Low-to-middle income Melbourne households are walking the ‘Food Security Tightrope’

As you sit down to your dinner every night, very few of us consider that access to nutritious food is a fundamental human right. Yet over 1 million Australians face the challenge of not meeting this basic right and are unable to put enough food on their tables to feed themselves or their families. This challenge is food insecurity - the limited or uncertain physical, social, and economic access to enough nutritious food [1].

You might be thinking ‘hang on, isn’t Australia a high-income country?’ - and you would be correct, it is. But food insecurity is experienced in high-income countries like Australia and is a complex, persistent, and multidimensional issue. Current estimates suggest 4% of Australians [2] are food insecure but this number may in fact be as high as 10-15% [3-4] and is even higher in rural and remotes parts of Australia and the Indigenous population[2].

But, what does this experience mean for people?

One of the tricky things about food insecurity is that it can be ongoing or episodic and is often hidden behind closed doors. Food insecurity includes being worried, anxious, stressed about having enough money for food or running out of food to making compromises and changes to the type and amount of food and experiencing hunger. The consequences of this situation impact on physical, social, and emotional health, employment, productivity, lack of participation in community and developmental and educational impacts in children [6-10]. It’s so much more than going hungry.

There are many key interacting factors affecting a households food security status including the food supply, physical and economic access to food and the use of food and other socio-demographic characteristics of households [11]. The major factor, which comes as no surprise, is a low income or limited financial resources - making very low-income households at higher risk of experiencing food insecurity. Evidence from other high-income countries like Canada and the USA indicate that the food insecurity experience is also felt by low-to-middle income households [12-13]. Yet in Australia we really have a limited understanding of both the existence and experience of food insecurity in these households. This lack of understanding may be hindering the development of approaches to address the determinants of food insecurity more broadly across income groups.

Dr Sue Kleve, public health dietitian and researcher in the Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food at Monash University has been investigating household food insecurity, with a specific focus on low-to-middle income Melbourne households and their experiences of food insecurity. When talking about her latest research published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Sue commented that “we are all too familiar with stories reported in the media about some households doing it tough with rising costs of utilities and other living expense pressures. As a way of meeting these demands on the household budget, people are forced to make some hard decisions regarding the food budget.”

Sue’s research goes beyond collecting statistics. “Up until now we really didn’t know much about the existence and experiences of food insecurity in low-to-middle income households. My research really focusses on capturing people’s experience, what it looks like and what are some of the things that they are doing to prevent and address it.”

“Through my interviews, it really highlighted the precarious nature of achieving and maintaining food security with similarities of what we know in very low income groups. Importantly it highlighted the resilience and resourcefulness and the wide array of strategies that people would use when facing the many factors that would trigger food insecurity.” Sue added, “People were so willing to share their stories about the physical, social and emotional consequences they felt and what it meant for their households.”

Sue explained that an important finding from her research was the wide array of assets or protective strategies people possessed. “People had a combination of social connections and supports and highly developed budgeting, food knowledge, planning, shopping and cooking skills - these are also known as food literacy.” This ‘toolkit’ of knowledge and skills were important to households when the triggers of food insecurity were felt, but they could only protect or buffer the food insecurity experience to a point. This is consistent with the literature indicating the limitations of food literacy strategies to address food insecurity in the long term due to the complex range of factors contributing to food insecurity [14].

Yet in Australia, similar to other high-income countries, the main response to food insecurity is through the provision of food, often via welfare agencies, and developing food programs that may focus on teaching people how to budget, cook or grow food. Sue commented that “while these are important, they should not dominate our responses. In order to prevent Australians from falling off the food security tightrope, a broad range of responses inclusive of but beyond food provision are required.” She went on to explain that “we need to ensure our responses include policies and interventions that address some of the key determinants of food insecurity such as adequate income, and more specifically address the inadequacies of social security payments (Newstart, disability, and single parent) and addressing the cost of living pressures.”

For more insights you can read Sue’s latest paper “Walking the Food Security Tightrope – Exploring the Experiences of Low-to-Middle Income Melbourne Households” co-authored with Dr Sue Booth , from Flinders University , Dr Zoe E. Davidson and Assoc Prof Claire Palermo , From Monash University in the recent Food Insecurity in High Income Countries special edition of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

More Information:

Dr Sue Kleve is a public health dietitian and researcher in the Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food at Monash University. Her current research focuses on household food insecurity. Click here to access Sue’s research profile. You can follow Sue on Twitter via @SueKleve.

Stay up to date with the Monash University Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food on Twitter via @MonashNutrition.

Image Credit: Thought Catalogue via Unsplash.

Publication information

Reference: Kleve S, Booth S, Davidson ZE, Palermo C. Walking the Food Security
Tightrope-Exploring the Experiences of Low-to-Middle Income Melbourne Households.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018 Oct 10;15(10). pii: E2206. doi:
10.3390/ijerph15102206.

Journal impact factor: 2.145

Link to publication: Click here to access the paper published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

References

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