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.

Merename yes she did and she apologised for getting it wrong.

I did the building for my future bit when I was earning, I bought a house. Unfortunately when I fell ill I couldn't work, so my savings soon got used up. If I hadn't bothered to work hard & buy a house, I would have been on housing benefit the day I claimed. Because I do own a mortgaged house, they may help with the interest payments after 30 weeks but not before.

Typical monthly rent of a 1 bed flat in my area £900 per month, cheapest B&B £39 a night so £1170 a month, cost of my mortgage interest only around £300 per month. So actually the cheapest option by a very large margin would be for them to try to help me keep my own house but no, the rules state that if I don't have 30 bloody weeks mortgage saved up plus the other expenses of running a house I would have to sell the house, use up the remaining cash (if there is any left) until I was destitute THEN get housed at a minimum of £900 per month forever as I wouldn't be able to get back on the housing ladder again at my age. I didn't have vast amounts of savings because I did what I'm supposed to do - made sure I had at least a bit of a pension with any left over money, which I can't really touch for a few more years as I'll need that for later life.

So me building for my possible future actually caused me a lot of problems at the time!

I can't currently "put in a bit of work" because I'm waiting on a procedure at the hospital, and until then I'm on rather "interesting" painkillers so I'm constantly exhausted and very fuzzy - unless I cut down the painkillers so far I can't walk or even get in the shower. But I don't class as disabled by a long way, because I CAN walk 50 yards with those painkillers that make me unfit to work, and my brain IS fit for work if I don't take the painkillers.

I want to work, I'd love to be at work right now. I've managed to get myself a little bit of work from home (using my initiative and skills!) so I'm earning maybe £450 per month rather than the £300 or so I would get on benefits. Taxed & NI paid of course, but that still produces a little more than mortgage interest plus I did build up a bit of savings so I'm not currently in poverty despite needing to run a car as I can't use public transport except on my very best days. Of course to do this work I have "reduced painkiller" days, which means increased pain days and sleepless nights but hey, who cares that I'm at the PC on those days crying with pain as I work.

Working nights and days is not soul destroying. I, and all the other mere mortals I work with somehow cope
That's the easy excuse to not put the effort in, yet again.

It's hard work, sure. But if I was in the level of poverty being described then I wouldn't be looking for excuses why I could not do something I'm perfectly capable of, and what other people are clearly willing too.

Working nights and days is not soul destroying. I, and all the other mere mortals I work with somehow cope

Yeah, I do it too. And I'm constantly frazzled and stressed. I sat down for five minutes at lunchtime and woke up three hours later. Luckily I had no massive deadlines today or clients booked in, so all it means is I need to work tonight to catch up on what I missed today while I slept. I'll be up until 1/2am working and back up at six to work some more before I meet my first hair client at 9am.

Just because it is achievable does not mean it should be achieved or is healthy. It isn't. I'm leaving one of my jobs after xmas because working regular eighteen hour days is slowing killing me.

Frequency are you suggesting that everyone in poverty has children or are single parents. Not everyone is a single parent

Where did I suggest that?

Ok, you personally say you can't cope with it. That's fair enough.

But to declare it "soul destroying" as if its not a viable option? Its deciding whether being "frazzled" but getting out of poverty is a worthwhile trade.

I find it hard, but rewarding. As do the others I work with. And it's this positive message that should be passed on, not trying to dismiss it before anyone tries for themselves. Some days, I'm knackered too, but that's life.

Hard work is hard. If it's available, but too much effort then you can't complain about your living situation, you're contributing to the status quo. Particularly when others can do it and just get on with it.

Yes food poverty is real.

No poor people do not have time to forage as too busy working all the hours they can to pay the bills/keep the bailiffs away or disabled or caring for kids/elderly relatives/looking for work/dealing with significant life stresses.

No they might not be able to afford to cook the food either, nor the facilities needed to do so.

Sorry I didn’t realise you were replying to someone

In pots I grew enough tomatoes, green beans and lettuce to feed us all summer

Really though? My tomatoes weren't ready until mid August - I'm in SE.

How much do you think it cost to cook those dried chickpeas? You have to boil them for a couple of hours before they are edible.

Lettuce is one of the few things you can grow that I think is much cheaper than buying. But in most cases growing veg is more expensive than buying it.

"Also working nights and days concurrently is soul destroying and not something many people could maintain long term"

It also badly affects your health. I used to work 5pm to 3am in a sex chatline office 17 years ago, (we wernt just sitting on our arses either. We were running from room to room answering different phones. ) a colleugue of mine was mainlining all sorts of uppers and downers so she could work this job and care for her toddler during the day. It affected her health quite badly.

This is why i made my comment about health earlier Because i saw her go down hill right in front of my eyes.

How much do you think it cost to cook those dried chickpeas? You have to boil them for a couple of hours before they are edible.

Soak them for 48 hours in cold water. Then you only need to cook for a few minutes

"it badly affects your health"

No

You mean it can badly affect your health in occasional circumstances. The vast majority just get on with it.

If someone can't cope with the lifestyle and takes god knows what to get through each day, they are the exception, not the rule.

Plus, your friend wasn't even working days and nights. Just nights. The issue there was the individual, not the work.

I've danced nearly ten years now. Will have worked closely with around 200 other performers, all of whom you get to know very intimately, it's the nature of it, and other than physical injuries/accidents, it has not been bad for any of our health. I know one girl with depression, but this is not related to her working.

