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.

Do you realise how superior you sound?

A little petit filou (spare me any lecture)? An apple?

I didn't mention Appletiser. You did.

Milk costs money.

You may think milk in scrambled egg tastes 'vile'. Not sure most would agree.

My point is (although you allow dressed salad!) that you are leaving all the frills out , and actually not costing the whole meal.

Is that really what you would feed growing children?

Not sure why people are criticising this meal. Sounds perfectly fine to me. Healthy and nutritious.

My DH queries my bill every single time I return from the shop. He still can't accept what things cost.

Yes, but not every day!

And not enough for growing children really.

I do as well. This is one of my recent shops totalling £63:

Peanut butter
Green beans
Toilet roll
2 tins of coconut milk
Broccoli
apples
Tin of kidney beans
Load of bread
Bag of sweet potatoes
chocolate digestives
1kg rice
2 tins chick peas
1 tin tomatoes
Bottle of squash
6 eggs
bag of bagels
Jar of curry paste
multipack of tins of tuna
Orange juice
6 yoghurts
2 cartons of oat milk
4 Yorkshire puddings
pork joint
Parsnips
carrots
potatoes
fish fingers

To feed me, DP, DD(4) and DS(11 months)

I could’ve cut it down to about £50 if I’d really needed to.

6 eggs for a family of 4?

Better than pizza or chicken nuggets and chips surely. What would you feed a growing child?

It's plenty for growing kids. Absolutely loads of calories in cheese.

This was £51. Yes it was Sainsburys but I had a voucher (usually shop at Aldi)
The beef was for a beef casserole that made 6 portions for the freezer
Some weeks it's more like £45, some weeks it's closer to £60 depending if I need toilet roll/greaseproof paper/washing up liquid. Monthly it always comes out around £240pm and that includes if I have a coffee out/mcdonalds

And fat.

No toiletries or cleaning products?

What would you feed a growing child?

More than 1.5 eggs and a handful of grated cheese some toast and a bit of salad. I know mumsnet is famous for competitive under eating but that would be a lunch for my two, with some fruit and a yoghurt. It certainly wouldn’t be their evening meal.

Use less cheese then

Well, probably y the former because I am shit. Judge ye not.

But I would not feed 6 scrambled eggs to 4 people as their main meal of the day. I'd let them have some sort of pudding.

If I did feed them this , they would not be getting basically the same thing the next days.

I'm not using it at all thanks.

Well what would your meal be then?

You just moaned that cheese has too much fat. Now you want to give them pudding too? Logic has left the room

Come back to us on that one when you have teenagers.

Your 11 month old's food is making vanishingly little dent in that shop.

Someone with a partner and two teenage children is feeding 4 adults.

The age of your DCs does make sense of your portion size and costing of the magic extending scrambled eggs meal.

It's not my meal.

Pudding could be fruit.

I am just responding to a holier than thou poster who bangs on about nutrition.

I really don't care. I want not to live in a country where so many children are in destitution and barely eat at all, whatever it might be.

I think this thread has started to romanticise the notion of being ‘poor’. Nurses and teachers are not ‘poor’, I earn on a par with them and I am not poor, I’m not struggling to buy food and my DC are not about to suffer from malnutrition. My DC’s friends parents are all in a mix of similar jobs and we are all managing fine or at least I assume they are when they are shelling out loads of money for dancing and gymnastics and all the other things our DC go to, or go on holidays or get new cars.

Obviously there are differing circumstances but it’s a bit much to suggest that there won’t be any nurses or teachers as they won’t be able to eat. Nonsense.

Also the theme running through the thread of the hard working ‘poor’ person, doing 15 hour shifts, scraping for their last penny, all worried about feeding their DC nutritious food, not able to afford butter and most definitely never, ever, pissing money away on alcohol or cigarettes or scratch cards. Not buying the cheapest of shite for their kids so they can go out at the weekend. Not everyone obviously but I grew up in a properly ‘poor’ (can you tell I hate that term) area and all of you ‘let’s pretend we know what it’s like to live on the other side’ lot honestly don’t have a clue.

Typically in my house an evening meal would be something like home made cottage pie with veg in the pie filling, with a green veg on the side, or chickpea and chorizo casserole, veggie curry with fruit for dessert. Occasional pizza, occasional dessert - fruit crumble or some such. Basically proper, nutritious food that costs money to buy, cook and store safely. I don’t think it’s beyond the pale to think that parents should be able to afford to feed their kids something other than eggs on toast for an evening meal.

I also grew up in poverty - actual poverty, not the mumsnet idea of poverty. I remember huge vats of soup and rice pudding with stewed or tinned fruit - hot, easy with some degree of nutrition and most importantly, filling.

I'm going round jellycats please.