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.

All these ideas are fine and dandy if you're not coming from the position of an empty store cupboard. These foods all sound delicious, if you've got herbs and spices and garlic and ginger and chillis to flavour them with.

And no one with allergies or restricted diets for whatever reason.

I remember when my son was little not having the money for a loaf of bread and a pint of milk. I joined forces with a friend in the same position, we bought both and split them in half. Anyone virtue signaling about cheap meals who’s never been in that position really should have the grace and decency to pipe down. You’re looking very smug and foolish.

I’m still trying to work out where the hell you can buy half a dozen eggs for 78p? 2010 maybe?

Yes, but nobody is paid a day, or a meal, at a time. You could go and buy the whole lot for £2.31 and have loads of eggs and 2 potatos lefover.

Only if you have access to cheap supermarkets or have the money to pay for an online shop.

Tesco, for example, have recently changed their minimum spend to £50 which is useless if you only have £20 to last until payday.

Many people live on estates where the only shops a Spar or Londis, neither of which sell eggs for 13p a pop.

To be fair, Tesco sell 10 eggs for £1.33.

Supermarkets are making billions of pounds of profit which increase year on year

Energy companies are making millions of pounds of profit which are increasing year on year

Housing costs have increased significantly

But obviously the issue is poor people not eating lentils...

Supermarkets are making billions of pounds of profit which increase year on year

Energy companies are making millions of pounds of profit which are increasing year on year

Housing costs have increased significantly

But obviously the issue is poor people not eating lentils...

Ah if I had a pound for every brain cell.... nope I'd still be skint.

Didn't you know casserole will save the world?

If you have low housing and transport costs, it's hardy surprising that food is your biggest expense. It's the same for us and I would consider it normal.

Supermarket profitability was down 40% last year. Energy companies are going bust left right and centre.

There are so many factors at play. The lower your income the more likely you are to feel all the pressures that come along with it like an unstable relationship, addiction etc. We don't educate people how to properly wean babies and undereducated people reach for easy foods like chips and chicken nuggets. They don't want to see nor can they afford the food waste that comes with BLW. They don't know how to make a nutritious meal and wouldn't eat it even if they could because they've been raised on highly processed crap that makes them happy when they eat it. High sugar is always going to give a dopamine boost that nutritious foods won't.

The number of tradesmen who show up with a bag of crisps, a chocolate bar and coke for lunch is really high. They are working physically demanding jobs and shoving themselves full of crap. Then they have a fag. They have no idea where to even begin or even that they should for the sake of their own health.

Our cleaner is always agog at what our kids eat for lunch as hers wouldn't touch half of it and is very happy with a can of Pringles.

If we don't alleviate the stress of long term poverty and start to do a better job of educating pregnant mothers on how to feed their babies it's hopeless. We will create a underclass of people who will be blamed for their own miserable existence. If we want a fair and healthy society you need targeted interventions that not cheap nor quick.

One of the big problems in Glasgow is that they cheaper supermarkets are a bus ride away - and bus fares are not cheap either

@DuncinToffee I add bottled blackberries to porridge but earlier on in the thread someone was sneering about foraging for blackberries so I didn't like to say. I pick blackberries every year, bottle them in syrup - costs about 3p a jar, and ds eats them with pancakes through the winter.

I'm not criticising anyone. I grew up, one of 7, and learned to get by on not much. Then I was a skint student and spent another four years living on thin air. It does take knowledge & effort to survive on very little, and a lot of people have lost those skills which is sad.

And obviously people need the facilities to cook, but too many are living in one room without a cooker or a fridge. I'd like to see communities running classes on how to produce very inexpensive meals because it can be done.

Tesco reported adjusted operating profit of £1.4bn for the 26 weeks to August 26, 2023, up 14% from £1.3bn in the previous year.

British Gas saw its annual profits jump tenfold, from £72m in 2022 to £751m in 2023.

I'm a single parent. My oven broke last year so we have an air fryer and a portable electric hob currently. Cooking is tricky as everything that needs an oven must fit in the air fryer. I can't afford to replace the oven any time soon.
I can still do a lot of meals, but things like this with families can make it harder. That along with it being nearly £2 for a bag of apples vs a bag of chips in Aldi. Which one is more filling? Which one goes further? Its obviously the chips, so they'll get priority over the apples. I still buy fruit and veg but nowhere near to the extent as before.

If you replace fresh veg with frozen/tinned, it is definitely possible to eat healthier and tastier than cheap upfront foods on a cost per meal basis. However, it requires planning and for you to buy several ingredients up front, not to mention having a ready supply of herbs/spices/store cupboard staples. It's this that is the problem if you live on or below the poverty line line.

A basket of staples such as flour, oil and a few herbs and spices can easily amount to £10 these days. That's often half the budget a single person on benefits has for food. Take out toiletries as well and there simply isn't enough to buy good food and those staples.

No one's saying you need to eat casserole every day, it's just one example of a cheap nutritious meal. A 99p pizza will only feed one person so for a family of 4 would be around £4.

You could buy 4 jacket potatoes for less than a £1 in Aldi, 6 free range eggs for £1.50, a packet of frozen peas less than a £1. Make 2 x 3 egg omelettes and that's another cheap meal.

Ok so buy a week's worth of shopping for one adult and 2 children and a toddler (a fairly typical household).

That week is "big shop" week where you need at least 3 of the following: laundry detergent, washing up liquid, sanitary products, nappies, wipes, soaps, hair care, deodorants oh and little Johnny's school shoes have a hole in them.

What sanctimonious clap trap. People know! They just prefer to eat the shite because it’s often literally the only thing they have to look forward to. MC people will get their buzz from looking forward to a nice holiday, or a couple of glasses of wine at the end of the day, or a new pair of shoes, or a visit to the salon… You begrudge struggling people the tiniest morsel of pleasure and look down your nose at the cleaner eating crisps. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I think this is incredibly complex. I think we have generations of people who can’t cook from scratch.

My grandmother was a dinner lady who cooked amazing food (apparently). Didn’t seem to pass these skills into my mother, my mother didn’t pass any of her skills onto me and I have zero skills to pass onto my kids. So my food is basically toast and the food I feed my kids is mainly shop bought, hence my shopping bill being insanely high.

I think a lot of modern families are similar to me. We don’t get takeaways really , but I suspect a lot of people also lean on takeaway foods.

Tesco’s profit was £2.5 billion last year. I think they can afford it, don’t you?

Indeed. And healthy food being more expensive has been known about since the 1980s, when it was acknowledged to be a problem in the UK by then the Health Minister Edwina Currie. She vowed to tackle it, when it was brought to her attention during a TV news interview. I recall one of the examples used was cheap crap white bread versus granary wholemeal bread.

The problem however got worse. Currie was minded to (unhelpfully) take on the farmers but she couldn't or wouldn't tackle to business models of the big supermarkets and their supply chains. And recently the problem of food inequality has systemically grown much, much worse.

These days I would point particularly to: fruit, vegetables, fish, eggs and cheese, and what TV cookery luvvy Ina Garten would call 'good bread'. Tinned tomatoes and jars of stuff like pickles/olives have jumped in price. The oft-recommended 'Mediterranean diet' is no longer cheap or even moderately priced - and that has health implications.

And if they cant afford it maybe they should considered it might be their own fault because they could be making better choices...

After all if finger pointing and judgement work for the poor

Weird how we dont hold rich companies to the same standards, when like you say, they can afford to do better

I didn't sneer at blackberry foraging - I do it too - but in itself it is not an answer to poverty, or an excuse to point the finger at poor people for not doing enough to help themselves as clearly it's not an option for everyone or a satisfactory solution by itself.