Food insecurity reveals baked-in institutional racism
Written by Sara Bailey & Imogen Richmond-Bishop Photo by Kamigi Ogino.
In March 2021, as the Sewell report declared institutional racism to be a fiction, the UK Government released statistics revealing that on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, households where the head was Black were more than twice as likely to be food insecure than White households. And while hypotheses regarding the disproportionate COVID-19 deaths among ethnic minority groups have coalesced around their increased exposure to infection, food insecurity – and its bedfellow, malnutrition – cannot yet be erased from the picture. As health and medical experts have underscored, research ‘points to a role for nutritional status in resilience to infection and as a mediator of its effects’ with adequate ‘intakes of energy, macronutrients, and micronutrients…critical for immune functioning’.
Food insecurity is never inevitable…