Food Capability

shapes his food behaviors according to what such digital influencers recommend. In this regard, Steils & Obaidalahe (2020) warn about the lack of control over the information shared since nutritional knowledge is co-constructed on social media, which might lead to knowledge distortion.

Another source of nutritional knowledge is familiars and friends. In the following passage, Tarsila narrates how she learned about beetroot, orange, and vitamins while caring for her mother.

Since I was very young, my mother always made beetroot, which she said was good for the blood. When she was sick, I gave my mother a lot of orange juice and beetroot. She taught me it was good, so I always made it for her. So, I always buy beetroot and zucchini because they [her children] like it and green food because I think it's all green food, so it's good. But about vitamins and nutrients like that, I don't know anything.

In this passage, Tarsila demonstrates that her primary source of nutritional knowledge was her mother. In this sense, she tries to introduce this “healthy food” into her children’s diet because she considers it beneficial to health. This finding is consistent with Voola et al. (2018), that pointed out family members as trustworthy sources where participants access nutritional information. More than that, families develop a mechanism to provide generational transfer of nutrition knowledge.

I commune with Adkins & Ozann (2005), who found that low-literate consumers employ various coping skills to meet their needs. Similarly, urban poor families cope with their low literacy and nutritional knowledge, using what is within their reach to deal with their lack of food literacy.

To sum up, learning through informal sources is a coping strategy that urban families employ to overcome their limited access to formal learning sources. According to (Hill & Sharma, 2020), this is a transcending coping strategy because participants surpass their few years of study, accessing nutritional knowledge through sources that were available to their low literacy skills.

Lack of ability to practice nutritional knowledge. Frequently, the participants have enough nutritional knowledge, but they cannot effectively practice it (Block et al., 2011). For example,

Marta’s doctor recommended that she cook her own bread to introduce a more natural food into her routine. However, since her oven is broken, she cannot bake her bread.

She said I had to eat homemade bread. For me to make the bread. But my oven... My stove now has just one burner. I'm cooking in my mom's crockpot, making rice in the electric pot because the stove broke out.

And the oven is not closing. She told me I could make homemade bread.

That homemade bread, for me, wouldn't be as bad as other bread. Or buy ready-made bread. Then I told her I couldn't.

Although Marta wants to make her bread, she cannot cook it in her oven. This situation limits the applicability of the nutritional knowledge that she learned from her doctor. This passage makes it possible even to feel the melancholy when she talks about the oven. Not having the necessary appliances is disturbing not only for Marta. Eduarda went through a similar situation when she got without a refrigerator.

Wow, it was horrible. I couldn't make rice for dinner and leave it for the next day's lunch that would spoil. It was a time when I ate once a day too. And there was no meat. I was crying. I think it was the moment I cried the most in my life. I called my friend, saying, “I'm angry.” Then he said, “stop crying, Eduarda, you'll make me cry too.” I said, “how?

I just keep doing good for others, for everyone. Why do these things happen to me?”. I cried desperately.

This passage demonstrates how Eduarda got angry and sad when her refrigerator broke. The lack of appliances damages her physical health and affects her mental health and well-being.

The previous examples suggest that urban poor families give up the ability to apply nutritional knowledge. The lack of adequate appliances limits their food literacy practice (Block et al., 2011), which justifies the classification of this coping strategy as giving up one (Hill & Sharma, 2020). Participants face this issue as a “no way out” situation and no longer seek to surpass this challenge, acquiescing to that.

Perception of food is running out. When participants realize their food is running out, they employ strategies to manage the food scarcity challenge. These strategies are similar to cooking strategies to make the most of the foods (e.g., adding water to beans or cutting cuts of chicken

into smaller pieces) presented by Sato et al. (2017). Urban poor families invent or follow recipes that optimize the food amount to make the food yield. For example, Eduarda prefers to cook her family strogonoff, a recipe with meat (beef or chicken) and milk cream. She argues this is a cheap recipe, which her family likes.

