Inconvenience Food
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Inconvenience food The struggle to eat well on a low income Caroline Hitchman Ian Christie Michelle Harrison Tim Lang Open access. Some rights reserved. As the publisher of this work, Demos has an open access policy which enables anyone to access our content electronically without charge. We want to encourage the circulation of our work as widely as possible without affecting the ownership of the copyright, which remains with the copyright holder. Users are welcome to download, save, perform or distribute this work electronically or in any other format, including in foreign language translation without written permission subject to the conditions set out in the Demos open access licence which you can read here. Please read and consider the full licence. The following are some of the conditions imposed by the licence: · Demos and the author(s) are credited; · The Demos website address (www.demos.co.uk) is published together with a copy of this policy statement in a prominent position; · The text is not altered and is used in full (the use of extracts under existing fair usage rights is not affected by this condition); · The work is not resold; · A copy of the work or link to its use online is sent to the address below for our archive. By downloading publications, you are confirming that you have read and accepted the terms of the Demos open access licence. Copyright Department Demos Elizabeth House 39 York Road London SE1 7NQ United Kingdom [email protected] You are welcome to ask for permission to use this work for purposes other than those covered by the Demos open access licence. Demos gratefully acknowledges the work of Lawrence Lessig and Creative Commons which inspired our approach to copyright. The Demos circulation licence is adapted from the ‘attribution/no derivatives/non-commercial’ version of the Creative Commons licence. To find out more about Creative Commons licences go to www.creativecommons.org Demos is an independent think tank committed to radical think- ing on the long-term problems facing the UK and other advanced industrial societies. It aims to develop ideas – both theoretical and practical – to help shape the politics of the twenty-first century, and to improve the breadth and quality of political debate. Demos publishes books and a regular journal and undertakes substantial empirical and policy oriented research projects. Demos is a registered charity. In all its work Demos brings together people from a wide range of backgrounds in business, academia, government, the voluntary sector and the media to share and cross-fertilise ideas and experiences. For further information and subscription details please contact: Demos The Mezzanine Elizabeth House 39 York Road London SE1 7NQ email: [email protected] www.demos.co.uk This page is covered by the Demos open access licence. Some rights reserved. Full details of licence conditions are available at www.demos.co.uk/openaccess First published in 2002 by Demos The Mezzanine Contents Elizabeth House 39 York Road London SE1 7NQ About the authors 7 © Demos 2002 All rights reserved Acknowledgements 8 Executive summary 9 ISBN 1 84180 050 3 Typeset by Discript Ltd 1. Hungry in a consumer society 13 The policy context 15 Research methodology 16 The field sites 18 Patterns of food consumption 20 2. The many dimensions of food poverty 23 Income and budgeting 25 Transport and mobility 31 Families and children 36 Elderly people 39 The local shop 40 Credit and cutbacks 43 Health and liveability 46 Skills and learning 47 Ethnic minorities 48 Diet and attitudes to healthy eating 49 3. Developing a policy response 52 Four guiding principles 54 Headline recommendations 56 References 61 Further reading 63 Demos 5 This page is covered by the Demos open access licence. Some rights reserved. Full details of licence conditions are available at www.demos.co.uk/openaccess About the authors Caroline Hitchman is a public health nutritionist who has worked as a researcher for Demos, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Thames Valley University. She has also worked for Action Against Hunger in East Timor as the nutrition programme manager. She is currently working in health promotion for Newham Primary Care Trust. Ian Christie is a researcher and consultant on sustainable development, and a member of the Demos Advisory Council. He is associate director of the Local Futures Group. Michelle Harrison is a Demos associate and an honorary research fellow at the University of Birmingham. Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at Thames Valley University’s Centre for Food Policy since 1994. He is chair of Sustain, the UK’s 105 Food NGO Alliance, a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine and a vice president of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. Demos 7 This page is covered by the Demos open access licence. Some rights reserved. Full details of licence conditions are available at www.demos.co.uk/openaccess Acknowledgments Executive summary We are grateful to the Tedworth Charitable Trust for their generous This book is about food poverty in contemporary Britain. Food poverty support of this project. can be defined as the difficulty of securing access to an adequate diet Thanks to the steering committee for their support and guidance: on a low income. But beneath this relatively simple definition lies a very Elizabeth Dowler, Martin Caraher, Meg Abdy, Hester Marriot, Ken complex form of social exclusion. Food poverty is difficult to measure, Worpole, John Beaumont and Jacqui Webster. and in its modern form most commonly consists of nutritional rather We would particularly like to thank Sue Dubois and Tim Orsen who than calorific inadequacy. It is caused by the interaction of several housed and befriended us in the field sites; the environmental health factors, ranging from income and family structure through to transport and planning departments at the field sites which gave us the data availability and the nature of modern food retailing. and support we needed to carry out the field work; Ben Jupp and Based upon detailed fieldwork in inner London and the rural Annie Creasey who supported and advised us throughout; and all the shires, this pamphlet unpacks the constituent elements of food individuals and families who allowed us into their homes and to poverty. In particular, it builds on earlier work highlighting the prob- share parts of their lives. lem of ‘food deserts’, where changing retail geography has resulted We would also like to thank David Barling, Liz Castledine and Mike in a dearth of food shops in low-income areas. Our research shows Nelson. that the problem of access to an adequate diet is influenced by much Finally, thanks to Eddie Gibb and James Wilsdon at Demos for edit- more than the proximity of shops. The picture is more complicated: ing the pamphlet and guiding the project to a successful conclusion. in a neighbourhood with few shops, households living in the same street can have very different levels of access and patterns of shop- ping. The geography of food poverty cannot be simply drawn on a map. As our research shows, achieving a nutritious diet on a low income requires extraordinary levels of persistence, flexibility and awareness. There are, however, common themes within the diverse stories of the people who took part in the study – to do with problems of mobility as well as time and familial constraints. It is these that form the foun- dations of the policy response that we propose. In a society where food plays an increasingly important part in our culture, socialising and 8 Demos Demos 9 This page is covered by the Demos open access licence. Some rights reserved. Full details of licence conditions are available at www.demos.co.uk/openaccess Inconvenience food Executive summary quality of life, we should be able to prevent the forms of food poverty 3. Inject a new social dimension into the food supply chain. which this report describes. Government does not seem to recognise that the rapid changes in In the final section, we outline a strategy for making the costs and the food supply chain over recent decades are part of the problem. injustices of food poverty more clearly recognised, and developing The silence of the Curry Commission on social exclusion and health policies and practices to eliminate it. We outline a framework that has not helped. The government should develop a long-term frame- will require joint action between the public, private and voluntary work for a socially and environmentally sustainable food supply sectors at the local level, together with a renewed commitment from chain, accompanied by policies and targets that will implement this national government. Our headline recommendations include: vision by 2020. 1. Identify public institutions at all levels with an influence on food poverty, 4. Renew and revitalise our national food culture. and encourage these to adopt a new strategy. The government should establish a clear policy objective of ensur- At a national level, there needs to be a rebalancing of the priorities ing that everyone – not just people on low income – has the confi- of the Food Standards Agency, to take greater account of public inter- dence, knowledge and skills necessary to achieve a good diet. est concerns over access to nutrition and social inclusion. At a DEFRA, DoH and the Department for Education and Skills should regional and local level, Food Forums should be set up to act as gate- develop a new strategy for public education about food. The govern- ways for local initiatives and to enable the public interest to inform ment should also consider setting up a national Health Promotion and influence the food supply chain.