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.

🙄 I've seen butter going for £7.50. Yes, you can find it cheaper. My point is that supermarkets are selling basic food items at stupidly high prices, like it or not.

If that is still not enough evidence that food prices are too high, then when will you accept it?

I dont think its surprising our spending habits have changed in the 1950s given that it was 70 years ago!

You cannot operate in society now without the internet or a mobile phone, so thats an additional expense.

One salary is not enough to run a household so both parents work so childcare costs are an expense that barely existed then.

Changes in housing means that families often have to move away from their support to find affordable housing - it seems to be rarer now for people to live closeby to family who could assist with childcare. And thats on presumption that grandparents are even able to retire.

The joke used to be that The Simpsons were meant to be the working class family- can you imagine one salary affording you a three bed house, three kids and two cars in this day and age?!

@LiquoriceAllsort2

You make a fair point. But the way the world is so interconnected now, we cannot solve everything.

Of the three things you mention, I don't drive and I avoid sweat shop type clothes where possible. I buy fair trade where I can. At home I support local retailers and businesses where possible, even when it's more expensive.

It's not as if child labour has never existed in this country. Thankfully we have advanced from that. Those children working in sweatshops and mines are of course doing it from necessity. What we need is fairer trade systems and multinationals to pay fair wages to the adults, stop asset stripping and practices which destroy the environment.

What we can do is look after our own. Maybe when we have a fairer more equitable society here, people will have more capacity to care what happens elsewhere.

I think if I was struggling to feed my family butter would be WAAAY down the list of essentials though.
People insist on calling it a basic, but it is far from a basic

Food prices are high, I think we all accept that. However, it's possible to eat cheaply if you can't afford higher priced foods. But every time it is suggested, people are shouted down as if eating budget meals is the greatest indignity.
I tend to agree with others upthread. This is just a nice topic for virgue signalling MNetters to get comfortably outraged about and pa themselves on the back for caring about poor people with less than they have.

Food was too cheap here for too long, now it’s drawn even with comparable EU countries.

And where on Earth are you shopping to see £7 butter? This thread is wild, and almost a parody of itself now.

Where have you seen butter for £7.50, I only pay £1.60 or thereabouts for a block of butter.

I know it’s 😂
’I can see why some people can’t afford food, if you pop into our local deli olives have gone from £10 to £12! Can you believe it!’

Anyway, I’ll leave it there, but goodness me…

You have an opinion but they are not categorical facts that somehow have all escaped our intellectual capacities. Personally, I feel your points may have more validity if you provided an answer to whether you and your family eat breakfast and lunch? Also, I find it difficult to take advice on feeding teenagers from someone who is a parent to a baby and an infant.

Butter's actually come down in price since last year!

It's actually gone up.

Should it EVER be acceptable for ANYONE to charge this much money for butter? Yes or no?

In fairness, butter isn't that expensive in most supermarkets but if all you have access to do is a small co-op or a Spar to do your top-ups, then they are expensive and they do kind of have you over a barrel.

I've seen things for sale in our local co-op that are double the price they are in any normal supermarket.

Oh bloody hell that's Lurpak 😂 No one forces you to buy that, it's not like there's no other options.

A block of butter last year was more expensive than it is now, it's gone down from around £1.89 to £1.60.

@Katypp

The issue I have with the budget meal posters is two fold
Firstly like the poster claiming they spend £63 on their food shop for a family of 4. Then we find out that includes two toddlers and no mention on breakfast, lunches, drinks (as in tea/coffee) and the most basic of cleaning/toiletry ssentials.
Secondly - nothing wrong with the budget meals in themselves, but eating like that day in day out is dull, boring, lacking in nutrition and quite frankly soul destroying.
I mentioned up thread that when I was growing up my mum was always running short of money 10 days a week towards the end of the month. My mum did not smoke, drink, go to the bingo or have a car. We never went hungry but the last week or so was egg and chips every night.
Nothing wrong with egg and chips, I make it myself now and again, but it was years after I left home before I could face an egg

Definitely, some things in Waitrose are way cheaper than my local Coop and my Local Sainsburys. Equally, healthier food is on offer whereas this is not pushed in Asda. The health of the nation is a bigger problem for the future, you can scoff about olives or Rye bread but we should care about everyone's health.

Also who gets the profits from pushing the addictive food on to people.

For those at the back again - I thik you are misinterpreting the figures (Guardian is always bad for this type of thing ) it is not 15% of the population - the survey with an axe to grind was of 6000 people who were those most likely to be on benefits or otherwise on low incomes etc) which is hardly representative.

Others besides myself, have made this point but it seems most of the posters are fixated on the idea that millions are on the breadline and skipping meals.

The Food foundation tracker is not an official regulated fact checker but a charity who are making a point which while valid and important is extremely biased.

You haven't answered my question. Is it acceptable that butter is being sold for £8.18? Yes or no.

If people will pay that for a particular brand and there are alternatives available, of course it's acceptable. No one is forced to buy Lurpak

How many people visit foodbanks now is that disputable and biased data?

No, we're not interested in the facts if there's something we can get in a virtue-signalling froth about on MN

A good question. I will also ask how many people cvisit food banks who would budget for food if they were not there as an alternative?
I said upthread I visit foodbanks as part of my job and the woman running the biggest one in our city (Trussell Trust) said they estimated about 40% of people saw the food bank as a way of subsidising their grocery shop each week so they could spend the freed-up money on things they wanted to. Is she lying? She's at the coal face and is very compassionate but says some people take advantage every week.

Not all butter is being sold for that price though is it so it's a bit of a silly question. You don't have to buy it. If people didn't buy it the price would come down.

'virtual signalling', most overused phrase on MN these days.

I live in a village. We have a Co Op, but no other food shops. We manage as we have cars.

This week, one car is in the garage, and DH needed the other for work... 200 miles away. So having to rely on the Co op for a few days, which we usually just use for milk etc..

I needed sanitary towels. 50p in Morrisons or Asda.. £2.20 there.

One off of us. More regular for a lot of people. Paying more because that's whats walkable.