In poor city neighborhoods, work schedule and travelling hour constraints as well as the lack of space in precarious habitats often leads to a reliance on popular restaurants and street food. These small-scale activities generate job opportunities but are carried out with limited resources, I.e. scant access to drinking water or quality raw materials, unsanitary environments, lack of food storage facilities etc.
Moreover, anonymity and low institutional quality control capabilities promote unfair commercial exchange behaviour. The informal food sector (although providing essential services to feed populations with limited purchasing power) I thus often considered as a generator of consumer health risks.
Food insecurity in these environments also involves difficult access to healthy food. More generally, market segmentation takes place with a supply of strict quality controlled products targeting relatively rich consumers, alongside the development of a supply targeted to populations with low purchasing power. This supply comes mainly from informal microenterprises and itinerant trade, but also from more specific sectors in which unsold products from formal markets are recycled for popular markets.
The development of market stalls to improve the health conditions, the creation of equipped areas devoted to popular restaurants and training of crafts people are different ways that some cities implement to enhance the health quality of food.
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