We're all tired from time to time, sure. But we don't complain, hard work is tiring, if you want the benefits, you just get on with it. If I had no money for basic heat and food, I'd have my priorities straight, and not find an excuse to shy away from work I was perfectly capable of doing.

Courtney, but the myriad of reasons why people can't afford to buy food/cook are exceptional, aren't they?
If someone has no money to travel to a food bank or buy food, and has no kitchen, cooking facilities, fridge, storecupboard or fuel, then what are they actually spending their money on?
Unless they are suffering from the often-quoted UC delay, in which case surely they would have these things already?
It's OK using extreme examples of people bring chucked out onto the streets with nothing etc, but this thread makesoit that everyone on the NMW or benefits is living in the dark with no good. It's nonsense.

I just wanted to say that I used to try cooking everything from scratch to give my son nice, tasty, healthy food but he refused to eat it. Refused. I'd end up throwing away good food, night after night. I can't afford to throw away food! So my dh and I decided we'd only do low effort evening meals, like beans on toast, jacket potatoes (takes a long time in the oven though), sausages and chips etc. It probably costs more, but my son will eat it, and we're not throwing out loads of food every night. Or dealing with the emotional fallout of having made an effort only for it to be shoved back in your face, etc. I can definitely see why people in food poverty choose foods they know their kids will eat. It's bloody obvious!

I'm absolutely terrified I'll end up in food poverty, so I bulk buy. I have a full freezer. I can cook (but son refuses it) so we'd be ok... but the thing that absolutely terrifies me is that my son has allergies - bread he can eat costs £1.30 for a tiny loaf that lasts 3 days max, dairy free cheese costs a lot, his dairy free yogurts cost a fortune for two small pots... his "milk" is expensive. I don't know how I'll feed him when brexit hits us and we get food shortages and price increases. It keeps me awake at night! If I could afford it I'd start putting allergy safe foods in food banks, but I honestly can't. It's three days to payday and we have £20 left... and we have a good, above minimum wage jobs and work full time. It's the cost of nursery that's killing us. I just dread to think how bad it is for people with poorly paid jobs, nursery fees to pay and fussy/allergic children to feed. I guess the adults skip meals. I'm on the edge of that reality myself.

I don't know how I'll feed him when brexit hits us and we get food shortages

Working nights and days is not soul destroying. I, and all the other mere mortals I work with somehow cope.

I strongly disagree with this - I regularly switch between working days and nights and it affects my metabolism, my sleep, my mental health and my relationship's. If I had the choice I would only work days.

I also volunteer at a soup kitchen and I was so upset to see groups of families, that work, attend our soup kitchen because they had no money to buy food to eat because they had just purchased school uniforms.

www.sleepfoundation.org/shift-work/content/living-coping-shift-work-disorder
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33638905
www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/oct/28/night-shift-three-million-workers-health-risks-obesity-cancer-diabetes

It's clinically proven that working nights is bad for your health (your as humans not just a few lazy feckers who can't be arsed)

You don't need to be a scientist to correctly surmise that working nights and days will worsen the impact on mental and physical health.

You say you're a dancer? What do you mean by this? The dancers who I know who 'work nights' are either strippers working one or two nights a week for £££ or they are dance teachers or volunteers working in dance schools from 4-9pm(ish) unless it's the two weeks the nativity is on and even then they finish at 10pm.

It's not the same at all as someone working 9-5pm in an office five days a week and 7-12am in a bar four nights a week.

If I had the choice, I would only work days. Or only nights. One of the two. I don't work for fun.

But working just one job won't provide adequate long term security for me and DS should the shit hit the fan and I find myself in these "exceptional circumstances".

To say, well, you do have the choice, nothings wrong at the moment so don't put anything in place, is a really irresponsible way to live.

The choice between having dedication, working my ass off, to ensure the worst (financially) won't befall DS and I, or not bothering because, today, everything was fine? That's really naive.

I could easily make a long list of really valid sounding points why I shouldn't have to do it. I'm responsible for my finances, it's that simple.

If I hadn't had this ethic, certainly since DC came along, and disaster struck tomorrow, I'd be up the creek too. Because as another poster says, you can't expect to live on benefits and not be in poverty.

The point is, if you want to moan about how outrageous the level of poverty you're in is, but all you can do is make excuses about how you shouldn't have to work this way, or that way, then quit moaning.

Accountants are one of the most highly stressed professions. Best find some links that show that, and use them as an excuse to quit my job. Why should I, precious flower that I am, be expected to endure such an ordeal.

The effort people put in to finding any excuse not to, as opposed to the effort they make to actually stop finding reasons why they can't do anything, is why a great deal find themselves in such circumstances. And obviously this doesn't apply to all.

We really are grinding the faces of the poor now, aren't we, Courtney? Does it not occur to you how obscene it is that you have clients who pay you to find ways of protecting the benefits they quite clearly don't need? Or is that somehow different? If you're complicit in enabling that, you've lost any right to criticise others.

you can't expect to live on benefits and not be in poverty
What the fuck did I just read? The whole point of benefits is supposed to be to keep people out of poverty. Despite what this govt would have you think, benefits are not actually meant to be a token gesture of feudal benevolence that people are made to jump through hoops for while they go hungry.

Oh, don't get me wrong, you should be able to. But you can't.

And instead of accepting that, however wrong it may be, so many have an arsenal of every excuse why they can't do anything to assist their situation, or act indignant at the suggestion they should have to, because their benefits don't cover their every expense.

I shouldn't have to do a lot of things. But instead of being outraged and entitled at the prospect of having to do it myself, I get on with it.

Any response to my questions, Courtney?