Exploring the Victorian food relief landscape to support consumers' access to meet culturally appropriate food preferences and special dietary needs.

Food security exists when individuals have regular and reliable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food, which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. This includes both cultural food preferences and special dietary needs. On the other hand, food insecurity is the reduced or unreliable access to nutritionally appropriate or safe foods, or the reduced or unreliable ability to obtain foods in socially conventional ways. According to the Australian Health Survey (2011-2012) at least 4% of Australians were living in a food insecure household. Food insecurity is a complex public health issue compounded by a variety of socio demographic determinants impacting on the physical, mental and social health and wellbeing of adults and children. The predominant response to food insecurity in Australia, like other high-income countries is through the provision of food through food relief provided by charitable organisations. In order to procure food for this food relief service organisations typically rely on food donations from the local community, foods donated by local food outlets including supermarkets (these are often close to use by or best before dates) and purchasing food. This often means that these services rely on what they are given varying in both quality (freshness), quantity and nutritional quality. This has implications for all people using food relief as their main source of food but especially where the food in unable to meet special dietary and or cultural preference needs. This project seeks to explore how food relief organisations in Victoria currently understand the need for such services, how they attempt to support their clients of these services to meet their cultural and special dietary needs and how this could be improved. The recommendations from this research will inform the Victorian Government Food Relief Task Force and also organisations providing these services. SKILLS ACQUIRED: literature review, quantitative and qualitative data analysis skills and interpretation, communication, scientific writing, oral and written communication skills with not-for-profit organisations and general transferable skills.