Envisioning Food Security: Highlighting Neighborhood Resident Expertise through Community-Based Research

Research Team Positionality

Through a community-academic partnership, we formed a diverse research team to combine insider and outsider community knowledge, lived expertise, and academic skills and resources for this qualitative analysis. Florencia Rojo is an assistant professor of sociology trained in qualitative research. Her ethnic and gender identities (queer, bilingual English/Spanish-speaking immigrant Latina woman) inform her analysis of marginalized experiences. However, having been food secure for most of her life, she relies on the expertise of community partners for insights into access. Eliza Guion was an undergraduate student when we began our research. She is a white woman with familial wealth who has not personally experienced food insecurity. She began her relationship with FTP as a volunteer and continues to work in food justice. Erin Taylor is the Director of Food Education at FTP. She is a white cis woman raised in the upper-middle class. She has worked in food education for over a decade and has been a SNAP recipient, food service worker, and farmworker. Cordelia Feess-Armstrong is the Volunteer and Youth Education Manager at FTP. She is a multiracial (Black and white) woman born and raised in Colorado Springs. She grew up in a single-parent household, and her family has been on food stamps, and at times food insecurity has impacted their lives. Patience Kabwasa is the Executive Director of FTP. She is a multiracial (Black, Latina, and white) single mother who draws on her personal experience of growing food to supplement what she could provide for her family when she was earning a low income. She was one of two interviewers in this study and shared her lived experience with participants to build rapport. Gabriela Gil was an intern with the FTP Food-Systems Leadership for Youth program and a recent high school graduate when she joined the research team. She is a Latina woman and resident of Knob Hill. The Food Access Manager for FTP, a Latina woman who grew up in Colorado Springs, also conducted interviews for this study.

In addition to our individual identities and social positions, we also formed a “research team identity” through the process of conducting this project, which materialized in a “collective perspective on the work” (Muhammad et al., 2015, p. 1057). Our shared interests in food justice, community power, and equitable partnership guided our decision making.

Community dissemination and feedback

Ongoing dialogue among researchers, FTP staff, and community members (including those at the intersection of these categories) is critical to ensuring the credibility of our results. In 2021, the co-authors created a one-page flyer and a set of posters summarizing the key findings of this analysis. The posters and flyers were utilized at a community event to share findings with residents who had the opportunity to provide reflections at interactive stations. We have also distributed the flyer at four food distribution locations in Colorado Springs, located within the field sites of this study, along with a brief survey to solicit resident feedback about our findings, beginning in 2022. This iterative cycle of research and dialogue will continue to inform FTP programs and advocacy and future lines of inquiry for our research team.

Defining Good Food: Fresh, Nutritious, and Balanced

Residents envisioned a healthy diet as comprised of fresh foods, pairing this idea of freshness with items such as fruits, vegetables, and meats. Even when they had limited access to food they considered healthy, residents held complex definitions of what good food meant. When asked what healthy food meant, participants’ most common response involved freshness. Even when residents also had other definitions of “good food,” freshness always came up, and all residents discussed fresh food at some point in their interview. Residents defined freshness in several ways; some connected it to locally grown or hunted food, others to how long the food sat in the grocery store, or how many steps in the supply chain between the food’s origins and the resident’s dinner table.

Residents were specific about foods they desired and considered healthy. Many residents listed certain food items; most of these were produce (avocados, squash, chilis, peaches, cucumber, tomato, broccoli, beets, potatoes, corn, etc.) and meat (“good meat,” game, pork, shrimp, catfish, etc.). These foods all fall within the USDA’s recommended healthy dietary pattern (USDA & USDHHS, 2020). Several residents described “processed” foods as harmful, unhealthy, or undesirable in quality.

In addition to freshly sourced foods, residents valued freshly prepared or home-cooked meals that enabled control over what they eat. For Marisa, a resident of Knob Hill, cooking locally grown food at home constituted good, healthy food:

Marisa’s vision of healthy food was multifold. She includes freshness, local sourcing, and home-cooking alongside a specific ingredient requirement: no preservatives. Some residents shared the latter sentiment, expressing distrust and fear of highly processed foods with long ingredient lists, including preservatives. Residents felt they could achieve healthy eating when they had control over what they put in their bodies and through home cooking. Like many residents, Marisa’s complex definition of “healthy food” was hard to realize in her daily life. Later in the interview, Marisa described doing most of her shopping at Walmart because of its price and proximity, but she said it could be challenging to find fresh foods there except in the organic section, which was out of her price range. Nonetheless, she did most of her own cooking.

