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.
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.
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.
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