Last week marked World Food Day, an opportunity to think about something fundamental to every person’s wellbeing: reliable access to food.
When we talk about food insecurity, we often talk about poverty. We talk about food deserts, rising grocery prices, transportation, public assistance, and communities where nutritious food simply isn’t readily available.
These are critical conversations. Many people within the Autistic and broader disability communities live on limited incomes, rely on public assistance, or live in places where food choices are already restricted.
But there is another part of food security that receives far less attention.
Having food available is not necessarily the same as having food you can eat.
When the Available Food Isn’t Accessible Food
For some Autistic and neurodivergent people, food choices can be significantly limited by sensory differences, ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder), allergies, gastrointestinal conditions, other medical needs, or a combination of factors.
Sometimes the range of foods a person can reliably eat is very small.
And sometimes specific really does mean specific.
A particular brand. A particular texture. A particular preparation. A particular flavor. Even a change in packaging or formulation can turn a previously safe food into something a person can no longer eat.
From the outside, this can be misunderstood as preference or inflexibility.
But when another food isn’t a viable substitute, the disappearance of one familiar item from a grocery-store shelf can become a very real problem.
Food Security Requires Reliability
Imagine knowing that someone in your household can reliably eat only a limited number of foods.
Now imagine that one of those foods disappears from the store.
There may be plenty of other food on the shelves. There may even be food in your own kitchen.
But none of that changes the fact that the person still needs something they can eat.
Families and individuals may find themselves visiting multiple stores, ordering food from other locations, buying larger quantities whenever an item becomes available, paying more than they can comfortably afford, or constantly worrying that a safe food will suddenly be discontinued.
For people already facing financial insecurity, geographic isolation, transportation barriers, or limited access to grocery stores, those challenges compound quickly.
This is food insecurity, too.
Expanding the Conversation
At GRASP, we believe conversations about accessibility need to include the realities of neurodivergent lives.
Food access shouldn’t be measured only by whether calories are technically available within a particular geographic area. We also need to ask whether people have consistent access to food they can safely and reliably consume.
That means thinking about disability when we design food-assistance programs.
It means recognizing that substitutions don’t always work.
It means understanding why someone may need a particular brand or product.
And it means resisting the assumption that a person will simply eat something else if they become hungry enough.
Food is a basic human need. Access to it should not depend upon someone’s ability to tolerate whatever happens to be available.
As we reflect on World Food Day, perhaps we can expand what we mean when we talk about food security.
Because food isn’t truly accessible if you can’t eat it.
In our next post, we’ll take a closer look at ARFID, why it affects many Autistic people, and why “just try another food” isn’t always possible.