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.

"If they had of listened to parents and gone through with a decent education, again they wouldn't be stuck in minimum wage dead end jobs"

Well i really really hope that one of the people in these jobs who chooses to better themselves is your childminder and she jacks it in with no notice Ditto your cleaner Incidentally how much do you pay them?

People who go 9n about bread and dripping forget the dripping came from the Sunday roast beef.That was the big meal if the week with it rehashed in various forms for the rest of it.
We had lots of fish as kids because it was cheap but a lot if find was more expensive and families ,where they could learned how to grow stuff 8n any bit if land.My GM taught us as she'd had to learn in the war.
They didn't grow tomatoes or rocket though!
Poverty today us a different beast as the UK has changed so much.

@Hiphopfrog in your op you are kind of asking several different things.

Ok so is food poverty real - yes. Lots of people regularly do not have enough t eat. Plenty of studies to confirm.

Next - is food education presently very poor in certain demographics? Yes absolutely I agree with you fully.

Therefore you are asking - would better food education help with food poverty? This is life complex....in the immediate sense - no. In a preventative way thinking about future food poverty - it won't solve the issue causing the poverty but it would help people cope a bit better and feel more confident feeding families for whatever pittance they can access through universal credit or similar.

Lastly you can't be reliant on food banks. In my area you can have 3 food parcels a year - imagine other areas are similar.

I think its bloody awful what is happening in third world countries Its also bloody awful what is happening in the UK.

Its not just a race to the bottom attitude going on here but also the fact that its "trendier" to care about the former and not the latter. Because society sees celebs going to third world countries How often do we see celebs visiting food banks here?

Its not very trendy Its not very Grazia so they dont.

Thats what ive dubbed this actually Ive dubbed it The Grazia Effect.

I love the comment losing practical skills - OP can you build a fire from scratch, make your own clothing, darn socks, spin wool, knit, crochet, chop wood, build a long drop, catch fish (and gut them), kill a bird and pluck it, churn butter, milk a cow/goat, make cheese, brew beer, produce wine, cordial, chutney, pickle, can you skin a rabbit, cut up a deer, build a shelter, select field mushrooms that aren't poisonous?... Are you Ray Mears?

Or are you just planting a few little gems in a pot on your patio and despairing that people living in abject poverty are having to access food banks? For the record many OAP's have to pick between food & fuel every single winter. And I'm guessing they do have life skills that involve nothing to do with kids in 2018 having access to a class allotment.

'm saying that people in our society are losing practical skills. The kids growing up in households reliant on food banks without even the means to cook at all are going to be even worse off. Many of the smart phone generation are helplessly reliant on ready meals and takeaways.
*
What should we do?*

As has been said many MANY times on this thread, the use of food banks is not because of lack of cooking skills but a lack of resources overall.

What YOU SHOULD DO is listen when people tell you this verbatim.

What exactly is 'the smartphone generation?' Smart phone use is a cross generational thing. Again with your broadstroke assumptions of society.

Cooking is taught in schools. My son did some basic cooking in Reception class. I will be teaching my kids the basics of cooking that I know. I will also teach them where food comes from/how it is grown etc. My youngest is almost 3 and has already attempted growing tomatoes and radishes at home.

As for society as a whole, I'm a firm believer everyone should be taught some basic cooking skills. They don't need to be Marco Pierre White ffs.

But you're conflating two issues: 1) peoples reliance on food banks (which is due to lack of resources, namely money and time. But especially money) and 2) people not knowing HOW to cook.

They are not the same issue. Gah you are so tunnel-visioned.

I'm not sure anyone can help you answer your questions without giving up and saying "yes OP you're completely correct in everything you say and the world would be a better place if people got off their lazy backsides and got down their nonexistent allotment and learned how to make butterbean and chickpea mush" so I'm done.

Hope more of the people who subscribe to your mindset turn up to agree with you so you can say you were right all along and put this bed.

Goodnight

The way some Christmas temps were paid last year. By Tuxedo card. Incurring a fee every time they wanted to withdraw money or pay a bill.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3368033-to-remind-Christmas-temps-to-check-how-they-are-being-paid

Op. The smartphone generation

You’ve just lost. Well done

@FlyingMonkeys My point exactly. They had very little but they were better equipped to manage.

were they? have you looked at the stats for diseases directly related to food (rickets etc) and those indirectly related to poor diet etc. Look at the state of the conscripted troops in WW1. The past wasn't a rosy place where people made big roasts every sunday and had bread and dripping on monday while mother made rissoles from the leftover meat. There were a lot of very poor, very malnorished, very badly off people. Urban poverty was much as it is now. Do people really think those living in tenements had access to proper cooking facilities. Maybe things were more homespun and prosperous in the 60s - this had nothing to do with skills and everything to do with a booming economy.

Guys I'm truly sorry that I have it wrong. I deserved flaming if it came across sanctimonious.

I am without a job so each shopping trip comes out of one of 2 overdrafts both of which are getting near the limit.

I know that I am privileged because I have the means to cook and because I have a fair store of dried grains, pulses, oil and salt.

My way of easing this situation has been to go collecting fruit and eek out meals with what I have grown apparently subjecting my family to meals that apparently no one else would eat. I will be doing much more of this unless I find a job soon.

I understand that this is not possible for many people for a variety for reasons and I'm sorry for suggesting that others should want to eat lentils and chickpeas. I guess I'm also lucky that I like lentils.

