The food environment and food insecurity: perceptions of rural, suburban, and urban food pantry clients in Iowa.(Research Brief)

Background

Food access is an important public policy issue across America, especially so in urban areas. The U.S. House Select Committee on Hunger studied shopping patterns of the poor and found that urban dwellers pay more for groceries in their local neighborhoods than do suburban residents (Morland, Wing, Rouz, & Poole, 2002). Others found that income affected access to rural and urban grocery stores and food varieties available for purchase (Perry, 2002; Morland et al., 2002). Moreland et al. (2002) found that residential areas where low-income households are located had fewer supermarkets and a smaller variety of foods, compared with what was available in wealthy areas. Low-income households that are unable to access the normal food system, (1) because of store locations and income constraints, are at risk of hunger and poor nutritional outcomes.

Local food safety-net providers are experiencing the strain of trying to provide food for an increasing number of struggling families. For instance, America's Second Harvest--the Nation's largest organization of emergency food providers--served 23.3 million people in 2001. Further, a survey in late 2001 and early 2002 found that 86 percent of Second Harvest's affiliates had seen an increase in requests for food assistance during the past year (America's Second Harvest, 2004). In addition, most families that turned to food pantries were working or had children (Zedlewski & Nelson, 2003). The Iowa Department of Human Services reported receiving 1.4 million requests for emergency food services in 2003, almost twice the number of requests received in 2000 (Iowa Department of Human Services, 2004). This increase in emergency food requests coincided with an increasing rate of food insecurity in Iowa: 9.1 percent in 2000-2002, up from 8.0 percent in 1996-98 (Nord et al., 2003). Thus, families throughout the United States, but especially those in the Midwest, are experiencing difficulties meeting their basic food needs.

We examined data from a purposeful study of Iowa food pantry clients living in urban, rural, and suburban settings. We focused attention on their perceptions of the environment in which they access food and their levels of food insecurity. Food pantry clients are often the most vulnerable households in a community; they lack financial and social resources that can help them solve problems related to food acquisition. In fact, community, social, economic, and institutional characteristics can influence food insecurity (Cohen, 2004). Understanding the circumstances under which these families attempt to meet their nutritional needs is vital to addressing the problems of food insecurity that permeate many U.S. communities. Of particular interest to this study are factors related to the household's participation in the normal food system, which provides a household with an initial capacity to meet its food and nutrition needs (Bitto, Morton, Oakland, & Sand, 2003; Cohen, 2004; Morton, Bitto, Oakland, & Sand, in press). Specifically, we concentrated on availability, access to and affordability of food from grocery stores, proximity to retail food stores, and transportation systems.

Methods

We developed a questionnaire to distribute to local food pantry clients to obtain information that would reflect changes over time in the food security status of low-income residents in a community (Greder, Garasky, Jensen, & Morton, 2002). The survey instrument captured broadly the conditions under which these households attempted to meet their nutritional needs. Respondents were queried about their (1) food security, (2) access to the normal food system and community food resources, (3) participation in assistance programs, (4) amounts and sources of income, (5) employment, and (6) personal characteristics. Questions about the local food environment dealt with perceptions of the adequacy of the number of grocery stores in the community, prices, store locations, transportation, and travel time to grocery stores.

The survey instrument also included six questions about behaviors and …