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Children’s Feeding Programs in Atlantic Canada: Reducing or Reproducing Inequities?

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Abstract

This study analyzed, through case studies of day-to-day observations and interviews with recipients and operators, the operations of nine children’s feeding programs in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland.

We found that children’s feeding programs result in the stigmatization of participants and families, despite an ideology of equality. Most programs adopt a family substitution role in the lives of children they serve and function in a way that excludes parental participation. Programs also transmit a hidden curriculum to children that teaches them how to behave and how a ‘proper’ family functions. We found that the professionalization of food and nutrition, a desire for an expanded client base, and dependency creation through the provision of other material goods, permit programs to exert increasing institutional control over recipients, a process we, following Illich, call the dragnet. While these programs may be meeting some nutritional needs in a few poverty-stricken children, they ultimately reproduce, rather than reduce, inequities.

Résumé

Nous avons étudié neuf programmes alimentaires pour les enfants mis en oeuvre dans les écoles en Nouvelle-Ecosse, au Nouveau Brunswick et à Terre-Neuve selon des méthodes qualitatives.

Nous avons découvert que les programmes alimentaires à l’intention des enfants stigmatisent les bénéficiaires et leurs familles malgré une idéologie d’égalité. La plupart des programmes finissent par s’approprier le rôle de la famille auprès des enfants à qui ils s’adressent, et même par exclure la famille de toute participation. Ils ont également un effet subtil chez les enfants: ils modèlent leur comportement en tenant à leur montrer comment une famille ªnormale« devrait fonctionner. Nous avons découvert que la professionalisation dans le secteur des aliments et de la nutrition, le désir d’avoir une clientèle plus large et la création d’une dépendance par l’approvisionnement en autres denrées matérielles, permettent aux programmes d’exercer un contrôle institutionnel de plus en plus grand sur les bénéficiaires; c’est un processus que nous appelons ªdragnet« à l’instar d’Illich. S’il est vrai que ces programmes répondent aux besoins de quelques enfants pauvres, en fin de compte ils ne font que reproduire plutôt que réduire les inégalités.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Health Professions, Dalhousie University, 5968 College St., 3rd Floor, Halifax, NS, B3H 3J5, Canada

    Lynn McIntyre MD, MHSc, FRCPC (Associate Professor)

  2. Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, and Centre for Health Promotion Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Kim Travers PhD, RD (Associate Professor)

  3. Department of Anthropology, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Jutta B. Dayle PhD (Adjunct Professor)

Authors
  1. Lynn McIntyre MD, MHSc, FRCPC
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  2. Kim Travers PhD, RD
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  3. Jutta B. Dayle PhD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lynn McIntyre MD, MHSc, FRCPC.

Additional information

This study was funded by NHRDP No. 6603-1461-201.

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McIntyre, L., Travers, K. & Dayle, J.B. Children’s Feeding Programs in Atlantic Canada: Reducing or Reproducing Inequities?. Can J Public Health 90, 196–200 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03404506

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03404506

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