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.

@Benjaminbuttonschild of course I have and my own family experience however anyone I know that was in that situation while younger or bringing up children worked a bit harder, bettered themselves and came out the other side, didn't dwell in it and stay like that for ever more

And if anything it motivated them to do well in life and to pass the same onto their children

• @Benjaminbuttonschild yes but standard of living is double the price of the uk as is housing and people manage, but again, suppose it's just perspective.*

Erm which parts of the U.K.? There's a massive financial gulf between the north of England and Scotland and the South.

I also know that some start-up business in ROI are EU funded. I have in-laws who set up business by putting an application in for EU funding and it was accepted. They live on the west coast of Ireland.

That type of thing doesn't happen here in the U.K. so easily.

Famously, everyone in Ireland is wealthy.

You have no idea what it is like to go without daily food to make sure your teenagers eat enough, even though you work a full time job but are a single mother.

For me we shouldn't be looking at how to "teach people to live on a 99p budget" type thing
We should be looking at why they have no money! That's the issue
If people can't afford food, then they need the money to afford food. Not to be taught how to forage

DONT FORAGE ELDERBERRIES! They are toxic.
They can be used medicinally but need certain treatment to be digestible and only then in small amounts.

I've just made elderberry syrup to ward off freshers flu for DD it was time consuming and relatively costly.

I@Benjaminbuttonschild sorry what? What do you mean parts of the UK? I'm talking about Ireland. We have a more expensive standard of living, and housing and seem to manage okay. That's what I meant nothing about south or anything of England

I have been in food poverty twice in my life. Both times were during a depression when I was unemployed and there were few jobs going. I learnt to cook lentils, which were very cheap back then, the first time but the second time I was so ground down and mentally ill that I just wasn't able to cook like that. Also, as someone said upthread, when life is really grim, something tasty and high calorie can both fill you up and give you a boost. I have excellent cooking skills but just couldn't put them into practice. I didn't have a freezer so couldn't batch cook, even if I could afford the ingredients. I lived in a flat without a garden and no foraging around here in the inner city. Stuff like olive oil is a luxury to people who are struggling. I had a good friend who occasionally turned up with a bag of food for me but that was humiliating and, as much as I needed the help, I was embarrassed to ask. There were no food banks in those days. So I got very thin very quickly and then got pneumonia and nearly died. It happens to people. I'm not proud of that time and rarely talk about it but sometimes people need to know what poverty feels and looks like. You get ground down by the relentlessness of it and, if you are on a low income or poor, food is just one of the things you have to find money for so you have to juggle a little bit of this and a little bit of that. As for comparing poverty here to developing countries, that is obscene. That we even need food banks in the 5th richest country in the world is obscene. How poor do you really want people to be before you judge they are poor enough for help? I find your posts obscene, OP.

I guess I'll only be showered with a million reasons why it wouldn't work and jelly crystals from the food bank makes more sense

Potatoes need to be cooked in some way. Jelly crystals need a functioning kettle. Not fucking complicated, is it? Again, if you had nothing, not even salt to jazz up your chickpeas, where would you start?

And if I had £1, would I be buying lentils? No, I would want cheap, easy and tasty and that is generally value stuff. Also calories. You get a lot more calories in a pack of value biscuits and some chips than you do in lentils

Sure cooking classes and cheap meals are a great idea. But you need to have time, fuel, basic equipment and CASH to buy stuff. Plus the inclination. Which if you're looking after children or working long hours or disabled or all three isn't easy to find

• @Benjaminbuttonschild of course I have and my own family experience however anyone I know that was in that situation while younger or bringing up children worked a bit harder, bettered themselves and came out the other side, didn't dwell in it and stay like that for ever more 

And if anything it motivated them to do well in life and to pass the same onto their children*

@Bimgy85 yup funnily enough the people I know who have fallen on hard times are also the ones trying not to 'dwell in it' and are desperately doing all they can to improve their situation. They are on UC which has proven to be a nightmare for them. And they were both employed. They have one child. It doesn't fit the narrative you describe in your posts at all.

I suggest you meet real people with real lives and not just spout bollox over the net.

I can see silvercookoo''s point, really. People would seriously rather starve than eat chickpeas and aubergines? Get a fucking grip.

Hiphopfrog I absolutely would despite having disabilities which mean I am often in pain a lot. I would also get my teen to help.
Having lived in a situation of having literally no food pre dc (I dropped to under six stone at one point ) for some time I have issues now surrounding food and panicking about not having enough , eating more than I need because my brain thinks it won't be there later I would do anything which guaranteed food for us.

The belief that people were healthier and better able to put nutritious food on the table in years gone by is a crock.

When they introduced conscription in the first world war, half of the men were unfit to serve through disease etc.

"At the time of the South African War (1899-1901), 40% of British volunteers were unfit: many had rickets, skin diseases and chronic bronchitis and a number had teeth too rotten to chew properly. The authorities were alarmed and established the Physical Deterioration Committee in 1904. In the First World War (1914-18) almost half the conscripted men were considered unsuitable. Many were given ‘Grade III’, which meant that they had marked physical disabilities and were considered fit only for clerical work. Grade IV meant the man was totally and permanently unfit for military service"

They might have been better off with a sliced pan and a pot noodle.

@Bimgy85 you said "Benjaminbuttonschild yes but standard of living is double the price of the uk as is housing and people manage, but again, suppose it's just perspective."

The bit that sticks out for me is "the standard of living (in Ireland) is double the price of the U.K."

The U.K. is a BIG area to cover. So I said which parts specifically? Is Ireland double the cost to live in than say London and the South of England. Or is it double the cost of the North of England (of which doesn't see much wealth).

There's a HUGE difference.

Yes it is and I have a disabled adult df who needs constant care. I have carers allowance which is utter shit of £64 a week for the amount of hours I do in my caring would cost social services thousands every month. Carers need more money and it's not easy I'm tired all the time. Try living on £64 a week n £44 income support. I have nothing left for myself and sick of the way we get taken for granted by this government.

Disabled adult dd*

Aside from the other reasons given here I think these days it’s much harder when both adults in a family need to be working full time to run the basics of a home. Easier to be resourceful with what you buy and cook if someone is home to take charge of that kind of thing. Growing veggies takes a lot of time for weeding, watering etc.

In principle the idea is sound but lives of the people that would most benefit are already too busy and chaotic to really have time to get things up and running.

I’m a single mum working full time. I know growing food and cooking from scratch is better and healthier and cheaper but actually wanting to do that when I get home at 7pm and need to sort the kids dinner, homework etc is another story :(.

We should be looking at why they have no money! That's the issue
If people can't afford food, then they need the money to afford food. Not to be taught how to forage

Completely agree

@myrtleWilson When anyone who suggests that food banks and ready meals are the not the best way to tackle food poverty gets a total flaming, what hope have we got?

If people reach adulthood not being able to cook or having had access to a school allotment, then we're doing something very wrong as a society.

• We should be looking at why they have no money! That's the issue If people can't afford food, then they need the money to afford food. Not to be taught how to for*

Because wealth is distributed fairly in society. Those who have it tend to keep hold of it. Whilst those on the bottom get a share of very little. Always been this way throughout history

Darksknight- very similar position to you and I agree. It would cost the government thousands to do what we do. But we get pittance.

Isnt* sorry

People don't go to food banks because they can't cook. They go because they haven't got any food to cook with. Why don't you get that, Hiphopfrog?