Food Swamps and Poor Dietary Diversity: Longwave Development Implications in Southern African Cities

Abstract

While the literature on food deserts focuses on limited availability of food in urban settings, ‘food swamps’ may better characterize the extensive prevalence and accessibility of cheap, highly processed foods. For urban populations, access to nutritionally inadequate poor-quality food has dire developmental consequences. The long-wave impacts of malnutrition at gestational and early childhood stages are negative and can be non-reversible. Moreover, those who survive into adulthood may face a lifetime of sub-optimal physical and mental development that undermines the second and third UN Sustainable Development Goals—to end hunger and to ensure healthy lives. This paper assesses the long-term health vulnerability of children with limited access to adequate and nutritious food in rapidly urbanizing cities. The analysis focuses on the African Urban Food Security Network (AFSUN) data drawn from 6453 household surveys in 11 cities and nine countries in Southern Africa. The results indicate that children in these households are consuming a limited diversity of food, have limited access to resources and have greater odds of experiencing both short-term and long-term food and nutrition insecurity. These findings demonstrate an underlying vulnerability to long-term health impacts stemming from nutritionally inadequate diets, with potentially significant costs to human capital.

Introduction to urban food security in the Global South

“…Despite the current donor and philanthropic enthusiasm for further "green revolutions" in the countryside, such efforts are highly unlikely either to stem the migration of people to the cities or to feed these newly urbanized populations. The Global South faces an increasingly urban future and food insecurity will become a primarily urban challenge (Chmielewska and Souza, 2011;Crush et al, 2012;Graziano da Silva and Fan, 2017;Frayne et al, 2018;Steel, 2009;Tacoli, 2019;Teng et al, 2011;Zingel et al, 2011). The knowledge gaps are many and a wide-ranging programme of research is urgently needed to uncover the dimensions and complexities of the phenomenon.…”

“…In the context of the second urban transition, it is now increasingly recognized that the cities of the South are confronting a deepening crisis of food inaccessibility, characterized by growing food poverty, hunger and malnutrition, a lack of dietary diversity, child wasting and stunting, increased vulnerability to infectious and chronic disease, and a growing obesity epidemic (Caprotti et al, 2017;Crush et al, 2012;Frayne and McCordic, 2018;MSSRF and WFP, 2010;Popkin et al 2012;Popkin, 2017). However, this urban crisis still seems largely invisible to the policy and research communities concerned with global food security.…”

“…More widely used at the subnational level are a set of cross-cultural measures of food access insecurity developed by the FANTA (Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance) Project in Washington DC (Swindale and Bilinsky, 2006). The FANTA methodology was used in a baseline survey of poor households in 11 cities in Southern Africa by the African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN) (Crush et al, 2012;Crush and Battersby, 2016;Frayne et al, 2018). The survey revealed a stark picture of food insecurity in poor urban neighbourhoods across the region.…”

“…This siloed approach to food security is only the latest example of a more chronic problem. With few exceptions, food insecurity in the Global South has been sidelined in urban research and policy-making over the last decade (Battersby and Watson, 2018b; Crush and Frayne, 2011;Crush and Riley, 2018;Frayne et al, 2018). When the UNDP (2012) called for "inclusive growth and people-centred approaches to food security", for example, it framed the issue purely as a matter of rural production and employment (Hanson, 2013;Spoor and Robbins, 2012).…”

The food environment and health in African cities

“…Hill and Peters, 1998;Lake and Townshend, 2006;Townshend and Lake, 2009). Low-income residential areas in many African cities can be characterised as food swamps rather than food deserts, in that they have a large number of food outlets that, although fresh fruit and vegetables are still widely available, increasingly sell highly processed foods (Frayne and McCordic, 2018). The net result is 'poor, often informal, urban neighbourhoods characterised by high food insecurity and low dietary diversity, with multiple market and non-market food sources but variable household access to food' (Battersby and Crush, 2014: 143).…”