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.

Classes is budgeting are useless when you have fuck all to budget with.

Food prep classes are no good if you don’t have knives, chopping board, and somewhere to store the food before and after you cook it.

Also no good if you don’t have anywhere to cook it.

I see the op and the abundance of other utter nobs on this thread have completely misunderstood the premise of food poverty and how it's come about with low wages, austerity etc.

But fucking well done on being such a total bunch of idiots.

Someone did a thread either yesterday or the day before on what we're proud of being British. Well not this bunch of idiots that sit in their privileged houses. I've comfortable but live a relatively modest life, I'm not naive enough to think this means I know what they're going through when I eat my lentils and rice for dinner.

Well if you are getting £20k in benefits you should be able to afford a tin opener or know someone you can borrow one off.

Broken - how much compost did you need for lettuce.

Some of the excuses as to why people can't help themselves or use a bit of initiative are brilliant.

Food prep classes are no good if you don’t have knives, chopping board, and somewhere to store the food before and after you cook it. So what you going to do with a bag full of food?

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.

I regularly thank whoever up there that I do not now have a key meter! Or have to get a load of 50ps to feed a meter to boil stuff. I was actually in full time work at the time when I was unfortunate enough to have to rely on meters. I only work occasionally now (not through choice! I would prefer a proper full time job!) and have to rely on UC to get help with the rent but luckily my bills are included. Otherwise things really would be shite. Luckily I also only have to look after myself. I cannot even begin to think how tough it must be for a whole family on or under the breadline.

Knowing how to cook is an important life skill but even a michellin star chef can do fuck all without the means to buy ingredients , electricity, gas etc.

Surprised the poster isn't promoting the use of roadkill....

Oh and a microwave meal is more flling than 100's of little home grown tomatoes.

Who is this mythical person who gets all this money on benefits?

Two biggish bags. I had to walk to the shop and carry them home. They were heavy.

If it’s easy food that doesn’t require prep, you open the packet and heat it up.

As usual in these kinds of posts most apply every excuse to all FB users not.

Im sure there are plenty of users who would grow their own tomatoes or try chickpeas. You do nothing to help by coming up with the most ludicrous reasons not to. If someone can walk home with a bag of food they can walk home carrying a small bag of compost.

Education is the key.

Where did I say it was one small bag of compost?

Common Sense?

No. I had to use two medium/large size bags. I did say this.

Are you saying I’m thick or are you saying I’m a liar?

Op you have got to be joking!

I have an allotment my £45 a year rent for it has given me food but if I added it up I could of got it cheaper in Lidl. I do it because I enjoy it not because I need it to feed us. I am privileged to be in that position.

I cook all of our food from scratch. I have a decent store cupboard and use my instant pot and kitchen aid to help me do those things. I make bread and biscuits etc. It would be cheaper for me to buy them in Lidl.

I have had tight months where I have eaten from the cupboards rather than go food shopping but again I’m lucky it’s not the norm for us and I have lots of food in to be able to do that. It’s hardly the same as someone in poverty who has nothing in! I couldn’t imagine only having £20 to feed my family of 5 for a week when I have no store cupboard.

How would you have cooked your delicious chickpeas if you had no gas or electric?

Or no cooker?

And would they still be delicious after you have removed the mouse poo? What you don't have mice? You don't have a leak in the shared bathroom of the B and B you are in?

Cut and come again lettuce can be bought cheaply from the supermarket, in pots so bigger than a Starbucks cup. I know there is the initial layout but it would last all summer. Or you can do the same with Spinach which added to any meal offers additional nutrition.

I have heard that it's possible to cook chick peas in an electric kettle.

Actually, no I haven't. Which is why many poor people can't cook chickpeas.

My lowest point I think was cooking spaghetti and there being nothing to put with it at all. I know in the great scheme of things this isn't up there with walking hours for a bucket of dirty water, eating grass to survive but it was bloody miserable!

@HipHopFrog

I teach food technology in a school in an area of deprivation in the U.K. We encourage the children to share bits of ingredients as usually some have forgotten something or couldn’t get hold of something. They get house points if they share something and they love doing it.

