Although Australia is a wealthy country that produces vast amounts of food, significant parts of our community are affected by food insecurity. What's food insecurity? Food insecurity is about a lack of access by people to nutritionally adequate and safe food.
According to the World Health Organisation there are three key components:
1. Food access: the capacity to acquire and consume a nutritious diet.
2. Food availability: the supply of food within a community affecting food security of individuals, households or an entire population.
3. Food use: the appropriate use of food based on knowledge of basic nutrition and care.
Food insecurity can range from to anxiety about access to extreme hunger because meals are missed or inadequate. And just as levels of food security can vary, people can shift in and out of levels of insecurity. It may be due to homelessness, unemployment, lack of mobility and access, or low income working families trying to meet regular or unexpected financial demands.
Often the solution is to miss meals or be forced into low nutrition alternatives. The impact is hunger, social isolation, impacted performance at school, and poor physical and mental health, including obesity.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2002), almost 60,000 Australians in low-income working families go without meals or are food insecure.This includes around a quarter of Indigenous people, unemployed people, and single-parent households.
There are lots of ways we can address this as a community. Food Rescue's goal is to address food insecurity by alleviating hunger through rescuing fresh nutritious food for people in need.
