Table 2 Themes from Semi-Structured Interviews with 11 mothers of children in food insecure household, Jujuy, Argentina, 2015

Socio-environmental Stressors

 Limited financial resources

  “Last year my husband lost his job, we started then to reduce [food expenditures] because we have to pay the electricity, water…” (40 yrs., housewife)

  “The last days of the month, we do not have enough money to buy food, until the next month when we get paid”. (25 yrs., 3 children, housewife).

 Environmental contamination

  “There is also the smell from the paper mill and other factories, it depends on the direction of the wind, we wake up in the morning and the house is full of smoke”. (47 yrs., 6 children, housewife)

 Lack of urban infrastructure

  Interviewer: is this water safe to drink?

  Respondent: sometimes [it makes us sick] because it has insects, many things, it is dirty…but we strain it with a strainer or we tie a cloth to the pipe (21 yrs., housewife)

 Limited food access

  “There are no food stores here, there is one in [a nearby neighborhood], it is far. (21 yrs., 3 children, housewife)”.

Negative Coping Strategies

 Rationing of food

  “We buy cheaper things. Sometimes the vegetables are very expensive then we cannot use vegetables…we replace them with other things...when we do not have meat we eat hotdogs, or we make pasta with sauce”. (25 yrs., 2 children, housewife).

 Selective intake reduction

  “I eat less, so the children and also my husband can eat more, three or four days per week”. (21 years, 3 children, housewife)

Buffering-Protective Resources

 Local markets of the informal economy

  Respondent: We buy in the market [open air market] they bring [the vegetables] directly from the farms, they bring fresh vegetables

  Interviewer: What do you buy in the market?

  Respondent: Carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, peas, all types of vegetables, also some fruit, apples, oranges, bananas, peaches and also pasta, corn meal, rice, oil, salt whatever is needed for cooking.

 Pooling resources among neighbors

  “Sometimes families come from Bolivia with lots of children, what we do is, on Sundays we go [to the market] and buy bags of potatoes, pasta, eggs. Then we bake bread”. (26 yrs., 2 children, employed)

 Extended family support

  “My brother in law has a job, so sometimes we have an extra income, on a weekend so we have money for food…he was unemployed and not long ago he found a job”. (33 yrs., 2 children, housewife)

 Financial and nurturing role of grandmothers

  Interviewer: who pays for the food?

  Respondents: my mother, she is retired and receives pension for being the mother of 7 children (39 yrs., 5 children, employed)

  “My mother decides what we are going to eat because she knows best, she knows what we are going to buy”. (25 yrs., 2 children, student)