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.

Goady ffs

Oh dear if someone's out of gas and electric they cannot cook anything so boiling up stuff is out of the question

I have had to use food banks this year. Scenario one, I was in temporary accommodation and had to pay out for kids formula etc. (couldn't get milk vouchers due to being moved constantly) and on the launderette (no washing machine) but could at least microwave my baked beans (no oven). Scenario two, also temporary accomodation, couldn't afford to run the washing machine and the cooker so had to eat cold beans (cooker but no microwave). After spending a whole day arguing with the council etc. moving GPs yet again, studying and looking after 2 kids I'd have loved some home cooked fare but did not have the facilities or the energy. So yeah, I lived off food bank rations because I'm 'lazy and uneducated' No, I can cook from scratch no problem, but I was unable to. Besides which, if I had to choose between nappies for my kid or onions and garlic I know where my money would be going (and where it went) YABU sorry. But for the grace of God go you...

Aww you cooked for an an hour. That’s nice. Did you use gas or electricity the whole time? Sometimes that’s not an option for people.

I volunteer at a food bank. Yes, food poverty is real. Imagine feeding several children after fleeing domestic violence with absolutely no money.

We get everyone from women with no access to money to women who work full time but just can't afford food as well as everything else.

Yes queene i agree with you.

The argument about people in poverty not eating as cheaply as they could is so old that Orwell wrote about it in The Road to Wigan Pier.

Then it was about people buying white bread and tea with sugar when that left their children without enough to eat. Now its about people buying ready meals and biscuits.

Its true, that if people on the lowest incomes cut meat, sugar and dairy out of their diet they could probably get the same, or more, nutritional benefit for less money.

However, to be blunt, it shows no understanding of the complexity normal people's lives to hope to ever change that. Telling people to eat more lentils, however much that might be rational, isn't going to help anything.

Christ I’ve just read the end bit. Food banks giving out seeds...are you actually fucking serious?

I live on a pension and have 80 pounds a month to spend on all household stuff, food, pet food for 2 cats, cleaning stuff, cat litter etc. It's doable.I use my slow cooker and halogen oven every day to save fuel. Treats are few. It works out cheaper to buy things like basic bread and biscuits than to make my own. I try to buy reduced things.

You ok now Daffodils?
Just ignore the goadiness and continue to hold your head up

dont worry op this biscuit was lovingly hand made

Smaller shops in built up cheaper areas are proven to cost more than their larger counterparts and have a much narrower selection of items.

Do you spend extra money on bus fare to get to a larger supermarket or 'save money' by going to the shop round the corner on the way home from work?

In isolation food poverty could easily be overcome. Housewives during rationing managed it but they weren't expected to work.

It’s probably a lot to do with different types of poverty rolled into one

1. Housing - maybe in a bedsit, or being moved from property to property. No garden, no windsill,

1. Work- working more than one job, being physically and mentally exhausted to be able to run an allotment, even if they could get one in the first place.

1. Money, debt. No spare money. Growling your own is SO expensive. I’ve done it. I do it, it take a couple of years on an allotment to really get up and running. Took me 3 years to be self sufficient in veg. And I had a passion for it. Poverty and money management go hand in hand, you wouldn’t believe how easy it is to not have 70p spare. It’s shocking. You get your money/ you pay the essential bills that mean you don’t become homeless and then you’ve literally got nothing.

1. Shopping - when you’re poor, you might not have a car to go to Aldi. you might have things on tick at the local expensive corner shop. (See debt) the story of old, pawning your coat to pay for food and then using the money to get your coat out and then having to pawn it again to buy food. Today it might be payday loans etc. But a cycle of debt is a key thing.

1. Good education- yes a bag of lentils will get you far. But you need to know what to do.

And I could give many more reasons why it’s the way it is. It’s not an excuse, but I don’t think anyone goes to a food bank unless they need to.

But the main one is probably most people don’t understand what it’s like to not even have 70p to ones name

Electricity on key cards to cook is way more expensive then it is costing you.

I’m only going to say one thing and then I will hide this thread because I know it will annoy me...

If you are living in an inner city council flat where in hell do you think families are going to be able to forage for apples?
And as for your seed suggestion, it’s quite likely you will only have £10 per week for food so buying pots and tomato seeds are frankly out of the question.
It’s astonishing to me how far removed people can be from reality.

Like pp have said, it's not just the cost of the raw ingredients plus know-how. It's the time, the kitchen equipment, the storage and food preparation space, fuel poverty, convenience, needing to eat on the go between shifts, transport to a big enough supermarket that stocks all the whole foods at low prices, etc etc. Also two Greggs sausage rolls for a pound taste a lot better than eating lentil dahl every night for a week, especially when you've just walked four miles to work because you didn't have the bus fare. When you're in food poverty you need quick easy calories. And bear in mind that that's the only treat you can have because you dont have money for anything else.

My low point was paying for a pint of milk and a pack of cigarettes entirely with copper coins. I now have a lifestyle where I can soak beans and forage. That's because I now have a lot more money, not because I learned how to cook ffs.

YANBU OP. I saw real food poverty in my life, the UK is nowhere near. It is actually quite insulting to people who actually starve.

YABU and extremely judgemental.

When you've been using up the contents of your cupboards for ages because buying food is impossible after paying bills then you don't have the extras to make curry or stew. A bit of rice/couscous or salad is another £1 that you just don't have. Some people don't eat so their children can, try telling them that if they spent 60p on lentils it would all be fine.

An hour cooking is unachievable for many people due to rising fuel costs as well.

@silvercuckoo
This is a race to the bottom

I'm having a particularly tight month this month due to unexpected expenses at the start of the month. I currently have £7 in the bank and £1.65 left in emergency credit on the meter.

Yesterday, we used the bendy carrots to make soup for dinner, with soda bread. Today I used the sprouty onions to make a caramelized onion tart and while the oven was on I roasted the last of the peppers for tomorrow's soup.

Now I'm lucky - this is an unusual month for me. Imagine every single week was like this.

I have a slow cooker, a cupboard of spices, flour, olive oil & balsamic etc. I wouldn't have this if I was always this broke.

I have to walk to work because I haven't got bus fare - so I'm out of the house from 7 until 6, and knackered because of the walk after being on my feet all day. Today it chucked down and my coat was still wet when I put it back on for my walk home.

And then, I should be out gardening after 11 hours out of the house and once I've done that I should be using expensive electricity to boil dried chickpeas and baking bread. Really??

There is “real” food poverty in the uk 🙄

You lost me "olive oil"

Hahaha, because every person struggling to feed their family buys olive oil over vegetable oil.

Your post really angered me. You clearly have no idea of the situations some people find themselves in. If only it were as simple as you suggest!!!

OP, have you heard of flats? Where the fuck are those of us who live in them supposed to grow veg? In the bin room?

How could a few pots of Tomatoes feed for whole summer. I’d eat the whole lot in a day or two. Also raspberries, there’s hardly be enough for a few bowls.

I’d love to grow vegetables but I didn’t think there would be enough to feed us all. Maybe I should look in to it a bit more.

Maybe they should play the Martian on a loop at the dole office.