Healthy Food Acquisition in a Food-insecure City: An Examination of Socioeconomic and Food-security Predictors

• In Event: 113 - Regular Session. Consumers and Consumption 1

Abstract

A prevailing assumption in various food and health movements is that food-insecure households have unhealthy food acquisition habits, specifically prefefring industrialized foods at the expense of fresher, healthier foods. Such food acquisition patterns may be attributed to socioeconomic constraints of education and cultural capital, as well as the expenditure of scarce time and resources needed in urban food deserts to overcome obstacles of food access. We operationalize this prevailing assumption into five hypotheses anticipating negative associations between food-insecure households and (1) preferring stores that sell healthy foods, (2) preferences for organic foods, (3) always reading food-item labels; and positive associations between low-income households and (4) preferences for foods that stay fresh longer and (5) preferences for foods that are easy to prepare. To test these hypotheses, we analyze data from an in-person survey administered to 355 households in the City of Poughkeepsie, New York, a small Northeastern city marked by high poverty, considerable unemployment, and USDA designation (in two Census tracts) of food desert conditions. Preliminary findings indicate that food-insecure and low-income households are no less or more likely to report unhealthy food acquisition habits with one exception: households with incomes less than $35,000 per year and black households are more likely to prefer food that is easy to prepare. While popular assumptions paint low-income, food insecure people as predisposed towards unhealthy eating, our data provides evidence to the contrary.

Authors

• Leonard Nevarez, Vassar College

• Kathleen Tobin, State University of New York-New Paltz

• Eve Michele Waltermaurer, State University of New York-New Paltz