What is food access?

The 4 'A's of Food Access is a useful schemata for understanding food access or the barriers to food access.

Availability

If you don't have physical access to food, you really can't have it.

Affordability

If you don't have the means of exchange for food, you still can't have it. Usually this refers simply to choices being limited by low incomes .

Awareness

If you don't have particular sets of skills and knowledge your access to food will be limited, e.g. how to prepare and cook food, knowing where to find it, understanding what is seasonal and perhaps more readily available, or cheaper.

Acceptability

This refers to a range of individual, social, and cultural reasons for food choice. While an individual's preferences for one food over another might have a degree of flexibility, social norms are harder to change, while religious rules around food and drink are often fixed.

Note. The origins of this schemata were laid out in "Making Fruit and Vegetables the Easy Choice"( Davies, S. et al, 1999) - a proposal to Department of Health for a 5 A DAY pilot project to address food accessibility in Hastings and St Leonards in East Sussex.