One day, a child who I knew was living in a refuge after fleeing domestic violence with a parent, had brought vegetarian protein. I asked them who was a vegetarian in their family and we had a conversation about it. Then I noticed they had ‘borrowed’ some chicken from another child. I stopped them and pointed out that the dish would not be vegetarian any more. In retrospect I think they were desperately trying to bulk out their dish with whatever they could get.

Later that day we had an irate phone call from another parent as their child had been to collect their completed dish from the fridge at the end of school only to find that it had been ‘taken home’ on their behalf by the first child. This had not been mentioned to the second child and the dish never arrived at the second child’s house. We believe that the first child had seen an opportunity to provide another meal for their family in the refuge. (When we explained what we could of the situation to the irate parent and offered to refund their ingredients cost they were mortified and asked what they could do to help the family.)

So, as well as having been the victim of awful physical abuse, this child, who never put a foot wrong in school, felt compelled to beg, borrow and steal food from their peers to feed their family. I’m sure you can appreciate that the offer of seeds would be an insult to this family.

Lack of money and violence are the problem here, not ‘the smartphone generation’, not schools failing to teach food technology and not laziness.

So if you want to help, why not raise money for a domestic violence charity or train as a food tech teacher. You’ll need to find some empathy first mind.

Artisan you told another parent information about a pupil and her family that should have remained confidential? I’m gobsmacked.

No Sleepykate, I don't have a spare £5 a week. Please fuck off.

Neshoma I mentioned tomatoes. I am growing 12 full size plants this year. Would love to know the hanging basket variety that gives you 1000's of cherry toms from 1 basket, especially in the summer we have just had.

Have had a terrible time keeping mine in the ground from dying from the heat, never mind anything in baskets or tubs! Am so glad I don't have to rely on homegrown produce for food because despite a 30m x 15m plot all used for growing I think we would have struggled unless we like courgettes with everything. Or cucumbers.

The most productive, nutritious, cost effective thing I think you can produce at home on a small scale is eggs. But it's pretty unrealistic to expect people in food poverty to keep chickens just to survive. No doubt some posters on here would expect us all to magic up the space, kit and knowledge to be able to deal with chicken husbandry.

Maybe we should go back to having a pig in the back yard too? Feed a family of 4 for months with a decent pig. And if the chickens stop laying you can always neck them and turn it into a mumsnet chicken and feed your family for a month with the addition of a few chickpeas and a never ending tomato plant.

In some of the OPs later posts, there is actually a grain of truth regarding "people" (in general) not having knowledge of basic cooking skills etc which could help those struggling to fair slightly better.

HOWEVER.

The OP has shown an amazing lack of understanding of true poverty and is still somewhat missing the point that the "tinned sludge, sugary cereals and biscuits" are all things which can be eaten immediately without any additions or processing (in terms of preparing / heating / refrigeration) and will be palatable to pretty much everybody.

A bag of dried lentils, whilst nutritious and possible to be made really tasty, require other ingredients, cooking pots, electricity, time.... all things which many do not have.

So ultimately.... yes, more education in schools, via foodbanks etc about eeking out ingredients and bulking things out with cheaper items can help some families, it's not a solution.

SilverCuckoo you would be really surprised by my early life experiences if you were to meet me. Yes, as a child I would have refused to eat things I didn’t like even if I was hungry. Here’s a thing, your appetite diminishes if you don’t eat regularly and often and you are a child. I was also sick. The person who saved me and my siblings was my nan, we used to walk miles to visit her and were fed tasty food by her. She also I loved and nurtured us and her home was a safe house from our inadequate, dysfunctional, depressed parents. My dad was also bi-polar but did his best bless him. So if you were to meet me now you would have no idea I had ever been hungry.

What I will say is that I am surprised families do not do more to help their own who are struggling.

Late to this thread but I read the op open mouthed! Shocking lack of awareness and imagination you have there op.

The aubergine stew gave me a good laugh...£1.50 for 3 aubergines. I'd eat them but if I was skint, I wouldn't spend money on aubergines which most children wouldn't want to eat. I'd buy a bag of value oven chips and value nuggets and feed my kids for a few days.

Frouby and I'm pretty sure our landlord would have something to say about us keeping chickens.