Eleventh International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Often normalized as a “rite of passage” (Hattangadi et. al., 2019), food insecurity among international students is an urgent social and health concern in Canada. This paper reports on the food insecurities of thirty international students from India, attending community and private career colleges in Toronto: (1) the nature and severity of their food insecurity, (2) the causes; (3) the effects of food insecurity on other aspects their lives (e.g., housing, employment, identities and sense of belonging); and (4) the coping strategies. We found that at the macro level, most of the participants had internalized their food insecurities as a “normal cost” of getting educated in Canada. They also paid little attention to the fact that they were skipping meals and seldom ate balanced diets. At the group level, most of them faced societal discrimination as “curry eaters”, which forced some of them to alter their dietary habits. To cope with such challenges, many Indian students felt that they had no other option but to live within their own ethnic enclaves in the outer suburbs of Toronto, resulting in longer commute times by infrequent public transit to colleges that were located in the downtown or in the inner suburbs. At the individual level, the pressure to earn money to repay familial loans while studying full time and commuting, seldom allowed these students to cook. Therefore, even though they had access to grocery stores and kitchens, most students seldom prepared and/or consumed nutritious and culturally specific foods.