Several residents described assessing foods for freshness when they went shopping. For Monty, a Meadows Park resident, signs that vegetables came from the earth indicated that they were “fresher” than pristine vegetables often found at grocery stores. Like Marisa, he mostly shopped at Walmart, citing the price and convenience. However, he was enthusiastic about his experience at Farmers Markets, exclaiming, “Yeah, oh yeah! I enjoyed it. You get the fresh beets, you know, dirty and everything. We’re pretty, we’re from, we’re made out of dirt so it don’t matter.” Anticipating that some people might find dirt on their food off-putting, he drew connections between the soil on fresh vegetables and human bodies. Monty enjoyed accessing food at farmers markets, where he could easily identify foods as fresh from the earth by their dirty appearance. Meredith, a resident from Meadow Park, also described visually assessing her food for freshness, with particular attention to meats:

The quality of meat, judging by how it was raised, how long it sat at the store, its color, etc., was important to many residents. For Meredith, finding meat that was up to her standard (fresh, brightly colored) was challenging, but she went out of her way to “look at it” and “check the meats” herself. Other participants echoed this sentiment, both in their value of what they considered “good meat” and the challenges in obtaining it. For example, one participant mentioned that “good meat” was one of the most difficult items to obtain at a food pantry.

Some residents also understood healthy food to entail certain nutritional qualities. Emily brought up the federal MyPlate guidelines: “So there’s the whole food guidelines, the MyPlate, where you do half fruits and vegetables, quarter grain and quarter protein. So that’s what I usually tend to go for.” Not only did Emily share knowledge of nutrition guidelines, but she also reported basing food choices on this information. Other residents employed the same concept of nutrition albeit more loosely, mentioning “balanced” meals or listing multiple food groups like fruits and vegetables, proteins, or grains as important. Two residents identified themselves as diabetic, and both described gaining health expertise due to managing their condition, which shaped their nutritional knowledge and food choices. Overall, residents described multicomponent definitions of healthy food that included freshness (in sourcing and preparation) alongside nutrition and reported a desire for diets comprised of fresh, nutritious foods.

Knowing Food Systems

Alongside their definitions of healthy food, residents also reported complex knowledge of the larger food system, from production to distribution. One question in particular generated responses that illuminated residents’ understanding of the food system: What is your impression of organic foods? Many residents contested the dominant discourse around organic foods, which frames organic practices as better for people and the planet. Many participants took issue with the price of organic foods, which put these products out of reach of low-income consumers. Even those who desired organic foods had trouble affording them. A few residents went beyond a critique of organic prices and offered analyses of organic agriculture more broadly, including the polluted growing environment and the economic challenges that small farmers face. Gina explained why she perceives organic food as overrated:

Gina grounds her critique of organic foods on her own experience with food production. She names the polluted state of the wider growing environment as a concern and points to a local case study. In addition, she voices concern about the loss of nutritional value along the food supply chain. While Gina is critical of the food system she operates in, she is also careful to highlight how she acts as an agent. She describes exerting control where one can as an imperative: “you have to know what you’re buying…” Not only did Gina possess a high level of knowledge about her local food system, but she also reported basing her food buying, preparing, and storing practices on this knowledge.

Deirdre, who grew up on a farm in Colorado, also contested the value of organic foods while demonstrating a complex understanding of food systems. She was specifically concerned about the role of agribusiness in the food system and the challenges small producers confront:

Deirdre expanded the scope of responsibility for healthy food production practices beyond farmers and implicated agriculture companies. Drawing on her family’s experience, she describes farmers’ experience under competitive market systems that favor large-scale producers. She underscores the importance of food systems knowledge, arguing that production practices could change if consumers knew more about the food system they operate in. While Deirdre supports the premise of organic foods in theory, she critiques over-reliance on the “organic” label, which she sees as signaling status and access more than actual quality.

Asserting Agency: Creativity Under Constraints

Residents deployed various resources and strategies at their disposal in order to surmount structural barriers to healthy food access. From economic oppression (poverty) to accessibility, unsafe infrastructure, and poor public transportation, residents highlighted the many obstacles they navigated to achieve a healthy diet. For some residents, what they wanted to eat was still out of reach, despite their best efforts.

While residents described structural barriers, they also centered their agency. For example, when Vanessa was asked why she did not feel her health had been affected by her surroundings, she replied, “Because I don’t allow it to,” a sentiment shared among other residents. Residents indicated an awareness that their surroundings could negatively impact their health but framed their strategic actions and decisions as mitigating this potential harm.

