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.

Also, as I said, if you go over 30 hours as a couple or 20 hours as a single person, your WTC gets cut.

As I said earlier, I think the truth is in the middle, with some people being genuinely trapped and other people refusing to take any sort of responsibility for their situation. I don't get people saying that their children refuse to eat healthy and cheap food though, so the parent has to buy expensive processed food. Offering a child things like home made lentil soup or a kidney bean chilli is perfectly normal, and special needs like sensory problems aside, the kids will eat it if they are hungry. Parents are in charge.

How long does kidney bean chilli take to make? In what pan? With what gas or electric? What spices? How do you store it?

In real life you buy something you can either pour hot water over or eat cold
We are talking poverty, as in choosing between bread or milk. Not veggie v meat
Food banks want high cal, no cook stuff for a reason

@harshbuttrue1980

Are you a parent?

I don't know any children who would eat kidney bean chilli and lentil soup.

I was watching a documentry a
On yoy tube recently about homeless families , now we are fat from rich and struggle at the end of the month , but this documenyry.showed things on a whole different scale , families living innone room with no cooking facilities , one family was heating tins of soup on the radiator and nowhere to store food , kids need feeding and yes everyone knows pot , noodles etc are not healthy but if you have nowhere to cook, no where ro store food whatdo you do.

harsh DD doesn't refuse to eat all healthy and cheap food, just fucking chickpeas. It's the texture. And yes, she would go hungry rather than eat, as I've seen when cooking new things. I don't offer alternatives, she'll go to bed hungry, never eats breakfast anyway, may not eat the fruit at school, so the first thing she'll eat will be lunch. I know not to offer her something she absolutely won't eat. She can have mash, or there are plenty of alternatives to potatoes, the school nurse says that as long as she eats a wide range of vegetables, I don't have to worry about fruit.

far from rich*

The UK cannot keep taking people in from all over the world who expect benefits and housing. We just do not have the resources
to help everyone.

Fuck me, your ignorance is astounding. No but your aggression is.

As for the taking in ironing shite....ffs! Where are you finding these clients? I'd use my initative.

This "if a child won't eat it they're not hungry" line , is utter bollocks. My son has always hated meat, from the very first taste it made him retch, he'd have not eaten for days on end rather than eat it. So would all you Victorian parents have watched him starve to stick to your principles?

Neshoma, sorry but you're either disingenuous, completely lacking in imagination or out of touch with reality. Failing all of those, then yes, I'm afraid you are ignorant - and arrogant to boot.

I'd use my initative

So you don't know how then? Would you print fliers? How much would that cost? Will you buy business insurance? Are you permitted by your landlord or mortgage company to run a business from home? Will you declare your income? Will it mean your benefits are affected?

This is not the 1950s east end where women would take in some sewing for their neighbours!

Oh dear neshoma

I'd quietly wind this down if I were you as its starting to sound a bit offensive

What about people who have no initiative? Seriously. What? Is is ok for them to starve or freeze to death? Judge society by how it treats it's most vulnerable.

How long would it take to cook a lentil soup on the radiator, or would a previous poster's gas bottle run out before the lentils were even soft.

FFS it is not that hard to understand why a tin of tomato soup would be preferred

...never eats breakfast anyway, may not eat the fruit at school, so the first thing she'll eat will be lunch. But if she was really hungry she would eat these things. The Jews interned in the camps were truly hungry and ate each other in the end. But in the 'soup' they were given they ate rancid vegetables, horse meat, fingernails, sawdust etc

Obviously during the holocaust and in famine situations, people will eat anything. I'm not sure that's a standard we should be using as a benchmark. I'm currently reading a book about the famine in North Korea...some people even resorted to cannibalism and picking undigested pieces of corn out of animal faeces....it's not a situation to aspire to.

No, she'd suffer out of stubbornness until it was an absolutely life and death situation. She'd happily live on one meal a day and become noticeably underweight, and then I'd have to make her eat. We have been that poor. When we were, my best bet was pasta, tomatoes and butter. Nothing else.

I can make her cheap food that she'll eat. Why on earth would I make cheap food that she won't?

Have been reading this thread absolutely astounded.

Just to let some people know -

JSA (or UC) is £73 a week for a single person.
Sound's OK doesn't it?? Liveable?? So why can't 'they' eat then??
Well,

Firstly there is the 5 week wait for ANY payment. Yes you can get a 'loan' to cover it now, but then the loan reduces that £73 to £63 for a long time and puts you in debt, but you have no choice cause who can just not eat or pay rent for 5 weeks..

Also there are amounts taken for any debts you may have.

Debts / Advances can and do easily take a lot of people down to £190 a MONTH , that's £47 a week now.. the claimant doesn't have a choice in this or asked if they can afford the cut from £317 a month to £190, it's just whipped off before they can access it.

Then as someone else said, your £10 for Council Tax due to more cuts, and many people have to pay a surplus on their rent, cost heavy pre payment meters, bus fares, phone for jobcentre.

So you can easily see how that £73 isn't really £73 anymore for most!!

AND I HAVEN'T EVEN MENTIONED - IF SOMEONE IS SANCTIONED (often for false or arbitrary reasons) , THEN LITERALLY EVERYTHING IS TAKEN - THEY HAVE ZERO INCOME, so from £73 a week to ZERO. Under the old system at least people could get hardship payments of 40% paid, now under the cuts the hardship payments are loans as well which have to be paid back (see a pattern here!!), which effectively doubles the sanction, and many sanctions are 6 months to 3 YEARS!!
3 YEARS WITH ZERO INCOME.

What would YOU do if you missed an appointment due to illness or whatever, and you found yourself, TOMORROW, with £0 in income for a period of months?? No money for food, no money for gas or electric, no money for buses. No money at all..

Do people on this thread really not know this??

CAN YOU PLEASE WAKE UP AND REALISE WHAT IS ACTUALLY BEING DONE TO PEOPLE, TO ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS??

No one, no one should be ideologically starved. And that's what sanctions are. Many of these people are disabled, ill and parents.

Now they are rolling out these sanctions to working people as well under the new system. And we have already seen, a high percentage of people using food banks are actually working. So anyone reading this who's household are reliant on their tax credits to top up their low wages, soon the threat of sanctioning, homelessness and destitution will be coming for you too, if you are not deemed to be earning enough. They are now sanctioning the equivalent of Child Tax Creds, wtc, and housing as well (if you work).

And if you're paid by work 4 weekly, 2 weekly, or weekly?? You better be prepared because whenever you are paid twice in one 'assessment period' (monthly period you can't change so eg 2nd-1st of every month) - YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE NO payment of what would have been your tax creds and housing ben the next month. Cause 'system says' you have been paid twice, convenient isn't it??

Anyone who works in the field of welfare will know the REAL reasons people are in Food Poverty are, it is criminally unacceptable and should be exposed as such, and here's a clue - IT HAS FUCK ALL TO DO WITH LENTILS.

People living in poverty are generally surroynded by others living in poverty they are not usually in a nice comfotable middle class area with lots of people wanting their ironining doing , people. So whete would they find the ir clients from.

Brilliant post the machine very well said and spot on

Well said themachinestops

That needed saying, The Machine.

Thanks machine