Mumsnet is bizarre at times. Not sure why anyone would call the OP a cunt really.

@madmomma
Well that was me only. So you may had well have directed your post accordingly.
It’s the concept of poverty, the old harming back to the old days.

Comparing people to 3rd world poverty, which kills millions.

If anyone was vaguely intelligent they would have empathy and intellectual insight into what structures allow food poverty in a 1st world country. I gave a list at the beginning. And the list makes it clear it’s not about food and it’s not about education it’s about many factors.
But let’s jusg blame it on poor lady people and the smartphone generation

Harking. Jesus
Should check posts when annoyed

OP, I agree with your general point. The art of self reliance has been lost. People no longer know how to fend for themselves.

But the UK is also very overpopulated, and resources are becoming stretched.

Ahh - so not only a name change fail OP, but a huge drip feed about available time, plus the fact you have a stockpile built up from when times were good.

www.derrynow.com/news/derry-woman-cares-severely-disabled-grandson-slams-universal-credit-process-horrific/248600

Have you seen the new cover of Time OP?

twitter.com/TIME/status/1040265119324884992

I’m sorry I haven’t read full thread but OP please google Jack Monroe - Hunger Hurts and are her books and blog. She would agree with you about many things I’m sure but her perspective will prevent the inevitable slide into judgement that it’s possible to read into your tone. Your cooking sounds lovely but I think there is a lot more going on in society than a lack of food awareness and education (though agree that’s one factor in a hundred)

@oatmilk4breakfeast I'm assuming that Jack Munroe's perspective should influence OP's perspective based on; her blogs, books, relationship with a B list celebrity chef, newspaper articles and her dad's MBE, plus her semi celeb inner city lifestyle whilst proclaiming 'massive poverty as a single mother'. Whilst looking to trans. All reflect on there is always someone way worse off?

How, as a single parent working part time and going to uni full time am I supposed to get the fucking bastard time to set up from scratch because there isn’t one and run a fucking bastard community fucking garden? Where the fuck is the land going to come from for a start?

How did you get to your foraging? How much did it cost to get there?

What will you do when all your store of herbs spices and olive fucking oil are gone?

Op. I didn’t have a couple of hours a week.

When you’ve been unemployed the rule is you have to be prepared to do a 90minute each way commute. Cost of that, on public transport, for me, was £60 a week. Off my min wage job.

Out of the house 7.15am to 7pm every day mon-Friday

Single parent.

Couldn’t afford a car.

Where the Fuck Was I gettin “a couple of spare hours a week”?

Also, are you on a key meter for gas and electric? Or are you billed? Because it’s a lot more expensive to be on a keycard. I don’t even have the option for gas so it’s oil or electric heaters.

Op and bimgy (who doesn't even live in the uk ffs) and others with similar lack of understanding - why do you think the onus is on the poor, the ones WITHOUT the power to effect change...to change things?

Why aren't you asking WHY BILLIONNAIRE CEO's and politicians, who've NEVER gone without something they need their WHOLE LIVES, AREN'T creating jobs, housing, paying ACTUAL LIVING wages so that working 40 hours a week actually pays enough to live on?

Why are you NOT asking WHY there's an IDEOLOGICAL waiting period for UC? WHY it takes sometimes several MONTHS for people to receive the benefits they are eligible for and NEED?

Why are you not asking WHY the sick and disabled are not being supported?

As for 'those in 3rd world countries have it harder' nobodies disputing that, but on a daily basis with no end in sight that doesn't mean that miraculously the poor in the uk are suddenly just fine and dandy!

Diseases of poverty and malnutrition that truly belong in the past in what is overall a wealthy country are on the rise.

And the utterly ridiculous rose-tinted view that in the nostalgic past of the 30's and 40's that people 'managed then why can't they now?' Well they didn't! My parents were born to very poor parents living in one room the whole family with no indoor plumbing in basically slums! My grandparents lost siblings due to the simple fact of poverty = death. Both grandmothers lost pregnancies/babies due at least in part to being malnourished and overworked.

People in the uk are literally dying now as a direct result of poverty, caused by poor governance. Just the other week in the news the govt desperately trying to cover up the number of deaths DIRECTLY related to benefits policies and cockups! Which currently (investigations ongoing) is believed to be well into the hundreds. Coroners are being stonewalled in trying to collate data on this.

Op it's pointless worrying about teaching people to cook/grow food until you address the more IMMEDIATE needs of literally having a stable roof over their heads and a basically equipped kitchen to cook in!

" if they had of listened to parents and gone through with a decent education, again they wouldn't be stuck in minimum wage dead end jobs" - as a Pp said, and then who fills those jobs when they 'improve themselves' out of them? Because those jobs DO need to be filled! How do you think YOUR life would be without street cleaners, shelf stackers, refuse collectors? EVERY job should pay enough to live on. Conversely - NOBODY needs billions to live on! MP's do NOT NEED £77k salaries AND free second homes, all meals paid for, travel costs paid for etc ESPECIALLY MP's who are independently wealthy!

Just leaving this here too. Too many pps and op need to check their privilege! Note in particular the "should have worked harder at school" notion being debunked! In ref to this particular discussion hungry children struggle to learn well!

digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/privileged-kids-on-a-plate-pencilsword-toby-morris/

OP have you tried making acorn flour? It’s a little bit of work but well worth it?