A Seat at the (Dinner) Table: Food and Eating Practices in the Ontario Basic Income Pilot

There is strong quantitative evidence that the risk of food insecurity declines when social programmes increase low-income households' available income. However, there is little qualitative research that examines how food practices change with a sudden increase in income for poor households. Using a Bourdieusian-informed theoretical framework, supplemented by recent literature on dignity, we analysed 79 semi-structured, open-ended interviews with recipients of the prematurely cancelled Ontario Basic Income Pilot (OBIP). Interviewees described how increased income improved their ability to afford enough and better-quality food, decreased their engagement in unsatisfactory survival strategies, mediated stronger relations with family and friends and facilitated more pleasure in food practices. These results reflect a 'logic of practice' in a very different context than Bourdieu's 1960s France: a consumer society where health is a 'super value' and belonging is gained through consumption. Our analysis suggests that for those living in poverty, income, not habitus, is the most important contributor to the logic of food practices. Our results contradict popular myths about the food practices of those who live in poverty and lend support to the call for a minimum income floor, adequate to meet basic needs, to promote health, household food security and dignity.