Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Sat May 23, 2009 9:31 pm
You hear a lot of chatter these days about "food security" and "nutritional security". What th' hoot, you may well ask, does that ish mean?
The crisp answer is that one is considered to be food secure if one has regular access to sufficient food and does not live in fear of going hungry. One is considered nutritionally secure when the food one is able to get contains the nutrients needed to remain healthy and active. [DeadCowX touched upon this topic in his last post, in fact -- a food supply filled with pathogens is not secure.]
These ideas are usually talked about in the context of the 'developing world'. In what we used to call 'third world countries,' extreme poverty is commonplace, famines due to lack of modern farming practices and infrastructure are frequent, and political instability often interrupts the food supply with wars and outright institutionalized theft. These supply interruptions and lack of money result in food insecurity. Available food is often incomplete in nutrition -- as with the millions who live on only rice for weeks at a time -- or marginally nutritive at best, as in the heartbreaking mud-and-shortening cakes consumed by Haiti's poorest. This is nutritional insecurity, and malnourishment creates a host of health problems that make quality of life worse for those who suffer it, as these illnesses greatly sap productivity.
A representative case study on these issues in Ghana can be found here :
http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/ABSTRACT/ABSTR112.HTM
Fact is, though, that folks in urban America have to struggle with food and nutritional security as well. Not only do lack of quality education and blighted neighborhoods create poverty, which itself causes 11% of US households to be food insecure at least part of the year (see http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity ), but long, inefficient delivery supply chains can cause supply interruption and in fact, many economically-disadvantaged in urban areas (a cohort that is less likely than others by a long shot to have a car) do not live within walking distance of a grocery store or other source of fresh food. This often results in folks who are technically food-secure (that is, they have the means / scrilla to buy enough food) being nutritionally insecure as a result of having only prepackaged convenience-store poison and 'fast food' available within their transport radius. This can lead to the same types of nutritional problems that result from poverty, with added risks from unhealthy ingredients often included in these food categories.
Think I'm jiving around here? Wrong, kid! Sit back and think it through. Check this out :
-As anyone who suffered through ASU in the 90s will attest, Stabler's Market on Mill Avenue was the only place within reasonable walking distance of the university (and surrounding jects / housing clusters) where one could get fresh food and produce. When they closed that place down to make way for more ugly engineering buildings, suddenly, the closest grocery store was well over a mile away. As a result, I spent more years than I care to remember living on Chick-Fil-A from the M.U. and peanut butter crackers, Sun Chips, and 40s of OE "800" from Circle K. Anyone who knows me personally, especially my pancreas, will testify that this is the truth. The cold fact is that though I made enough money at my $6.25 / hour ASU job to afford to eat, I was still nutritionally insecure because fresh, nutritive food was not available in my immediate area.
Is this just another pathetic collegiate sob story? Chea it is. But it's one that's shared by a whole grip of folks who've lived in high-density urban areas with no grocery stores around. How many Latewires have eaten ramen and / or Jumbo Jacks three or more times a week because the only places you can walk to are 7-11 or Snake in the Box? This is real. We pay a high price for living like this -- how many times have those same Latewires been sick this year? Before I stopped living like an animal and got a girlfriend with a car, I used to miss about a day of work every month because my body was mounting an insurrection against the Dorito-and-hot-dog diet that I was telling it to build itself with.
How is it that people who live in dense areas can't get ahold of good food? It's because they're not sufficiently educated on the importance of nutrition to demand the right food access. A person can't live on Chee-Tos and vitamin pills alone, but try telling that to a stubborn Lit Crit major with a tallboy of Icehouse in his hand. If this aspect of our bleak urban food security picture is going to get fixed, folks need to be motivated enough to drive this change from the demand side. And face it, if everybody who walked into the Circle K on University and McCintock asked for fresh broccoli instead of a carton of Kools, we'd see some changes pretty fast. Hell, I'm not suggesting burning down th' WeinerSchnitzel or anything.
Part 2 of this overview will go over a few key points about the food supply chain and what it means for your food and nutritional security. We'll get real about "organic foods" and why your $4 Costa Rican pear is your enemy.
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