Teens experience a fast rate of growth and development, and nutrition is critical during this part of their lives. They can suffer from many negative effects without proper nutritious diets, including behavioral issues, anger, sadness, depression, vitamin deficiencies, hunger pains, growth faltering, fatigue and low energy, and weakness. Even academic performance can be affected by improper and lack of nutrition, such as problems with focusing and cognition, exhaustion, self-consciousness, and embarrassment at school. Teens who struggle with food insecurity, or know those who do, highlighted these issues when Mecca Burris and MacKenzie DiMarco from the IU Department of Anthropology launched the Teen Food Insecurity in Southern Indiana project in partnership with the Center for Rural Engagement.
The project
Mecca and MacKenzie partnered with the IU Center for Rural Engagement to learn from teens how best to improve food security for teens in rural Indiana. In this project, which spanned from February 2020 to January 2022, a survey and focus groups were conducted with local teens. The project examined how present teen food insecurity is amongst teens in southern rural Indiana, identified challenges to food insecurity, determined the coping mechanisms used by teens when suffering from food insecurity, and gathered suggestions from teens on how they think teen food insecurity could be improved in their communities.
Mecca is an associate instructor and doctoral student in biological anthropology at Indiana University. She initially studied food insecurity in an urban setting at the University of South Florida. When she returned to her home state of Indiana she set out to look into the presence of food insecurity in rural communities. For the Teen Food Insecurity project, Mecca worked alongside MacKenzie, a doctoral student earning her Ph.D. in archaeology. Working mainly in Belize, her work focuses on social contexts. Her work with the Teen Food Insecurity project was inspired by her outside minor in pedagogy.
Data found
With help from local teens, the principal and nutrition director of Edgewood High School, the director of Lawrence County 4-H, and the teen director of the Ellettsville Boys and Girls Club, the project found that 30 percent of teens who conducted the survey were food insecure after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. They also gathered data surrounding gender, ethnicity, age, grade level, household size, and levels of food assistance participation as well as levels of food security before and after the pandemic. In focus groups, teens highlighted the challenges to food security, including affordability, accessibility, stigma, school issues, transportation, knowledge and preferences, and unawareness or misunderstandings of programs. The groups also identified common coping strategies teens used when facing food insecurity, including “a reliance on school food assistance programs, working a part-time job, utilizing community services and personal networks, and theft if necessary.”
Teens' solutions
The project found that in the focus groups, teens had ideas to help improve food security.
“Teens want social programs that are not centered around food assistance but around socialization that happen to include food for all (not just those with low income) to prevent stigma. Teens feel school is a good place to improve and implement programs as well as program awareness and marketing. In addition to schools, local libraries and youth centers were places where teens could go to access food.”
-Mecca Burris
"It is essential that we understand the prevalence and causes of food insecurity during adolescence so that we may develop political and social programs that speak to and encompass the unique needs and experiences of this life period. Initiatives and policies cannot be successful without adequate research that provides a holistic understanding of teen food insecurity."
- Mecca Burris