Is food poverty real?

[Leapfrog44]

Provocative title, sorry I know food poverty is real. I'm just not convinced about the extent of it.

I've cooked half a packet of dried chickpeas 50p which we eat fried with garlic, salt and olive oil. They're also delicious with pasta or with potatoes as a curry. Braised Puy lentils (60p) cooked with onions, celery and the bendy carrots left in the fridge.

And to really push the boat out an aubergine stew with onions and tomatoes. The 3 big aubergines cost £1.50. Tomatoes and parsley came from the garden.

I spent an hour cooking today including making a loaf of bread. With some rice or couscous, and some salad, what I've made will feed us for 4 nights.

We have apples too, foraged at the weekend. The windfall ones I cut the bad off and stewed them, the rest are good for eating. There are also elderberries, plums and a few late blackberries dotted around the margins of the city for anyone who can be bothered to go out and pick them.

I know not everyone has a garden but a very small space can be used to grow quite a lot. In pots I grew enough tomatoes, green beans and lettuce to feed us all summer. If I was less lazy or more skint, I'd also seed save, to ensure I can grow them for free next year. Many allotment holders would totally give up some produce in exchange for labour too.

So I guess I'm wondering if the increasing number of people who are in financial dire staits and find themselves needing to use food banks are in fact suffering from a lack of food education as much as lack of money? Our grandparents in the same situation would have cultivated every bit of earth with home grown vegetables and I'm sure would have been more resourceful and more capable of making do on very little.

Obviously there are very vulnerable people without the means to cook or to grow but surely not everyone experiencing 'food poverty' is in this category? I often wonder why at food banks they don't ask if recipients have access to a bit of ground (or a few pots) and give them seeds? Pulses and in season veggies are incredibly cheap and with a few quid you can feed your family really well if you know how to cook them. It's far better to cook a simple vegetable curry or dhal and eat it all week than have to exist on the pot noodles, tinned sludge, sugary cereals and biscuits that they're giving out.

Times are going to get MUCH tougher. Climate change and environmental destruction will soon jeopardise our food security and food banks will not be able to help everyone.

So AIBU? As a society are we actually getting poorer and hungrier or have we just raised a couple of generations lacking general resourcefulness, cooking skills and horticultural know how? Times are tough for increasing numbers but I can't help feeling that many of these people just don't have a clue how to help themselves.

Some people don't have any money AT ALL spare after bills each month. Don't have time to be pissing around with seeds when working three jobs to make sure the rent gets paid.
What sort of life is eating lentils for every meal?? I'm sure it's nice for you as a one off but, if you have no choice to eat stuff like that every day it would get pretty depressing pretty quickly.

Here you go:
www.thedailymash.co.uk/features/the-judgmental-bastards-guide-to-poverty-20180918177420

In the nicest possible way you have no idea what you’re talking about. I volunteer at a food bank and many people are in such dire straights re housing that the idea of giving them some seeds is laughable. When you’re stressed due to job loss, have a sick child or are mentally ill, plus benefit delays, no money left on gas meter and crappy temporary accommodation I can honestly say you’d have no energy left for soaking chickpeas! The people we see are so vulnerable and in dire straights. To give an idea this week I had a man who’s living in his car, another man who’s living in a house not fit for human habitation who has psychosis and can’t get help as the wait for the psychiatrist is two months, a family with six children who are living in a bed sit having been made homeless... the list goes on.

If they haven't got the money for food. They haven't got the money for bloody seeds ect
The words let them eat cake spring to mind.
Is that you back from the grave Marie Antionette

Many people don’t have sufficient fuel or pots or kitchen facilities for cooking big stews and things from scratch, let alone time or the knowledge/energy.

It may not be down to a lack of resourcefulness but other factors. For example time. If you are a job seeker and have been sent on a course you do not have the time to go foraging. You are either on your course or fulfilling your other job seeking obligations.
Do people have the money to pay for the fuel to cook?
Do they have the money or space for a freezer to store batch cooking?
Those declared homeless but housed in temporary accommodation may only have access to a kettle and a microwave. There's not much in the way of cooking from scratch you can do there.

