Food security in the time of Coronavirus (COVID-19). The Argentine case

GIANNUZZI L.

International Journal of Food and Nutrition Research

eSciPub

Año: 2020 vol. 4

2572-8784

The context of pandemic of the human coronavirus COVID-19, preventive strategies based on mandatory social isolation (quarantine) were imposed by governments to reduce transmission in the community. However, they have had a strong impact on the economies of the countries and on the people as massive layoffs, decreased wages, uncertainty, inability to work formally, increasing precariousness and inequality and food insecurity. Without a doubt, the pandemic surprised Argentina without the necessary tools to amortize the attacks of the disease, and all the collateral consequences that emerge from it. The concept of food insecurity represents a situation or aprocess experienced by households in which there is a limited and uncertain availability of the quantity and quality of food that allow covering the nutritional requirements of people, thusas an also limited and uncertain availability of the ability to acquire them in an acceptable way from a social and cultural perspective. This work addresses household food insecurity at the micro-social level based on their own surveys and describes the strategies carried out by households in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires city, Argentina to withstand the effect. FI status was assessed among 200 adult university students a mean age of 28±6 years (57% female, 43% male) during isolation period in April -May 2020 using the food insecurity experience scale (FIES).