Food Insecurity Affects Us All - Interview with Lesley Frank

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Infant food insecurity. In Canada. In 2022. Author and academic, Lesley Frank joins us to discuss her research and book, Out of Milk, Infant Food Insecurity in a Rich Nation. Why is it that the most vulnerable among us go hungry in one of the wealthiest nations in the world? How deep does the problem go? What can be done about it?

About Out of Milk: Infant Food Insecurity in a Rich Nation

“Did you ever go to bed and wonder if your child was getting enough to eat?” For food insecure mothers, the worry is constant, and babies are at risk of going hungry. Out of Milk calls out the pressing need to establish the economic and social conditions necessary for successful breastfeeding and for accessible, reliable, and safe formula feeding for families everywhere.

Through compelling interviews, Lesley Frank answers the breastfeeding paradox: why women who can least afford to buy infant formula are less likely to breastfeed. She reveals that what and how infants are fed is linked to the social and economic status of those who feed them. Out of Milk uncovers the shocking reality of food insecurity for formula-fed babies, the economic and social constraints limiting mothers’ ability to breastfeed, and the lengths to which mothers must go to provide for their children. But in a country that leaves the problem of food insecurity to ineffective charity models, public policies are failing to support our most vulnerable populations.

This book is important reading for health practitioners, social workers, community agency workers, and policymakers involved with food insecurity, infant feeding, poverty, social welfare, health, or food policy. It is also essential for students and scholars in sociologies of health, food, family; nutrition; food studies; nursing, public/social policy; and women’s and gender studies.

Buy Out of Milk now

About Lesley Frank

Lesley Frank is the Canada Research Chair in Food, Health, and Social Justice at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. She is a leading scholar of infant food insecurity in Canada, with publications in the journals Food, Culture and Society; Food and Foodways; Canadian Food Studies; and the Canadian Medical Association Journal. She is the author of the annual Nova Scotia Family and Child Poverty Report Card and a steering member of Campaign 2000, a cross-Canada public education movement that works to increase public awareness of the levels and consequences of child and family poverty. Her work has been featured on CBC’s The Current.

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