Urban food security in the context of inequality and dietary change: a study of school children in Accra

Diets are changing globally, as agricultural and food systems have become globalised and created new forms of food production, distribution, and trade. Understanding how patterns of globalisation affect the welfare of populations is a key development question, but we know little about the way that the globalisation of food and agriculture systems affect different individuals or groups. By looking at schoolchildren in Accra, this study explores food security in the context of inequality and dietary change. We use a novel approach based on triangulation of primary data on food consumption and a synthesis of secondary literature on food trade, food policy and urban food environment. Thus, we bridge a divide between micro-level analyses of food consumption and macro-level studies of food systems, and seek to contextualise children’s food consumption patterns in the broad picture of global dietary change. We find that socio-economic status is a critical dimension of food security and food consumption, with poorer children more vulnerable to food insecurity and narrow dietary diversity. However, consumption of packaged and processed foods, often sugar-rich and nutrient-poor, cuts across wealth groups. In the 1990s, the question of urban food security was seen as embedded in that of urban poverty. We argue that the urban food security question today is defined by two intersecting phenomena: intra-urban inequality and global dietary change. The urban poor continue to face the fundamental challenge of adequate food access. In addition, urban food security is endangered by a food environment that provides consumers with unhealthy food options that are widely available, cheap and enticing. Therefore urban food security can no longer be addressed only through agricultural policies that ensure availability of affordable staples for a growing urban population, but it strongly needs agricultural and trade policies that regulate imports of cheap, processed, unhealthy foods.