15% of households skipped meals last month because they couldn't afford to buy enough food

[cakeorwine]

‘Health emergency’: 15% of UK households went hungry last month, data shows | Food poverty | The Guardian

"Millions of people – including one in five families with children – have gone hungry or skipped meals in recent weeks because they could not regularly afford to buy groceries, according to new food insecurity data.
According to the Food Foundation tracker, 15% of UK households – equivalent to approximately 8 million adults and 3 million children – experienced food insecurity in January, as high food prices continued to hit the pockets of low-income families.

Expects warned the persistence of high levels of food insecurity among low-income families was a “health emergency” that would drive the prevalence of conditions linked to poor nutrition, such as malnutrition and rickets.
Nearly two-thirds (60%) of food-insecure households reported buying less fruit and 44% bought fewer vegetables as they struggled with the ongoing cost of living crisis. By contrast, just 11% of food-secure households bought less fruit and 6% purchased fewer vegetables"

This is awful data - and something that should be being talked about. Being in work does not protect you from this. Life is just very expensive for some people - and costs are still going up.

They are getting hired just not in my area for my skill level. It's all senior/CCNP/network design roles and I only have certificates relevant to my current/previous role although I have had a very promising chat with a recruitment agency who is very interested in my Aruba certifications.

Unfortunately, the job he was calling me about was too far away and inaccessible by public transport but he was very confident he could find something remote so I have emailed him my CV to pass around.

I've also just been accepted onto a 3 month skills course in software engineering but that will mean not working for 3 months and attempting to live on UC. I am tempted though because this is the second time I have been made redundant from network engineering.

Both roles were support roles for third parties and the contracts I was working on were not renewed. I'm thinking software engineering might be more secure plus Indeed tells me my area is short of junior web developers.

Cereals are expensive. I'd buy something else instead and as well as spices. £70 is a decent budget if you know how to cook. It's not a huge amount less than I spend anyway.

I agree they could, but that's not really the point is it.
You said that you assumed that people would know you meant with butter or margarine - and I was pointing out that assumption is wrong because you're assuming the extra butter is readily available when for people in this situation it's not, and if you don't understand that (which you clearly don't because you made the assumption in the first place) then why are you dishing out advice to people who are living it day in day out? About a situation you clearly have no understanding of?

Yes, this was precisely why. As I said, speed and reliability were my primary concern not price.

Yeah, Aruba's a bit niche. Have you considered Juniper certification?

Not all calories are equal.

The many calories in a box of cereal will trump the very few calories in a pot of paprika every time when trying to put a meal on the table.

And the annual fee for delivery??

Frequency - £35 a month for 3 years for a phone contract? That totals £1,260!!

It's becoming more and more apparent that so many people don't actually believe that people on low incomes don't have a soul to destroy.

Why would you need to pay an annual fee? ASDA evening slots are £1.50n sainsbury's 4 hours start at £1.

Not everyone can get those slots. Plus now it's OK to instantly add money to this shop??

It's a hypothetical £70 budget. I can hypothetically spend it how I want. Defeatism for the sake of defeatism.

I think povvo-shaming is about psychological comfort. It's comfortable to believe that you'd cope just fine if you lost your job and these poor people are going hungry because they are stupid or just aren't trying hard enough. Whereas accepting that most if not all of us are one compulsory redundancy away from missing meals and taking cold showers because the gas meter has run out is really scary.

£70 for a family of four to include absolutely everything (all food for the week, toilet paper, toiletries, cleaning products etc) is really not a huge amount of money. At all.

@IvorTheEngineDriver

I don't know if anyone has picked you up on this.
Do you understand how sampling and surveys work?
You don't need to sample a lot of people to have confidence in your results.

The data is here

Food Insecurity Tracking | Food Foundation

The methodology is here

Microsoft Word - Methods Explanation (foodfoundation.org.uk)

6000 people in a population of 60 million

There is a 95% chance that the result is 15% +/- 0.90 %

How lovely for you that it is hypothetical.

When you're broke, you can't afford to be fussy.

I think most children would rather have cereal for breakfast over some garam masala in their cupboards.

I never said it was a huge amount. But I agree with the pp, that's it's a doable amount to eat well, including basic toiletries.

Says it all, really.

You have no clue.

What’s the point in having a hypothetical £70 budget where you can eat well if you’ve only got £30 a week to actually spend?

It's not just basic toiletries though, is it?

It also needs to include cleaning products, toilet paper and all the other little necessities that you end up needing to buy once a month or so. Which all add up.

A rice pouch is supposed to serve 2 people - assuming there's something to go with it.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia

I typed "Network" and my area into Indeed a few days ago and looked at the certs that popped up to see if there was much available that I had the skills for but not the cert in the hope I could get the exam out of the way quickly/without much study but it was mostly 1st line support roles that I am over-qualified for and that don't pay enough or senior roles which required CCNP as a minimum. I'm limited by not driving and the public transport is shit around here.

I applied to the first-line ones anyway, so hopefully I'll find something to tide me over if I don't take the skills course.

When I typed in "IT" a lot came up locally for PHP/Python/Wordpress which is why I then started looking at software courses. I do know PHP/WordPress and I am vaguely familiar with Python but the only affordable courses/certs I can find are full-time government skills boot camps.

Such as period products....