NEWS: Is feeding the poor enough if nutrition is lacking?

While senior city officials say the daily meals served at two recently opened, full-to-capacity homeless shelters (at 1435 Granville and 677 Broadway) are key to the shelters’ success, very little research has been done to investigate food security among homeless populations. It’s a troubling gap that food researchers such as Dr. Karen Cooper are looking to resolve.

Cooper met with WE on January 7, the day after a homeless shelter reopened under the Granville Bridge. That night, she visited the shelter to conduct nutritional interviews with people using the facility, as part of her research on the physical and mental health of homeless people before and after they’re introduced to a regular food program.

“The piece I’m looking at specifically is, what impact is there when you provide meals within the housing? What sorts of nutritional changes happen?” says Cooper, who is also researching the number of 911 calls from residents and shelter staff before and after food programs are introduced. “I can tell you right now that you get statistically significant drops in the number of 911 calls [after food is introduced to housing],” she says. “My research is going to show that it will be cheaper to [provide food programs in housing] than to manage the effects of hunger through the emergency rooms, through people sitting on the ward for three weeks to gain enough weight so they can fight off their pneumonia, through 911 calls by all of our services.”

Cooper’s work is part of a new and crucial body of research exploring the nexus between housing and food security, says Chris Miewald, a faculty member at SFU’s Centre for Sustainable Community Development. Miewald is the author of an August 2009 report for Vancouver Coastal Health, “Food Security in Housing in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside,” which highlights nutritional deficiencies in much of the food served in the Downtown Eastside to homeless populations. The report suggests an overabundance of white bread and high-sodium foods are available, while fresh fruit, vegetables, and whole grains are scarce.

Introducing more nutritious foods to vulnerable populations can even go beyond meeting an individual’s basic needs for food — it might also help curb criminal behaviour, the report says. While problems with self-control are more likely when glucose levels are low from a lack of food or eating food with a high glycemic index, restoring glucose to a sufficient level tends to improve self-control.

The report also indicates that the Downtown Eastside has Vancouver’s highest rates of nutritionally-related disease, such as colorectal cancer, diabetes, and circulatory diseases. “Someone’s ability to stay housed and be healthy is related to food,” says Miewald.

But other than anecdotal evidence from food and housing providers, the research to back that claim is scarce. “We really came up with almost nothing on the topic,” Miewald says of starting work on the Vancouver Coastal Health report. “It was kind of surprising that more research hadn’t been done.”

While the cafeteria in the Carnegie Community Centre, at Main and Hastings, is looked upon as a model for providing affordable, nutritious meals to low-income and homeless populations, both Miewald and Cooper agree that more work needs to be done to ensure wider access to nutritious food among the vulnerable. “In the past, the emphasis was just on providing food to people that are hungry. Now the emphasis is on providing nutritious food,” says Miewald. “The question is, how do you provide healthy food on very limited budgets?”