The Effects of Income and Class on Food Security

Elaine Power, Ph.D.School of Kinesiology & Health Studies

Queen’s University

Food Security

exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

Canada’s Action Plan on Food Security, 1998

Many layers

• individual• household• community• region/foodshed• national • global

Two main emphases

• physical & economic access to healthy food for ind’ls & households; skills & knowledge to prepare healthy food.

• sustainable food system - ensuring that food producers are able to produce food that is healthy for humans, the environment and other creatures

Contradictory Needs

• low income consumers need healthy food at a low cost

• local food producers using sustainable methods need fair and adequate compensation for their work

Both groups are marginalized from the dominant system but

in different ways

Marginalization & indignity in the food system

• inability to inability to feed one’s family as one would wish

• for some, the indignity of having to rely on charity, e.g., the food bank

• lack of choice• lack of food

Marginalization in health

• higher rates for health problems, esp mental health, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, etc.

• malnutrition• physiological effects of the stress of

living in poverty• not well-treated in the health care

system

Marginalization in Consumer Society

• inability to be “normal” and do “normal” things

Consumer ethic often rejected by proponents of fair & just

food systems, but most people living in poverty wish only to

“belong” to the dominant society to restore their dignity

“Logic of Practice”

Logic of food practices living on low income

• staving off hunger• preventing your child from going hungry • symbolic ways of belonging to consumer

society • preventing additional indignity (your own or

your child’s) • making the children happy • keeping the man of the household satisfied

How do those of us in the middle class keep an open mind and heart to hear the “logic of practice” of those living on low-incomes? i.e., can we walk a mile in the

shoes of another?

Two modest suggestions:

• to make the food system sustainable and just, focus on the middle class

• a guaranteed annual income (aka Basic Income) could solve the problems of both low-income consumers and sustainable food producers

Proposal: Income security is a necessary but not sufficient condition for food security.

The shadow is deepest when the light is brightest