“Half a loaf is better than none”: Food provisioning strategies of the urban poor in Johannesburg.

Abstract

Child malnutrition remains a persistent issue in South Africa and has severe consequences for children’s health status. National and municipal food and nutrition security policies mainly focus on production, safety nets and nutritional promotion and education. This research aims to critically assess the assumption of policies that one of the key factors that will improve child nutrition is nutrition promotion and education. Therefore, it seeks to investigate what the key factors are that determine caregivers’ food choices for their children in food insecure households in Johannesburg. By looking into the food provisioning strategies of these caregivers, the results of this research demonstrate that there are different contextual, household and individual factors that limit their food options in various ways, and may pose multiple simultaneous restrictions on acquiring, preparing and consuming nutritious and fresh food. As a consequence, caregivers’ final food choice is a result of careful considerations within these limited options. Policies that assume that more availability of food as well as nutrition information will lead to improved food and nutrition security, without sufficiently looking at factors that determine access to nutritious food, will therefore have limited effect. As the results show that food and nutrition security is interlinked with broader issues of poverty and exclusion, it is important to take into account the wider context and living situation of the poor.