Alignments and Discords in Nutritious Food Access in Eastern Montreal
Facing spatial and economic challenges to nutritious food access in eastern Montreal, public health authorities, community organizations and their partners have established the Réseau alimentaire de l’est de Montréal (RAEM) to coordinate their interventions with low-income households (LIH). These interventions are in line with a spatial perspective in nutritious food access, and with alternative models to conventional food aid. In the context of a partnership research with the RAEM that aimed at identifying alignments and discords in representations of the problem of food access and solutions of three types of actors (member organizations, support partners and LIH), we have carried out a qualitative data collection through focus group and individual interviews. The data were analyzed with a multidimensional model of nutritious food access, which allowed to compare the perspectives of each group of actors. We found that the spatial dimension is not equally important to each actor, and that the personal dimension of food access is perceived differently by each of them. These discords have their importance and impact on the organization of the eastern Montreal food system and highlight the necessity of a critical reading of the mainly spatial framing of food access problems.