Can’t Pay? It’s OK: St. John’s restaurant feeds Hungry for free.
Big Bite Pita is a restaurant in St. Johns. It is a middle eastern restaurant that has been in operation for one year. The restaurant offers free meals to the people in need every day from 3 pm-4 pm. The owners of this restaurant narrate how, at one point in their lives, they couldn’t afford enough meals for their families. This paper gives an analytical review of food insecurity in Canada and the social responsibilities towards curbing this insecurity.
Description of the problem:
The restaurant offers the hungry and needy food at no cost. This when a man with only 3 dollars walked in and asked what he could order. However, one of the co-owners told him to keep the money and get what he wants. This restaurant offers a different kind of atmosphere for those looking for help. Food insecurity in Canada is one of the significant challenges that the country faces. This negatively impacts physical, mental, and social health. The food insecurity is mainly linked to poverty. Some parts of Canada still cannot access food.
Identify social institutions involved in the problem.
The food insecurity is associated with Low levels of education, weak social networks, low household income, cultural and language barriers. Therefore, school plays a major role in food insecurity in Canada. With a good education offered one can secure employment thus reducing the financial constraints. Indigenous communities in Canada are also at a high risk of experiencing food insecurities. The discrimination towards these people has perpetuated this crisis with serious implications for health and well-being.
Describe the dynamics of the problem using your knowledge of social roles as they apply to the interactions described in the article.
In Canada there have approaches taken in order to curb the food insecurity. These approaches are: Establishment of sustainable food system and elimination of poverty. The antipoverty approach focuses on how the less fortunate can get access to food. There has been development of social systems which are designed to give Canadians income securities, equality of access to Canadian institutions, concern of well-being of every individual and collective social responsibility of all citizens (Hobbs et, al 2015).
The citizens who aren’t poor are challenged to listen to the poor. On the other hand, the sustainable food system approach tends to address the political economic critique of the contemporary food system and environmental movement. Nonetheless, food insecurity remains a slow process.
Theoretical analysis:
Food insecurities continue to persist among different groups in Canada. There are various theories used to explain the concept of food insecurity. However according to (Scalan 2003)and Nord (2014) There are 7 predominant theories. Some of this theories are: Neo-Malthusian theory, Modernization theory, Social stratification theory.
Neo-Malthusian Theory:
This theory was developed by Thomas Malthus. It analyses food insecurity from the perspective of food production (Hoffenberg 2007, Masonite Guzman 2011). It is the idea that population growth is potentially exponentials while the growth of food supply is linear. He believed there were two types of “checks” these are: preventive checks and positive checks. Preventive checks are moral restraints such as abstinence. On the other hand, positive checks were meant to lead to premature deaths such as diseases, starvation and war.
Malthusian theory further emphasizes that for food sovereignty advocates the blame lays with the developing world independence (Hendrix, 2010). The theory simply explains that the demand does not meet the supply. Many experts acknowledge that rapid population growth would be checked by limited resources such as food. In Accordance to this theory the food insecurity in Canada is a result of inadequate resources compared to the population.