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The Relationship Between Food Banks and Food Insecurity: Insights from Canada

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Valerie Tarasuk ,
Andrée-Anne Fafard St-Germain  and
Rachel Loopstra
Valerie Tarasuk*
Affiliation:
Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 150 College Street, Toronto, ON M6G 2W6, Canada
Andrée-Anne Fafard St-Germain
Affiliation:
Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 150 College Street, Toronto, ON M6G 2W6, Canada
Rachel Loopstra
Affiliation:
Division of Diabetes and Nutritional Sciences, King’s College London, London, England, UK
*
Valerie.tarasuk@utoronto.ca
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Abstract

Food banks have become the first line of response to problems of hunger and food insecurity in affluent nations. Although originating in the USA, food banks are now well established in Canada, Australia, and some Nordic countries, and they have rapidly expanded in the UK and other parts of Europe in the past two decades. Defined by the mobilization of food donations and volunteer labor within communities to provide food to those in need, food banks are undeniably a response to food insecurity, but their relevance to this problem is rarely assessed. We drew on data from the 2008 Canadian Household Panel Survey Pilot to assess the relationship between food bank use and household food insecurity over the prior 12 months and examine the interrelation between food-insecure households’ use of other resource augmentation strategies and their use of food banks. We found that most food-insecure households delayed bill payments and sought financial help from friends and family, but only 21.1% used food banks. Food bank users appeared to be more desperate: They had substantially lower incomes than food-insecure households who did not use food banks and were more likely to seek help from relatives and friends and other community agencies. Our findings challenge the current emphasis on food charity as a response to household food insecurity. Measures are needed to address the underlying causes of household food insecurity.

Keywords

Food insecurityFood banksHousehold resourcesCanada

Information

Type
Original Paper
Information
Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations , Volume 31 , Issue 5 , October 2020 , pp. 841 - 852
Copyright
Copyright © International Society for Third-Sector Research and The Johns Hopkins University 2019

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Footnotes

Electronic Supplementary Material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-019-00092-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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