Very interesting article on the relationship between obesity and food security - local to DTES
Natalie Lanoville
Link between hunger and obesity raises concerns in the DTES
REPORTED BY
Katie Hyslop
In the DTES "food swamp" unhealthy options are often the cheapest. Photo by liltree (via Flickr).
Reported on
June 19, 2012
A study released May found one in three homeless people in the United States is obese. Vancouver has no official numbers on homelessness and obesity, but homeless people, especially in the Downtown Eastside, have a unique and complex obesity issue.
The study, conducted by researchers in the Harvard Medical School and released in the Journal of Urban Health in May, found that homeless people are just as likely to be obese as other Americans. Two explanations were hypothesized: that cheap foods contain high concentrations of fats and sugars and that chronic food insecurity causes the body to store fat.
While the link between obesity and poverty is well established, it is an issue that researchers and community health workers in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES) are just beginning to grapple with. Christiana Miewlad, a medical anthropologist with Simon Fraser University, says obesity is common among Vancouver's homeless, adding Aboriginal people are especially prone to obesity-related diseases like diabetes and hypertension.
But the high drug use in the DTES has an affect on the obesity rate. "Drug addiction does tend to affect appetite and may cause people not to eat even when food is available. [It] may also result in disordered eating patterns such as binging or anorexia which may continue even if a person stops using," she told OpenFile via email.
Miewald says former or current addiction can increase your risk of obesity and obesity-related diseases. She observes the counterintuitive link between food insecurity and obesity described in a growing body of research among Vancouver’s low-income people. Therefore she believes access to nutritious food should be part of harm reduction strategies.
Coco Culbertson does her best to keep addicts and the mentally ill from starving in the DTES. As project coordinator of the DTES Central Kitchen, a project run by the Portland Hotel Society (PHS), Culbertson oversees the daily cooking and delivery of 837 nutritious meals to all of the PHS and Atira Women's Resource Society Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels.
Culbertson doesn’t agree that obesity is a big problem in the DTES. "Being underweight is a huge part of health issues for our folks—a lot of them are poly-addicted and have very erratic eating habits, and don't have cooking facilities in their units," she says. For the people Culbertson serves, many of whom are juggling more than one addiction and mental or physical health problem, malnutrition is still the bigger concern.
Funded by private donations and public funders such as BC Housing and Vancouver Coastal Health, Culbertson and the SRO residents that work in her kitchen cook nutritious meals from scratch. Often they inject freshly juiced vegetable juice into meals like macaroni and cheese to add as much nutrition as possible.
Although more nutritious food options like the DTES Central Kitchen have started in the DTES, Miewald says the area remains a "food swamp": filled with cheap and unhealthy food options. She says it's important to remember that food, like housing, is a human right. And you need both to eat healthy.
"The homeless and those living in SROs have little ability to prepare their own meals and are therefore dependent upon what is provided through various free and low-cost food programs," she says.
An earlier version of this story appeared in Megaphone Magazine, Vancouver's street paper. Please support your local vendor.
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Natalie
Anne Lanoville
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