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.

But the article is not about eating rubbish it’s literally about people missing meals.

Yes, because that £4.99 Netflix subscription fee would feed a whole family healthily for a month.

Because people with no money will buy frozen, processed crappy meals at 3 for £8/£10 in a cheap supermarket to keep their families from being hungry rather than spend £3 on a tiny watermelon.

Are these people missing meals children? And are they doing it by choice with food in the fridge should they choose to eat it?

And a 99p pizza I'd filling? For a family?

Much more filling and satisfying than some boiled vegetables, yes!

Children need fat and carbs. They'll also be much fuller and happier on some pizza and chips than they would on a bowl of boiled carrot and swede 🙄

But 3 months of Netflix would buy a slow cooker, which opens up a heap of cheap easy meals.

I really wouldn't wish this kind of lived experience on anyone but I really think some posters need a dose of reality.

I think the closest some of you will get to understanding is try raising a family on the money you had for just yourself when you were a student. Not the subsidies your parents gave you, just the maintenance loans. Feed a family on that.

Why would a pizza be more filling than root vegetables and pulses? Children need some fat, they also need vitamins and minerals and Fibre. Casserole one day, pizza one day.

Families often consist of two people. (Or two people who are eating if the mother is going without.)

How is a slow cooker any different to cooking normally? Maybe I'm being dense as I've never felt the need to have one but I don't know why people swear by them.

Children are starving yet people are arguing about if they should eat a 99p pizza or not. Check your privilege fgs. That’s not a bloody luxury, it’s something that can be shoved in the oven that parents know their kids will eat. When you’re skint you can’t make a pan of vegetable stew in the hope that the children will eat it because if they don’t you have nothing else to give them. Food is expensive, so you buy what you know they will eat.

It’s not fair to be blaming the poor for the poor for the circumstances they’re in. The majority of them are doing their absolute best. Start looking up because that’s where the real problems are in this country.

Because kids won’t eat a bowl of water with some soggy leek and chick peas!!

@Butterdishy I don't know - common sense? 🤷‍♀️

I know this is MN where everyone's kids happily tuck in to lentil curry or porridge with chia seeds but in reality children are much more likely to eat pizza and chips.

And when you're tired and poor and don't have much time, you go with the easy options, especially when you know your kids are guaranteed to eat them.

Slow cookers are very cheap to run @5p an hour or something - much better than the hob or oven. You can bake potatoes in them, cook overnight porridge and all sorts as well as the obvs stews and caseroles @Beezknees

You're determined to force this casserole idea on people aren't you. In the same way as the mythical Mumsnet chicken exists.

I'm looking at Asda online now and working from an empty pantry.

600g casserole vegetables - £1.20
Stock cubes - £0.65p
500g bag green lentils - £1.90
Jar of herbs/spices - £1
Bag of onions £0.99

Total - £5.74

Or a 99p pizza.

A casserole with pulses will fill you up for longer than a pizza which is full of empty calories.

If a child doesn't like casserole there are plenty of other cheap nutritious meals. Even scrambled egg, beans and mashed potato would be better than pizza or chicken nuggets.

The main issue is housing costs. So people have less money left over to get food. The costs of both renting and people's mortgages are ridiculous these days. Of course that issue will never be tackled it seems.

The problem is that people who are poor don’t just have one type of poverty to contend with.

If you are a reasonably well off family and you lose your job you can indeed save a lot of money by batch cooking meals based on pulses and using up what’s in the freezer.

If you are truly skipping-meals poor then it is likely that you are also in fuel poverty (maybe on a pre-pay meter, maybe trying not to use too much as you’re already in debt) so you can’t easily cook things that take a long time. You’re less likely to have a well set up kitchen with working white goods (cost to replace, unlikely to have credit). You’re less likely to be able to wash cooking smells off your body afterwards (cost of hot water, soaps and shampoos). You’re likely to have either been working long hours (min wage jobs, no flexibility, overtime to try and afford food) or looking after kids (often with no support as a partner works to put food on the table). You’re more likely to come from a family of origin that was poor, you’re more likely to have no family support, you’re more likely to have experience of the care system. You’re less likely to have good executive functioning, you’re more likely to have experienced trauma.

Thats why poverty is complex, hard to fix, and inter generational. It’s also why some poor people are still overweight.

Right but how many people are paid daily? And how much of that casserole budget will be leftover? And how much did you save using the hob vs the oven?

I see. Don't think I'll be persuaded myself when I can just do potatoes and porridge in the microwave! Although if you're really on a budget fair enough.

''@Fairyliz

If this is true why is everyone so fat?
According to lots of health gurus intermittent fasting is the easiest way to lose weight.
They can’t both be true can they?
Given it’s in the Guardian I assume someone has miscalculated the January dieting statistics.''

No wonder we have issues in the UK.

This is a typical example of a tone deaf response from smug people who can't accept that the cost of living crisis has a dire impact on people's finances and who instead prefer to come up with the usual victim-blaming nonsense.

With that clarity of analysis and total lack of empathy and understanding of what is happening in this country @Fairyliz would do well at the Daily Mail...

Exactly @Menomeno.

I do wonder about some of the responses on here sometimes, they're just so far removed from any reality I know!

I wouldn't get into a debate about this without some stats - who are these families - single mums where DH has cleared off and doesn't pay, those on benefits but it isn't enough for food, two parents working but cost of rent sky high, disabled parents, housing assoc rents too high, mainly limited to SE England where rents must be high????? it's possibly all of these but hard to come up with a solution, if you don't know who it is it's hard to fix.

The full bag of vegetables will be used, half the bag of lentils, so you'll be left with 5 stock cubes, 2/3 jar of herbs and some onions.

And 14 more meals to make for the week

Stop blaming the poor for being poor and daring to want chips over bloody dahl. It’s rampant capitalism which is the issue. People are poor because their wages are not enough to have a decent standard of living. That’s it. Wages just don’t match the cost of rent/mortgage/childcare/food/fuel/clothes every month.

We live in the north and have decent wages but I’m shocked at the price of our shopping and how much it’s gone up in recent months.

We need to address the fact that a wage shouldn’t even have to be backed up by tax credits if shareholders are still making a profit. You should be able to live on two minimum/median wages and raise two kids because that’s what a lot of people have to do.