Changing food places: Shifting food acquisition practices of pension age households and food insecurity a secondary analysis of a decade of qualitative food system research.

The UK food system has been subject to a range of external pressures over recent years, and particularly influenced by austerity policies, the Covid-19 pandemic, exit of the UK from the EU, geopolitical instability increasing energy prices, and cyber attacks. These disturbances have resulted in high levels of inflation and a cost-of-living crisis, presenting challenges to household budgets and food affordability. In addition to the food system challenges above that affect all households, support structures that have traditionally supported pensioner age households (PAH) to access food, such as community lunch clubs and meals on wheels services have been particularly affected by austerity measures, and thus have been in decline since 2010. Many community lunch groups which were forced to close during the pandemic have not re-opened. This paper explores how disruptions to the food system have impacted on how PAH interaction with the food spaces and spaces they have traditionally relied on. The challenges presented by food system disruptions, are explored through a secondary analysis of and critical reflection on data from four empirical qualitative studies undertaken in the South-East of England over the past decade. The secondary analysis focuses on place, in particular, in relation to changes in food acquisition practices. Both the studies and exploration are underpinned by a theoretical framework developed to model food system vulnerability in later life. The studies include an ethnographic study exploring the vulnerability of older people in the UK food system undertaken before the pandemic, two studies exploring food practices undertaken during the pandemic, and a study undertaken post pandemic examining use of food aid by older people. These studies demonstrate how the places PAH use to source food are in flux. The cost-of-living crisis has led to an increase in the numbers of older people using food banks, shifted people towards using food aid such as food larders and social supermarkets/pantries supplying surplus food and community cafes producing low cost or free food. However these sources do not meet all their food needs and are supplemented with purchasing foods from supermarkets. This increases the complexity of the food environment PAH engage with and could amplify their risk of being food insecure. Governments and food providers need to be better prepared for future major disruptions to the food system, and be particularly aware of, and be prepared to support the needs of PAH.