Funding outcome

Food insecurity (FI) is the inability to access affordable, accessible and nutritious foods. In Canada, there are over 2.5 million children living with food insecurity and over 10 million Canadians living with FI. This has led to very high rates of food bank use by Canadians because families are struggling to have enough money to pay for food. Children with celiac disease (CD) are not able to tolerate gluten, a protein found in common grains such as wheat, rye and barley. They must eat a gluten free diet (GFD) for the rest of their life to stay healthy. Gluten free (GF)-foods are very expensive and cost more than 200 times the cost of gluten containing foods. This has led to almost 50% of families with children with CD having food insecurity in Canada. Food insecurity can cause a lot of issues for children with CD including a less healthy diet and children who are not able to strictly follow a GFD because their families can't afford GF-foods. Not following a GFD can cause children with celiac disease to develop poor bone health and to develop other long term health issues. Many families with children with CD also may need to rely on food banks to get GF-foods, yet the food banks have very limited resources to purchase and supply GF-foods to families. The study purpose is to determine how many families with children with CD in Canada use Food Banks to get GF-foods for their children with Celiac Disease and to describe the challenges that food banks experience providing healthy, gluten free foods to families. We would also like to know if some food banks have developed local strategies to help them with these challenges. This is important to understand as there are lots of children who have other dietary restrictions (e.g food allergies) and these local solutions might help food banks to figure out efficient ways to meet the dietary needs of all children on specialized diets like the gluten-free diet.