Food insecurity as a symptom of a social disease: Analyzing a social problem from a medical perspective.

Food security is “the right of every individual to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger.”1 Despite the well-known association between food insecurity and type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, mental distress, and poor health in general,2-4 food insecurity is steadily increasing in developed countries such as Canada. Consequently, the effects of food insecurity are becoming relevant to family physicians. Family physicians should acknowledge the importance of food insecurity as a determinant of health and, moreover, be aware of the strategies currently implemented to address food insecurity. The objective of this article is not to medicalize a social problem, but rather to present food insecurity within a medical context that might give physicians a better grasp of this issue and help them understand their role in addressing food insecurity. Increasing food insecurity in Western countries has its roots in the social and economic changes that have taken place during the past 30 years. Since the economic recession of the 1980s, welfare programs have not been able to efficiently respond to the increasing number of people in need.5 At the population level, food insecurity and hunger have resulted from prolonged periods of high or increasing unemployment and underemployment, declining wages, lack of affordable housing, and the absence of adequate welfare policies.6 From a medical point of view, food insecurity is a symptom of a complex and multidimensional social disease affecting a large proportion of populations in Western societies. In medicine there are 2 possible strategies to relieve a symptom: treat the symptom itself or address the causes of the symptom operating on the pathophysiology of the disease.