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.

During the last austerity crisis the BBC did a programme where they got several chefs to try and meal plan for a week and make a meal for less than the cost of the same value ready meal at the time. They struggled. Deciding people should learn to cook and that would solve the issue is oversimplifying the issue a lot.

Is this meant to be serious? You can't afford strawberries in Feb? An out of season fruit? I'm honestly not sure if this is meant to be a joke (which isn't funny at all when families are struggling) or if you don't understand the seasonality of fruit and veg and why they are an expensive luxury out of season.

Yep. My usual shop living alone is £60pw, can be more or less
I can do a cheap week at £30 but that involves using up cupboard and freezer stuff
If I didn't have a freezer, spices, and gas/electric I wouldn't be able to do it

The oven costs 71p per hour to run. A hob is 61p per hour. It’s negligible. A pizza cooks in 15 minutes. It’s cheaper to cook the pizza in the oven than use the hob for 25 minutes.

This all day long! The pontificators will never get it. They’ll just bang on that kids should eat pasta sprinkled with dust for 26p.

Does that 71p take into account that an oven takes 15 minutes to get to the required temperature when it will be more expensive as it's heating up?

Yep, been there myself in very hard times. Slow cooker is very economical and it’s not ‘filling’ to feed your family processed crap like frozen pizzas. But people simply won’t believe it. They don’t believe some of use choose to cook from scratch with limited funds using cheap, fresh ingredients. They assume we all want a frozen pizza or may own an air fryer. Air fryers are going to be number one on the cancer causing list one day I’m sure. They want us to be chomping on cheap biscuits, microwave lasagnes and crisps. They won’t hear of people who have actually experienced poverty during childhood and then managed to come out the other side with good budgeting skills and cooking healthy meals.

I agree with this, a couple of years ago we as a nation were spending less percentage wise of our income on food than people were in the 1950s. Not sure if that gap has closed since food prices have gone up but housing costs were lower in the 1950s percentage wise.

Please take up my challenge then.

I don’t get the link with air fryers - I cook far more from scratch and more experimentally with one as it’s so much quicker and easier to heat up than the oven. Homemade soda bread, granola bars, frittata to cut into chunks for lunch, roasted veg…I buy very little freezer food but the air fryer goes on almost every day! I’d say it’s made our diets far healthier.

Some of the commenters here would have kids picking oakum for one bowl of gruel a day, no seconds. Jesus wept. How bad does it have to get before people develop some empathy?

Cheap food is often nutritionally poor. Think rice and pasta: no vitamins, no minerals, not enough protein.

People can be obese and also malnourished.

Poverty also fucks with your mind and can drive binge eating when there is food available because you don't know when it next won't be. Being able to eat healthily has become a privilege of the well-off in the world's sixth-biggest economy.

Well we have the solution to food poverty. Bin off free school meals, food banks etc. And just provide cups of lentil stew with root vegetables to the undeserving poor as they queue up down the street.

Shall we reopen the workhouses to fund the food while we are at it.

The whole point is that if you are cooking all the time, you would have these in your store cupboard anyway, and not have to go out, and build it all up from nothing. So things like a bottle of soy sauce, paprika, oregano, curry powder, fish seasoning etc.. And obviously these will not all need replacing all at once.

FFS!

British Gas reported an increase in profit of £94 million between 2022 and 2023 - not income, profit.

The problem is not that using the oven to cook a pizza is 10p more than cooking lentils on the bloody hob! Or that it takes 15 minutes for the oven to heat up, it's huge companies charging extortionate amounts for a product they know we can't do without so the rich can get richer.

But you still need to find that extra £1-2 a week to start stocking the store cupboard. You've got an empty cupboard staring you in the face, you're due on your period, your baby has 2 nappies left and the toilet needs cleaning. What do you prioritise?

You've got to have money on the gas an electricity meters to cook from scratch. Increasing numbers of food bank users are asking for food that doesn't need heating because they can't afford the energy costs to run the cooker. So we are talking bread, crisps, cans of beans, perhaps tinned fruit, tins of corned beef. This is all a far cry from fresh ingredients.

I don't cook pasta or lentil dishes as they simply do not fill me up.

I really do enjoy lentils but there seems little point if I am still going to be hungry.

I could put yam plantain or sweet potatoes with it but then it will cost more.

I've often thought about this.

Asda do a frozen mac cheese for 85p. If you let it defrost completely, it only takes a couple of minutes in the microwave to cook. It actually tastes pretty good.

I really defy anyone to make one, including the cooking costs of boiling macaroni and making cheese sauce, for much less. Yes, you can make it in bulk for cheaper, but that presupposes being able to buy the ingredients in bulk and having a freezer, containers, utensils, etc. (Asda's own brand cheese is now £3 for just 400g.)

Also the cook/industrial deep freeze/re-heat process of the frozen mac cheese means it's easier for people with gluten intolerances to eat, as much of the gluten is knocked out during the processing. Products marketed as low gluten food can be ridiculously expensive.

@Whatsthesecret whats your challenge? It’s not air fryer related is it?

If you look up this organisation - the test sample size is a few thousands and they do state that they focus on those most likely to be in need.

Suggest you take these figures with a large dose of scepticism.

I do agree that many families are 'ill-fed' and it is the children who would suffer.

Because they are fantastic for buying cheaper, tougher cuts of meat, and making a tender meal out of it, if root vegetables are added, along with seasoning, and stock cube. Simple to use, economical. Not standing while tired after work, wondering what to eat, they can be left on low to cook, while out at work in fact. Quickly steam some green veg to accompany the meal, job done.

I'm one of them.

Yes, I make food from scratch. I don't have any choice, even though I'm disabled and it's an enormous struggle to do it. A few years ago, I would have got myself a takeaway or had a ready meal on a bad day. Now I either go hungry or I struggle to cook in the kitchen. I'm often in the kitchen with tears in my eyes because of the pain I'm in. It was only about two weeks ago, I ended up on the kitchen floor trying to make something because I collapsed halfway through.

Food is just too expensive. I've got massive bills to pay so food ends up being my last priority. I consider myself to be relatively well off for someone living on benefits because I'm in a HA property and I get significantly more than others because I can't work. But hunger pains are a normal part of my life, as is panic and guilt at the checkout.

That's the thing that really gets me - I feel guilty for buying food.

No. It's this.

I set this challenge for you all. Budget and plan for the following:

A week's shopping for 1 adult 2 children and a toddler in "big shop" week. Also during this week Johnny needs new shoes, Tommy's 3rd hand pushchair has developed a tear in the fabric and Tomathan has been struck by the school bullies again who cut off a chunk of her hair, class photos are this week and she is in tears over how she's going to look in them

A lot of families also - for some bonkers reason - lean on branded items. Which are unjustifiably expensive when for the most part it's just different packaging to the own brand label.

I'm not for a moment denying prices have gone up. We shop in Lidl and I'd say it's up 40% in 2 years. The rise in coat of mint bubbly bars from 69p to £1.09 is criminal imo.

But when I see people spending £4 on tomato sauce because "ooh it's little Johnny's favourite" I think they need urgent lessons in budgeting.