Want Amidst Plenty: Food Insecurity in Rich Liberal Democracies

This chapter is about food insecurity, a social problem common across rich liberal democracies. In these countries, food insecurity and hunger are thought of as problems located overseas—surrounded by landscapes scarred by drought or battered by civil war. Countries populated with supermarket aisles brimming with foodstuffs and pizza delivery services are clearly not food insecure. And it’s true: rich liberal democracies are not food insecure countries. Yet the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand all share a persistent trend—that a significant minority of their populations suffer food insecurity. A broadly accepted definition is that: • food security exists when there is access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life, where there is at a minimum: a) the ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and b) the assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways. Year after year households in wealthy societies, despite being surrounded by readily available and safe foodstuffs, suffer food insecurity. The Problem In some areas, the readily available foods are not nutritionally adequate. These are often called “food deserts.” In many more places, nutritionally adequate foods are available , but are not accessible by those households which are unable to buy them. In rich liberal democracies, the normal and socially acceptable way to acquire food is to purchase it. If a household cannot buy enough food, it is food insecure. If a household does have enough food but someone had to visit a food bank (food pantry), a dumpster, or a community kitchen to get that food, it is food insecure. A household is also food insecure if they are not confident that they will be able to get enough nutritious food in the near future. These criteria may appear to offer a low bar for qualification as food insecure, but it is not unreasonable to expect that citizens in rich liberal democracies should be able to live without the fear that they will be unable to get enough nutritious food to eat. A portion of the population in “first-world” countries brimming with food should not consistently have difficulty in accessing food.

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