends on what you mean my starvation. Hunger comes in stages. After about 24 hours of not eating, your mind will be less clear, but at around the same time, you stop being hungry. You don't even need to look up disasters, some people do it willingly. Take a look at any survival shows (real ones, Bear Grylls often makes situations seem more dangerous than they are to do teaching moments, but there are plenty of shows where people actually go long periods of time without food.) After about a week, muscles really start to break down as your body eats itself, but even that is not life threatening. Humans are endurance creatures, our ancestors would have often gone days without eating, including children who were too old to breast feed. We're remarkably good at it, it's just uncomfortable. I'm not entirely sure how those timelines would adjust for toddlers. Their metabolism would be faster, but after not eating for a while, anyone's metabolism will slow to a crawl. Of course, this is assuming that water is available. I've always heard the rule that you can go 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food.
Hydration makes a huge difference in how long starvation takes to have detrimental effects. If the victims have water or certain other liquids, they can last much longer without food. Without any water, they can weaken quicker and die within three days but sometimes last up to two weeks. A while back we found an article on a woman who purposely chose to die from starvation because she had terminal cancer and euthanasia drugs weren't legal. Her children give a detailed account of how it happened, how long it took, what her symptoms were, etc. I think it was in "The Guardian" publication if you want to search, and the author was Sophie Mackenzie.
A foster mother I knew had a boy who, as a newborn, had gone several days without food because his biological mother didn't realize he was hungry because he didn't cry. Don't know what state he was in, but clearly he survived.
Just FYI, I seem to remember reading that a newborn can survive for a little while without food, I believe to deal with the fact that breastfeeding may not succeed immediately. I tried to find my source for that, and failed. So don't take my word for it, but I wanted to mention it.