Eleventh International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic, economic crisis, and government measures to contain the spread of the virus have created a shock to Chile’s food system, and the burden of increased food insecurity is unequally distributed among a population already segmented by wealth and nutritional status. The sanitary crisis was layered onto a foodscape and political context intervened by social protests and a pre-existing obesity pandemic concentrated amongst socioeconomic vulnerable populations. In conjunction, these factors have resulted in an increase in childhood malnutrition in all its forms (hunger and obesity). For the first time in four decades, undernutrition has reversed its downward trend and there are clusters of infant malnutrition as well as an unprecedented acceleration of severe obesity amongst school-aged children. This has revealed the inequality in Chile’s social pact, barring the precarious nature of even the most minimal levels of social welfare and illustrating both frailties and strengths in the political decision-making and policy implementation that shape the state’s ability to cope with this crisis. This presentation will present the design of a three-year research project organized around capturing the way that the Covid-19 pandemic, the sanitary measures to contain it and the ongoing economic crisis, exacerbate pre-existing nutritional segregation and increases childhood malnutrition in all its forms, and the hypothesis that political decisions and public policies have the potential to ameliorate or exacerbate effects on childhood nutritional inequality.