What would you buy if you only had $26 per week for food? Stretching that amount over seven days gives a person on welfare about a daily food allowance of $3.71 . “Raise the Rates” ran a recent B.C. wide campaign called the Welfare Food Challenge to increase awareness of how it feels to live and eat on a welfare budget.
The current income assistance rate for a single person expected to work in B.C. is $610 per month. Raise the Rates calculated that after rent and other basic expenses, just over $100 a month is left for food.
That works out to $3.71 per day.
Ted Bruce, executive director of population health with Vancouver Coastal Health, participated in the “Raise the Rates” challenge.
Bruce said research shows that stress and lack of control contribute to chronic disease in people living in poverty. “That’s what I experienced as well,” he said in an interview with a Vancouver newspaper.
Bruce said after a couple of days, he became stressed out that he would run out of food before the end of the week-long challenge.
In B.C., one in five children under the age of six live in poverty, according to a Raise the Rates information sheet. Nearly 500,000 people who live in poverty in B.C. struggle to maintain their health on what Raise the Rates organizer Bill Hopwood calls a “poverty diet”.
Gerry Kasten, a registered dietitian who has been working in the field of nutrition in Vancouver for more than 20 years, also participated in the Raise The Rates challenge. Kasten said in an interview with a Vancouver newspaper, ‘In general, eating on this fixed budget, many people would fall short on iron, on calcium on zinc, on B vitamins, vitamin C, and a wide variety of nutrients.’
Also, he said, “We know such things as a shortage of iron in early childhood leads to irreparable cognitive delays.”
Last February, Dietitians of Canada, BC Region released the report The Cost of Eating in BC 2011.
The report shows that low-income families in BC can’t afford healthy food.
Low-income Canadians are more likely to report poor health and die earlier than Canadians with higher incomes, the report noted. They spend less on food and eat fewer servings of vegetables, fruit and milk and are less likely to get the nutrients they need for good health.
The cost of food continues to rise, presenting another facet to the problem. Forward-thinking strategies to improve food security, plus help people to buy more locally grown, healthy food assists in the long-term sustainability of our food systems; and ultimately, the health of the community.
The divide between “rich” and “poor” can be one of the main drivers in the social determinants of health (which includes food security) for a community. Helping to close that gap in an area may improve the region’s variety of health indicators and bring the population into a more equitable balance.
Sandra Gentleman is a registered dietitian who is passionate about health and wellness. She is co-owner of Canal Beach.