You are looking at things with a very narrow lens OP. YABU.

Fuck me. I can’t believe anyone is so naive/ignorant as to post a thread like this but here we are.
I suggest you go and take your privileged self and volunteer with a local food bank. Then you can come back and tell us everything you’ve learnt.

I think you’re off the mark with the grow-your-own produce suggestion, OP, but I agree that eating healthily can be very cheap.

I think the argument comes down to convenience, rather than finances in many cases.

quite Hodge

ODFO

You are going to get roasted

Who has a garden in a one bed tenement flat in a city? Or access to an expensive allotment?

There's a real problem with food education, cooking isn't taught in schools and lots od adults have parents who didn't cook or talk to them/teach them about cooking.
Also, depending where you live you just can't buy pui lentils, celery salt, cous cous and aubergines. You can buy oven chips and cheap burgers at the places you can walk to.
You're looking at it from an incredibly privilege position with access to food and abilities that plenty of people don't have.

Yes, yab an absolute idiot. Some people have NO MONEY. Literally none. There are no wonky carrots in the fridge, garlic and salt to season(!) or olive oil! No trees or time to forage for apples. No tomatoes growing in their non existant garden! Soaking chickpeas and waiting for seeds to grow in a moudly room with no kitchen and two kids... whilst you work every hour to make ends not even start to meet... I don’t think so! These people aren’t lazy or lacking in knowledge and skills ffs.

Just because you have not experienced something first hand, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

Try living in a bed sit on job seakers allowance and see how much electric it uses on your key meter to boil your chick peas.

We’ve grown stuff in our garden for fun this year - it takes quite a bit of time and effort, and the return on your money is negligible! I mean, it’s fun and it’s great to eat homegrown stuff and let the kids see where food comes from, but we’re hardly self-sufficient - I have a small new-build house garden, and need room for kids to play out, so there’s not much space to spare.

It's not only not being able to afford food, but not being able to cook it in the first place because you can't afford the fuel or don't have the basics!
Many people have to live in tiny rubbish flats with a microwave only (if they are lucky)

Perhaps they could swap the seeds for a cow OP.

Silly post.

Your lack of awareness OP is quite staggering.

YABabitU you are right in saying that people soften don't choose what they eat wisely. Meat really is a luxury. So are ready meals, processed food etc. There are people coming on here like can I feed my family for £10 I'm skint and one is like 'dude!'. But growing food is often impossible. I live in a flat. All I can muster is a few pots of herbs for example. And going foraging can cost more than its worth/be impossible without a car. Yes food education and a bit of effort would help a lot of families but it certainly wouldn't eradicate the problem.

Does this few quid for ingredients also include the initial outlay for the spices, herbs, oils and other seasonings needed to prevent your chickpeas tasting like a bland mush? How do you make a curry from just vegetables? Again, you would need to spend money to get the required flavourings.

Batch cooking only really works if you have enough money for the initial outlay. If you've only got £20 a week you arent going to be able to buy enough to warrant batch cooking.

As someone said to me the last time I mentioned this - it's very expensive being poor.

Lots of reasons food poverty is real. I lived on benefits for four years BUT I'd worked for over 30 years, I had a degree and a full kitchen of cooking equipment. I was able to economise easily. I knew how to cook cheap but filling meals.

Contrast that with a young person who hasn't had my advantages and the rising cost of food. Easy to see why food poverty exists.

Some of the poorest do not have access to cooking equipment, not the knowledge of cooking this type of food, no time or energy, even fridge to store food.

OP I know your intentions are good, but really? You haven’t even considered:

Not having money to pay for electricity to cook food
Not having money to get to the shops
Living too rurally to walk to a shop
Not wanting to spend your last pence on ingredients your kids might not like and you’d rather you bought what you know they’ll eat
Not having enough pots and pans etc
People not having time or energy to devote to growing stuff

This is just too goody an OP for my taste.