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Household food insecurity is experienced by many immigrants and refugees. Though culture strongly influences food and eating, little is known about the interaction between culture and immigrant food insecurity. Following Power's (2008) concept of "cultural food security," we investigate three pillars of.food security (food availability, access, and use) for immigrants and refugees living in a medium-sized city in Canada. Multiple perspectives on the challenges of obtaining and eating nutritious and culturally satisfying food were gathered through interviews with service providers and immigrants. Many immigrant participants identified issues that service providers did not, including a lack of availability of high quality, fresh, less processed, and chemical-free foods. Immigrant participants also expressed forms of food nostalgia. All participants identified low income and high food prices as barriers to accessing desired food. Also significant is the fact that immigrant participants experience difficulties when shopping, identifying, and using new foods, such as canned items. These findings illustrate that cultural factors are integral to satisfying each of the three pillars of food security for immigrants and refugees. We make recommendations at both the level of community programming and policy to increase food security among immigrants.
Key words: food security, immigrant and refugee health, food and culture, nutrition, immigrant services
Introduction
It is well established from national survey data that recent immigrants experience a higher prevalence of household food insecurity (19.7%) compared to non-immigrant Canadians (12.1%) (Tarasuk, Mitchell, and Dachner 2015). Moreover, since 1989 the number of immigrants requiring assistance from food banks has increased by 92 percent (Koc and Welsh 2002). Household food insecurity decreases as length of stay increases until about ten years after immigration, at which point the prevalence of immigrant food insecurity is close to the national rate (Girard and Sercia 2013; Rush et al. 2007; Tarasuk, Mitchell, and Dachner 2014).
Food security is variously defined. A widely used definition from the 1996 World Food Summit reads: "Food security is attained when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life" (FAO 2016:para 1). While this definition does acknowledge the role of "food preferences," in most studies, "biological and nutritional importance of food insecurity has...