“There is very little scientific research looking at the food skills, food habits or dietary intake among low-income people in Iceland. Additionally, this project is bringing to light food security in low-income households, another statistic understudied in Iceland. Everyone can feel prices rising and food getting more expensive, but how many people are struggling to put food on the table?” asks Brittany Repella, doctoral student at the School of Education. Her research explores whether hands-on food skills and nutrition education can help reduce food insecurity in Reykjavík among low-income populations.
Food insecurity can be defined as the situation when people do not have regular access to safe and nutritious food to thrive and have an active and healthy life. „Essentially, I want to understand if teaching practical food skills can make a real difference for families facing food insecurity in Reykjavík, thereby helping them eat better, manage resources, and meet Iceland’s new dietary recommendations,“ Brittany says about her doctoral project.
Inexpensive ingredients transformed into nutritious meals
A part of her doctoral project is the pilot program Næra og Fræða (Nourish and Educate), a course which she has developed to teach people to transform easy-to-find and inexpensive ingredients, such as canned beans, dried pasta and frozen vegetables and fruits, into delicious and nutritious meals. Earlier research has shown that food and nutrition knowledge helps in enabling and empowering individuals to make more affordable, healthier and safer choices within their food environments.
Brittany has an education in food and nutrition and says that she has always been interested in community public health. She got to know that topic well when she interned and volunteered for food pantries and a cooking and food skills program called Cooking Matters, which has been run for a long time in her homeland, the US. The program aims to develop people‘s skills when shopping for and cooking healthy foods on a budget.
One-fifth were categorised as experiencing some level of food insecurity
In 2020 Brittany decided to go back to school and signed up for a master's in public health at the University of Iceland. In her master‘s project, Brittany explored food and nutrition knowledge, dietary intakes and food choices, and behaviours among people categorized both as food insecure and secure. She conducted a survey among people who have needed food assistance. „The survey reached just around 130 people and revealed some really important data. I also analysed data from a European study titled “Food Insecurity among European University Students” during the COVID-19 Pandemic (FINESCOP) project,“ says Brittany.
Her master’s project revealed that in accordance with the Food Insecurity Experience Scale classification, around one fifth of the respondents of the survey were categorised as having some level of food insecurity and almost 60% were considered food secure. The results of FINESCOP showed that around 13% were food insecure and 65% food secure.
Brittany adds that two peer-reviewed publications from her and her colleague’s project have been published and that another is underway. „This prompted me to continue with the same topic for a PhD and to actually put the data into action in the form of a food skills and nutrition course (pilot),“ says Brittany, referring to Næra og Fræða. Brittany's supervisor and main collaborator is Gréta Jakobsdóttir, associate professor in the Faculty of Health Promotion, Sport and Leisure Studies at the School of Education, while Anna Sigríður Ólafsdóttir, professor at the same Faculty, and Bryndís Eva Birgisdóttir, professor in the Faculty of Food Science and Nutrition make up her doctoral committee.
A government funded food program?
Since those who experience food insecurity are a vulnerable population, the attendance at the pilot course was low according to Brittany, and therefore, the data did not reveal any significant results. As a result, she is in the process of incorporating a qualitative element into the project and will conduct interviews with some participants from the pilot course this year. „We are hoping this will fill in the gaps as to why this population may be under-researched and how a hands-on intervention may be re-designed to best fit the needs of this population,“ she says.
Brittany underlines that very few have researched the food skills, food habits or dietary intake among low-income people in Iceland, and therefore the novelty of the research is quite significant. „My hope is that this pilot program will become a government funded food program that people all over Iceland could benefit from. There are very few options for people who need food for themselves and their families; therefore, the more programs that are available, the better,“ says Brittany.