One thing I know everyone likes when I cook it is strogonoff, right? It was a cheap mixture that doesn't spend a lot, yields, and everyone likes, right? So, there was a time that I frequently tried to make strogonoff because it was cheap.

Because meat is expensive food, Eduarda mixes it with milk cream into one of the family’s favorite recipes. In the past, when buying meat was not too expensive, she cooked strogonoff recipe frequently to make the food yield and to please her family. Cintia also narrates how she cooks pumpkin with minced meat to make the food yield.

Interviewer: Tell me something that I was curious about. That pumpkin you made with the minced meat is to make it yield, right?

Cintia: Yes, to increase the amount. And it's delicious. I cut the pieces [of the pumpkin], put it with the meat to stew, and then add water little by little. Wow, it's good. It tastes good.

In this passage, Cintia describes how she cooks pumpkin and minced meat to make the meal bigger. Cintia is a great cook, so she uses her culinary skills to create delicious and cheap recipes.

Furthermore, Angela creates a strategy to vary the recipes, even using the same ingredient to make the food yield. She argues that, within this strategy, her family does not get annoyed with only one recipe.

Since it's just chicken, so to not have the same thing all the time, I make it in the stew, I cook the thigh [chicken], then I put tomato, onion, peppers, everything I have, everything, to make the broth. So, since I've already cooked it like that today, tomorrow I'll do it fried.

Angela describes how she alternates preparing chicken in different ways. Since chicken is the cheapest meat that she buys, she varies the preparation to eat different recipes with chicken.

Such examples constitute coping strategies that consumers employ to deal with shortages.

Fernbach et al. (2015) categorize these mechanisms as “efficiency planning strategies,” in which consumers stretch their resources to achieve savings and do more with less.

Making the food yield can be categorized as a giving in coping strategy (Hill & Sharma, 2020).

When they realize that food is running out, participants embrace this issue and work on solutions to make the food yield and manage the food scarcity.

Food ran out (hunger). Besides the strategies to make the food yield, the interviews also draw attention to the strategies the participants create to handle the hunger: when they actually ran out of food. For example, Eduarda relates how she cooked bananas in different ways to not starve.

There was a time when I was very hungry... I don't know if you've heard of it, but I used to fry green bananas. I grated green bananas like potato chips and fried them. It looked like potato chips. I made green banana soup with pepperoni and green banana stew too. When I only had rice, bananas ended my hungry a bunch of times…

In this passage, Eduarda describes how she alleviated hunger with green bananas. At that time, she had a bunch of bananas available because there was a banana plantation next to her house.

She cooked the bananas in different ways to eat with rice or eat by themselves. She probably did not even know how bananas were nutritious during this period, but she ate them to alleviate hunger. She learned how the banana is a nutritious eating banana to alleviate hunger. The following passage illustrates how Marta’s mom created recipes to alleviate her hungry daughter.

When I see cassava flour and butter, I remember when my mother gave it to my sister. That day, she was going to die, and then she asked for flour with sugar. So sometimes I remember when I see it, right?

In this passage, Marta affirms that she remembers the past every time she sees butter and cassava flour. Difficult situations of starvation mark her childhood. There was a time when her sister was starving, and her mother gave her a mix of cassava flour and butter. This mix is not a proper recipe but a creation of her mother with the only two things she had at home at that moment. Then, she created the mix to feed her children. The preparation of the blend was not consciously; it was instinctive. She learned from practice how cassava flour and butter have nutritional value.

The coping strategies to handle hunger align with Mehta & Zhu (2016), who found that scarcity context activates a mindset that compels consumers to think of the products beyond their

traditional functionality. Therefore, urban poor families facing food deprivation are induced to use creativity to make other functions of some foods.

Creating recipes to alleviate hunger is a coping strategy categorized as a giving in type (Hill &

Sharma, 2020). Similar to the previous coping strategy, urban poor families accept their food scarcity situation and attempt to manage this issue, creating recipes not to starve.