Getting fat on food insecurity

-- Pedaling insecurity for fatter research budgets

Cyclists know a thing or two about hunger.

At some stage we’ve all suffered the dreaded hunger knock and had to improvise sports training survival tactics.

But it turns out we’re not the only ones worried about sustenance.

A Canterbury Community and Public Health report says 10 per cent of New Zealand households have "low food security" and that one in 10 of us are hungry, malnourished or nervous about where our next meal is coming from.

Terrible stuff, and not just for the desperately hungry faces in our midst, but also the cruel irony of their expanding girths. The report says limited access to culturally acceptable foods encourages the consumption of high-sugar, cheap and filling foods.

Turns out the fear of not being able to eat makes us eat more of the wrong stuff.

Otago University Health Economist Des O'Dea is on to this and has already floated his cure - the Food Insecurity Card, making the right foods cheaper and, so the theory goes, reducing our anxiety and propensity for fattening foods.

But, like the hungry cyclist, the one in 10 New Zealanders gripped by food insecurity won’t be reassured knowing that carrots and cauliflower are now on permanent special.

Anyone steering down the barrel of sugar low is seduced by the closest convenience food wrapper.

Forget about health foods.

No one, least of all the anxiously hungry, is interested.

They’d rather eat burgers and get scurvy than entertain archaic practices of vegetable-based food preparation.

"Low food security" is the concoction of a cardigan wearing researcher punting for new funding.

Food has never been as abundantly available, which is why New Zealanders are so fat.

Try researching ways to get people off their arses.

Food for thought

-- Lining up for NZ's Food Insecurity Card

Des O'Dea
Health Economist
Otago University

Dear Des

I must say your food insecurity card is a tasty idea.

Especially for a fat guy like me, who struggles to resist calorie dense options, like mince and cheese pies and butter chicken.

Mmmmm. You see, I’m salivating already.

Anyway, I see that it’s only available to “low and middle-income families” which puts it out of my reach (by global health and government standards I’m fat and rich).

You say the starved of cash tend to high-energy foods.

Frankly, though, in my high-income experience I’ve never consumed so many calories. When you’ve got money to spend you go for the good (bad) stuff.

I figure the assumption is that my high-income status makes me smarter and less prone to fast-food temptation than low-income types. Yes?

So, putting the food insecurity card into my soft sweaty hand would be a waste. I should know better.

But then I think back to my University days (not so long ago) when I really was starved of cash (and, strangely, much skinnier than I am today), and reflect on the satisfaction that came from making rice, chuck steak and peas so darn tasty.

Which I guess poses the question:

Is effectively lowering the price of “healthy foods”, by using things like your insecurity card, going to change anything for low-income earners, who it seems are much like high-income earners and don’t really care about healthy eating options or obesity?

Food for thought.

On a different track, have you thought about subsidizing bicycle ownership?

Get more of us on to bikes, which is known to melt lard from saggy behinds.

Might also help with easing congestion and reducing CO2 emissions.

A much healthier carrot in my mind.

Yours in insecurity

Lester