This paper reports on qualitative research concerning community-based organizational responses to infant formula needs due to household food insecurity. It explores this topic against the backdrop of neo-liberal social welfare approaches that shape gendered food work within food insecurity households, as well as current state approaches to infant feeding policy targeted to vulnerable populations. Based on telephone interviews with a random sample of organizations across Canada (N=26) in 2016, this paper details typical responses to infant food insecurity within a sample of family resource projects with funding from the Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program, as well as typical responses from a sample of food banks. Results demonstrate that neither state nor community organizations adequately respond to infant food insecurity. This leads to serious problems of unequal access, potential food risk, and food injustice that are imposed on mothers and formula-fed infants when mothers are forced into situations of pathologized foraging to find formula. This paper argues that infant food insecurity is the result of a succession of public policy failures that are best addressed with a reflexive, feminist, food justice approach.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Frank, L., (2025), "Finding formula: Community-based organizational responses to infant formula needs due to household food insecurity", HSSCommons: (DOI: 10.15353/cfs-rcea.v5i1.230)

  Copy Citation | Export metadata as... | JSON | CSV | RO-Crate | BibTex | EndNote

1. feminist studies
2. food studies
3. infant food insecurity
4. social welfare
5. sociology

Original publication: Frank, Lesley. "Finding formula: Community-based organizational responses to infant formula needs due to household food insecurity." Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation, vol. 5, no. 1, 2018, pp. 90-112. DOI: 10.15353/cfs-rcea.v5i1.230. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation. Copyright © the author(s). Work published in CFS/RCÉA prior to and including Vol. 8, No. 3 (2021) is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY license. Work published in Vol. 8, No. 4 (2021) and after is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA license. For details, see creativecommons.org/licenses/.