Food poverty goes beyond food shortages, reflecting and amplifying deep social and economic inequalities, while disproportionally affecting young people. Alarmingly, even in advanced economies, the number of people experiencing food poverty continues to grow, while existing measures often provide fragmented and insufficient responses.
The DisPARI research project, carried out by the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Milan, ActionAid Italia and Secondo Welfare, thanks to the support of Fondazione Cariplo, aims to address this issue by focusing on adolescents, a group often overlooked in discussions of food poverty. Supported by an Advisory Board of experts, the project seeks to measure and analyze all dimensions of food poverty, contributing to a deeper understanding of its implications.
In this interview (also available in Italian) we had a talk with Dr. Anne Kepple, member of DisPARI’s Advisory Board and senior consultant at FAO Statistical Division. With a PhD in Nutrition Science from Cornell University, Dr. Kepple has worked in the United States and Brazil researching hunger and contributing to the development of food security metrics, including the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), a tool used globally to assess food poverty. She also contributed to produce one of the key indicators of the Zero Hunger goal under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
What do we mean when we talk about food poverty and food insecurity?
FAO has identified 4 dimensions of food security: access to food, availability of food, utilization of food, and the stability of all these three dimensions.
One of the challenges is helping people understand that experience-based food insecurity scales, like the FIES, focus on measuring only the access dimension of food security – i.e. the ability to access food, being adequate in terms of both its quantity and quality, and on a stable basis, either at the household or individual level. Thus, when we talk about food insecurity based on these scales, we are concentrating on the access dimension of this broader concept of food insecurity.
I believe food poverty is basically the same concept as this more limited concept of access to food at the household or individual level. I think food poverty is just the term that is more commonly used in Europe.
In your professional experience, how did the concept of food insecurity evolve?
Until the 1980s, hunger was measured using nutritional indicators such as child undernutrition, stunting, and wasting. However, in the 1990s, two researchers at Cornell University, Kathy Radimer and Cathy Campbell, realized that these measures were inadequate for monitoring the rising hunger levels in a wealthy nation like the United States. Drawing from qualitative interviews, they developed a conceptual framework capturing three dimensions of the experience of hunger and food insecurity: psychological, which is worrying about food and feeling deprived; food quantity, which relates to not having enough to eat; and food quality, which refers to decreasing the quality of your diet to avoid running out of food.
These dimensions formed the conceptual basis for the creation of the U.S. household food security measure, which was later adapted by Canada, Brazil and other countries. This approach became the experience-based way of measuring the (in)ability to access to food at the household level. During the development of the SDG indicator framework, it became evident that FAO’s traditional measures like the prevalence of undernourishment were inadequate for monitoring the universal agenda and the focus on leaving no one behind. The experience-based food security measure was then scaled up to the global level and included in the Gallup World Poll, which collects data in over 160 countries. It was a new way of thinking about measuring hunger.
Why is it important to understand and discuss food insecurity?
The right to food is a basic human right. Nobody should have to worry about having enough food, of having access to a nutritious and healthy diet. Research has shown that it has consequences that go far beyond the nutritional ones. The nutritional status of a person may be adequate, but they could nevertheless be food insecure.
The worst consequences could well be psychological, emotional and social. But these consequences are just not on people’s radar. People do not attribute much importance to learning difficulties, social exclusion and shame. It is so important to pay attention to the physical and economic access to healthy diets. It is just so central, especially in a country like Italy, where food is such an integral part of the culture.
What are the nutritional implications of food insecurity in young people?
Young people need a lot of energy because they are developing. Good nutrition allows them to concentrate in school and learn. Being undernourished as a child can cause metabolic changes with long-lasting effects, including increased risk of overweight and obesity. Additionally, undernourished young women who become pregnant may have infants with health problems.
Metabolic changes are also influenced by irregular eating patterns, such as cycles of abundance followed by scarcity, which often occurs when food aid does not last the whole month. In both wealthier and poor countries, the main nutritional problems that are increasing are overweight and obesity, and all of the non-communicable chronic diseases associated with them, like diabetes, hypertension, heart diseases, and cancer.
In your opinion, what are the dimensions of food insecurity that specifically affect young people?
I think teenagers experience the impact of food insecurity differently, especially the social aspects of not having full access to food. I think the policies would also be different for teenagers and research should shed light on what kind of help can be more effective.
Some policy options can help increase teenagers’ access to nutritious foods and a healthy diet, such as focusing on the school environment by reducing access to unhealthy foods and increasing the availability of nutritious food. You could make a lot of economic arguments for why it is really important to invest in teenagers. It prevents all kinds of health issues down the road, it saves money, and creates a healthy workforce.
In your experience, what are the key challenges in tackling food insecurity?
The main challenges are ideological and political. I think the problem is the total lack of restrictions on capitalism and the difficulty of really getting at the structural roots of inequality and racism. One of our biggest challenges is getting people to understand that everyone is better off, even wealthy people, when we all have access to enough food and when society is more equal. Everybody benefits when there is less inequality.
A lot of research shows that when people with low income have money, they spend it on people’s businesses and the community, dynamizing the economy. Helping people in need does not mean taking something away from others. In my doctoral research, I spoke with conservative policymakers who believed that poor people are lazy and that helping them will discourage them from working. These politicians found nutritional status – like rates of undernourished children- more convincing than food insecurity scales, which they considered to be too subjective. This example highlights the ideological challenges we face.
Therefore, while it is essential to provide food assistance, we also need to work on the relationships of power in society and the structural problems that promote continued inequality. The main challenge is not losing sight of the bigger picture of the root causes of poverty and food insecurity.