What Drives Food Insecurity in Western Australia? How the Perceptions of People at Risk Differ to Those of Stakeholders

Abstract

Food insecurity is considered a “wicked” problem due to the highly complex and at times undefined casual factors. Although many stakeholders are working to address the problem, a possible divergence exists between their views on food insecurity and those of the people who are actually experiencing the problem. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there was a difference between the opinions of those “at risk” and stakeholders. A total of seven focus groups (two stakeholder groups n = 10, five “at-risk” groups n = 34) and three interviews (stakeholders n = 3) were conducted to ascertain perceptions. Thematic analysis generated 329 (209 “at-risk” and 120 stakeholder) coded statements related to food insecurity drivers. Respondents were in agreement for the majority of factors, and limited income was considered the primary driver of food insecurity. However, there were notable deviations in the perceived importance of certain drivers, particularly around the price of food and the lack of food literacy. Differences in the perception of causes of food insecurity may in part be attributed to the varied role each group plays in working towards the resolution of the problem, either at the household or system level.

Food-Insecure Household’s Self-Reported Perceptions of Food Labels, Product Attributes and Consumption Behaviours

“…Another product attribute considered important by food-insecure respondents in this study was organic produce. This mirrored the results from our previous research, where food-insecure interviewees indicated that organic food equated to healthy food, and this was one of the reasons cited for the perceived higher cost of nutritious food [36]. It is plausible that increased provision of food literacy education, with an emphasis on understanding food labels, identification of cost-effective and convenient healthy food options, may assist those experiencing low food security in maximising their income and diet diversity [37].…”

“…Lack of time has been cited as a barrier to obtaining and preparing healthy foods in food-insecure households in several studies [29,33,35,36]. Indeed, food-insecure respondents in our research highly valued convenience, but it is unclear how these individuals make trade-offs between convenience and price.…”

“A Lot of People Are Struggling Privately. They Don’t Know Where to Go or They’re Not Sure of What to Do”: Frontline Service Provider Perspectives of the Nature of Household Food Insecurity in Scotland

“…In addition, while hunger due to destitution is no less a public health and social concern in its own right in the UK and elsewhere, food insecurity without hunger in high income countries (like Scotland) is increasingly understood to be the more common experience, but also as damaging to health [33,38,39]. Recent UK research indicates that the numbers of people who report skipping meals in the previous year due to economic constraints had risen from 13% in 1983 to 28% in 2012 [40].…”

What can Secondary Data Tell Us about Household Food Insecurity in a High-Income Country Context?

“…In contrast, low and middle income countries most generally experience acute and chronic episodes of food deprivation, hunger, and starvation [8]. Critically, for health and social care policy makers in high-income countries, the experience of food insecurity featuring poor diet quality leads to negative health outcomes i.e., cancer, stroke, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, and depression [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. Much of the epidemiological evidence highlighting these associations has been generated in the North American context where routine capture of HFI data has taken place for some decades [16].…”