The Global Sociology Blog

To have a healthy food budget while living below the poverty line (3 euros per day for food, in France) is a challenge faced by the poor. In this Liberation article, sociologist-anthropologist Christine Cesar examines the strategies the poor use to feed themselves and by photographing their refrigerators. What are these strategies and what is there in the poor’s refrigerators?

• The first nutritional casualties of poverty are fruits and vegetables; those are expensive items, along with prepared meals.

• Refrigerators show a lot of identical items (yogurts, milk bottles, leftovers). This is accompanied by the constant fear of refrigerator breakdown, as a sure sign of degradation of living standard. The possession of a refrigerator (even one that was recuperated, not bought) involves a stronger attachment than any other appliance.

• Receiving food assistance or food stamps is stigmatizing and badly perceived by the recipients. Being able to buy one’s food is a sign of autonomy. Being on food assistance is a depressing sign of dependence.

• For the homeless families, food is not always the priority, so, receiving reminders from doctors and social workers that the children need more fruits and vegetables is not especially helpful when one does not have a roof over one’s head.

• The poor develop storage strategies: the poor buy cheap items (potatoes, rice, pasta, basic milk products) in bulk because having a full refrigerators (even full of such unappealing items) makes one feel better, less poor and marginalized.

• Repetition is key. By definition, the poor do not have the luxury of a varied diet. They select filling food items, those that dull the feeling of hunger (pasta, rice). It’s not uncommon to find the same menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

• The rising cost of fish has made it a rare item for the poor. So, they turn to cheap meat instead and store it in bulk.

• Going to the market daily to get fresh produce is out of the question. However, a good strategy is to wait for the end of the market hours to see what merchants leave behind (which can be quite substantial) and store most of it. Christine Cesar compares this practice to wartime economics.

• Finally, not every family living below the poverty line has a refrigerator or freezer (because it’s a symbolic item, many poor do not tell social workers that they do not have a refrigerator). In that case, a window sill will do. This means that frozen products have to be used first. But what does one do in the summertime?

There is definitely a great need for such studies of what it means, concretely, to live below the poverty line. We have the statistics, we have the political and moralizing vapid pronouncements. What is missing is the study of the actual experience, the time-consuming, exhausting and stigmatizing condition of being poor.