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Table 3 Strategies and practices implemented by families to cope with food insecurity

From: Voices of the hungry: a qualitative measure of household food access and food insecurity in South Africa

Strategy

Practice

Change diet

Reduce diet from good-quality and diverse to poor-quality monotonous diet

Substitute expensive foods like meat with cheap foods which are less nutritious, e.g. meat for cabbage, cook beans less often due to electricity costs, take black tea if they do not have milk

Reduce or re-allocate food intake

Reduce the number of meals and portions

Give food to young children first when serving food

Mothers sacrifice their meals for young children

Mothers are the last ones to eat always

Source additional food

Families send younger children to pre/school so that they benefit from school food programmes. Participants perceived that children eat too much when they are at home

Family members go for “food for work” programmes where they would receive food parcels twice a week after working half day in the fields at some institutions

Households receive food parcels every month from the government

Boost income to buy food

Households receive social or Child Support Grants every month from the government and use the money to buy food

Households convert their farms into timber plantations and earn income from selling timber and use the money to buy food, e.g. in Richards Bay

Families are involved in community projects like community gardens where they get food and sell any surplus to get income which they use to buy what they need, e.g. in Dundee and Richards Bay