Residents spent time and energy performing the mental calculations necessary to organize their various resources for healthy food access. Residents strategized about when to go to grocery outlets by going when they received their paycheck and loading up for the month, attending the farmers market near the end of the day when prices dropped, going to a food pantry on the “right” day of the week, or grocery shopping on the way to or from somewhere else. As one participant described:

Participants like Alana exerted a great deal of cognitive labor (the often invisible, strenuous mental work of running a household) on planning how, when, and where to access affordable food to feed their families. Strategies included: considerations of where to get different items on their list, going to a farther but more specialized store, using limited financial resources to buy at the grocery store what they knew the pantry wouldn’t offer (e.g. meat), going to multiple pantries throughout the week, or going to grocery outlets which balance affordability with quality. Hillside resident Barbara even analyzed the sale patterns of different foods by looking at ads, saying:

Like Alana, Barbara is highly strategic in her food purchases and demonstrates the level of mental energy required to procure something expensive like chicken without easy access to affordable foods.

Sometimes when people could not get what they wanted, despite their best strategizing, they made tradeoffs, and even these tradeoffs were thoughtful. Xavier, a resident of Knob Hill, went to extreme lengths to access the food he desired and considered healthy. While Xavier’s experience of walking multiple miles was not widespread among residents, his description of his decision-making process captures the way many residents considered the tradeoffs of their food choices:

Here, Xavier simultaneously considered distance, affordability, nutrition, and hunger satisfaction. He explained how he would utilize his resources (time, physical ability) to access food and how he makes tradeoffs between affordability and food quality, ultimately deciding to pay more for what he considers more nutritious and filling food. Many residents described similarly complex food-decision making processes that considered their desires, the resources at their disposal, the access barriers they faced, and the sacrifices they were willing to make.

Utilizing Family Ties and Community Networks

An important means of accessing healthy foods for residents was leveraging their social networks. A common example of this was using connections with friends and family to carpool or borrow a car to get to a grocery outlet. For example, Meredith used her daughter’s car to go grocery shopping, while Sue took the bus to the grocery store and asked her children to pick her up for the ride home with full grocery bags. In addition, Anna Rose, an 82-year-old resident of Hillside, demonstrated her significant reliance on social networks to access groceries, stating:

Without the support of community ties, it would be difficult to arrange transportation to the store. The physical excursion required to shop would create another barrier to accessing food. Like Anna Rose, Monty described coordinating rides home from the Meadows Park Community Center No-Cost Grocery program with his wife:

In addition to strategizing transportation and timing to bring food home from the community center, Monty explains that accessing food there has facilitated additional social connections. For residents who used the community center to access groceries, the program’s social atmosphere was a highlight.

Residents described a wide variety of ways they utilized social networks in addition to coordinating transportation needs. A woman from Ellis’ church helped him with food shopping and cooking. Melvin called on his extended family to bring him food during snowstorms. Kelly used a friend’s connection to the Air Force Commissary to buy cheaper meat and avoid spending extra at the supermarket. Polly picked up extra food at the food pantry for her daughter, who had trouble with SNAP. Emily and her neighbors shared produce from their backyard gardens with each other. Overall, residents identified their family ties and community networks as important resources to both give and receive food-related support.

Knowing Community Needs, Assets, and Opportunities

In addition to thinking creatively and strategically about accessing food for themselves and their families, residents viewed food knowledge as a collective asset. Many had ideas about improving their community’s relationship to food, food access, and ownership over food production and distribution. These visions were grounded in complex knowledge of the neighborhood’s specific resources, potential, and constraints. For example, Monty was passionate about youth empowerment, and he saw food education as one way to achieve this,

Monty envisioned practical food education and skill-building, particularly for youth. In these ways, residents positioned food education as promoting food security by increasing their and their fellow residents’ agency in the food system. Rather than emphasizing individual knowledge, Monty saw community-level education as a pathway to improving neighborhood food security. Bill had experience working as a dietary aide in a nursing home. He talked about meeting different dietary needs, such as allergies or certain levels of fats and salts in food: “It’s a lot of stuff that pertains to food that people just neglect and don’t know about.” His comment suggests that individual food education could be useful when it is tailored to residents’ specific needs and preferences.

Residents not only had visions of how to improve neighborhood food security but also identified what the challenges of actualizing such interventions might be. Emily shared Monty’s desire for collective food education, discussing the benefits of bringing garden education and food-sharing networks into her neighborhood, Meadows Park. She also discussed the potential limitations to her vision:

Emily was particularly knowledgeable and passionate about gardening, mentioning it over fifteen times throughout her interview. However, her vision of community food access was not unique among residents. Here, Emily recognized the climate-related challenges of growing food in Colorado and the potential shortcomings of using the public school system to promote garden education. Yet, even as she named these constraints, she remained excited about finding ways to promote food production knowledge and local food exchanges. Residents’ expertise in local contexts and their unique opportunities and challenges provide key insight for identifying and successfully implementing local food security interventions.