A crucial but simple – and largely unasked – question crossed my mind this past week as I composed my post about 10 million Canadians being Food Insecure: What, if any, is the difference between being ‘Food Insecure’ and ‘Starving’?
Have you ever ‘made do’ with boxed Mac & Cheese for lunch or supper?
Then, I wondered why it seems like two entirely different things to me when I think about the Gazans starving, and when I contemplate my own countryfolks being merely ‘food insecure’…
Just semantics?
When Statistics Canada says 10 million Canadians – about 1 in every 4 – are ‘food insecure’, it makes sure we know it’s working off the definition of ‘food insecure’ it’s concocted for its purposes.
The prologue to the latest StatsCan report on food insecurity states: “Food Insecurity is defined as: “The inability to acquire or consume an adequate diet quality or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways, or the uncertainty that one will be able to do so.”
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) defines Food Insecurity as: “[W]hen people do not have access to enough safe and nutritious food for normal growth and development, and [to lead] an active and healthy life.”
The only difference between those two definitions appears to be the exact wording.
However…
When the WFP uses the term Food Insecurity, it’s referring to situations where populations are suf-fering varying degrees of starvation due to climate catastrophes, wars or other dramatic social or economic disruptions. (See photo, top of page.)
When Statistics Canada uses the term Food Insecurity, it’s referring to situations where Canadians are unable to meet the same practical food acquisition thresholds, but for different reasons: continuing high retail food prices, wages falling further behind inflation, or global socio-political conditions (trade wars, etc.).
What’s the difference?
When you put the Canadian reality and, say, the reality in Gaza or South Sudan on a level playing field – i.e. stripping away the tricky semantics – aren’t ‘food insecurity’ and ‘starvation’ the same thing, re-gardless of what you call it?
My take
StatsCan is framing the Canadian situation in a much-less-threatening and worrying context than the WFP… And the reasons appear to be political rather than practical.
I can understand why Gazans and equatorial Africans are suffering starvation. But I can’t understand, or justify in my mind, why any Canadian should be unable, ‘to acquire or consume an adequate diet quality or sufficient quantity of food.”
It’s time for Governments at all levels to step in and mandate changes to our system to ensure that no Canadian starves. No matter how much that may annoy or disentitle the supermarket chains and food processing industry.
My questions to you:
If the Canadian government and its mouthpiece, StatCan, called it what it is – starvation – would you be more alarmed about the situation our most vulnerable, ‘food insecure’ cousins are facing?
Would you be asking more questions about why this is happening – being allowed to happen – here is Canada? Supposedly, one of the most prosperous countries in the world?
Would you not be wondering more why Canadians are starving when the major supermarket chains – which control the lion’s share of the Canadian food chain – are being left to manage the food supply without significant public interest oversight or supervision?
And reporting quarter after quarter of double-digit profits?
Muse on that…
~ Maggie J.