Tag Archives: #FoodLadders

SafeFood Presentation:  Food ladders: a framework for moving beyond emergency food support

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In September, I presented my research to SafeFood at a workshop event they organised. The workshop was organised because they recognise that the cost of living crisis is a critical public health issue across Ireland. As the cost of living continues to rise, it is expected that the numbers experiencing food poverty will increase. Food is often the ‘flexible’ element in the household budget. This workshop explored the impact of the cost of living crisis on food poverty and what initiatives are taking place to support those experiencing food poverty. For more information about the workshop, visit https://www.safefood.net/events/hungr…

SafeFood presentation on food insecurity

There is a more extended report with further analysis of Food and You 2 data, that also discusses research evidence around interventions. The report also extends the food ladders to include a ladder for health.

Food insecurity, its effects and ways to address them

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We all eat. As many as 1 in 5 people in the UK, through no fault of their own struggle to access the food they need to live a healthy life. Our research shows that moderately and mildly disabled people and children–disproportionately bear the burden of hunger. It is not right that in a wealthy country like the UK there is such hardship and struggle. In this short video I talk about the causes and the effects of food insecurity and suggest some of the ways that we can act locally to help reduce hunger and hardship and stress and distress in our communities by helping them repair the damage that food insecurity causes.

For ease I am also attaching the slides so you click through them.

Webinar on Food Support during COVID and next steps.

Video

This webinar features a food surplus project targeting moderately food insecure people living in Manchester, UK. The webinar also includes a representative from the Local Council talking about how they are using my Food Ladders framework to plot a pathway forward to build more community resilience. The third speaker is someone from Morrisons talking about how they are able to supply TBBT with food and their response to COVID.

I am the final speaker. I discuss my research about food insecurity, foodscapes and provide evidence of how community food projects help release social value from surplus food.

What is Food Justice to you?

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In 2014, just a few months after I returned to the U.K. from Hong Kong I wrote the following:

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Food Ladders: A multi-scaled approach to everyday food security and community resilience

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Everyday food insecurity is more than just a lack of access to food based on income.  Poverty creates a hole that has emotional and nutritional effects, as well as implications for community cohesion. Food insecurity as it intersects with poverty also materialises in places to produce landscapes where food availability and the social connections it enables are scarce (for an open-access paper see Blake 2019).  Poor foodscapes contribute to vulnerabilities to the shocks associated with limited food choices, which in turn reduces the resilience of places and people by producing want, poor health, social isolation, and fear and distrust of one’s neighbours.  The Food Ladders approach seeks to overcome these place-based aspects of vulnerability by developing positive engagements through food and ultimately aims to help communities become the places where people want to live, raise their children, and grow old.  Continue reading →