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.

Most people who use foodbanks are being sanctioned.

If it cost £18 for school dinners then packed lunches would be the way to go. Wraps, fillings, fruit and crisps wouldn’t cost £18 in Lidl or Asda. Also take squash in flask or Tupperware

Compulsory school dinners except for medical reasons, which have to have a letter from the doctor.

We're on WTC, which means in this borough that they deem it enough to cover school dinners Neshoma.

I don't have £2 to put aside in case of a crisis Courtney.

Luckily I don't have to feed DS2 until Sunday lunchtime, as he's in a different county for a sleepover. Just me, DH and DD.

Also user, as I stated upthread, the only supermarket within walking distance is Sainsbury's. Add £3 bus fare to whatever it would cost in Lidl or Asda.

I had no cooking utensils cathf when I first got a council flat. Isn't that how most people start when they first live on their own?

Sorry cathf would you like me to PM you the school's website, as you apparently don't believe me?

FFS user, do you really think that if packed lunches were the solution, Philomena would be worrying about paying for school dinners. Or did you think she didn't want to 'put in the effort'

This thread is turning really nasty

It turned nasty a while ago when a few dared to question the virtue- signalling rhetoric of the hive.

I think Philomena is very very brave coming onto this nasty thread and telling her circumstances, you keep on trying Philomena and I really hope your circumstances will improve but your children are cared for and in school and loved which is the main thing do they will thrive

Also, I provide my school age DC with packed suppers for after school club once a week, so if I was allowed to provide packed lunches, don't you think I would?

A car boot is a great idea. I do think more people should utilise them and charity shops and gumtree. What if you are disabled though? An awful lot of people in poverty do have a disability or illness.

And cathf I think it's only ever me who mentions compulsory school dinners on threads like these. Apparently, it's because they don't trust us to feed our DC. They even provide packed lunches for trips, again compulsory.

Or if you can't afford to get to them Sunny.

Does anyone - anyone - really know an actual person with no kitchen or cooking utensils who lives on dirty water?

My carer got a council flat. The water was clean but the kitchen had no cooker or fridge and he had no cooking utensils, crockery or cutlery.

My friend and I got him some starter bits and a plug in hotplate as a house warming present.

A car boot is a great idea. I do think more people should utilise them and charity shops and gumtree

Often difficult to do without a car. Also you don't know what will be available. You could spend £5 on busfare and not be able to find cooking utensils.

Charity shops are not for the very poor. Things can be more expensive in there than in very cheap shops. Go to poor areas and there are lots of discount shops.

Philomena why is the school punishing parents for being poor re the way they are with payment

As I said, they don't trust us to feed our DC. I suppose there have been enough cases of packed lunches consisting of a can of Coke and a Mars bar, or a cold Happy meal, for them to justify compulsory school dinners. They've been compulsory at least since DD started nursery. She's in yr6 now.

Everyone is very touchy if I or anyone else suggest anything. For what it is worth I know several families who for 3 generations have lived in benefits. They have lived in prime locations in social housing and I find it hard to believe that no one, in 3 generations has ever been able to find work. Why should they when they have a roof over their head, money and their time is their own. If I didn’t have £2 I would have to go begging. Judging by the amount of times I’m asked for money they must make something. Please don’t tell me this is illegal because I have yet to see a policeman stopping begging.

Some people aren't bought up and taught how to spend money well. I know a few people who help at CAP. People can't help the situation they are in but these people don't have a clue on how to budget/use what they have for necessities. If it wasn't for cap, and the food-bank don't know how lots of people would survive. Like I don't know how people can smoke, then say they can't afford electric. I would just give up luxuries to have the electric.

@serbasa Yes I did link to Jack Monroe's blog - because a) she has loads of food recipes for people on a budget b) I've used them and they're really helpful and c) she's been dirt poor and broke, and speaks up for people in the same situation. Are any of those reasons to dislike someone or dismiss them?

Also, spending £2 or £5 on utensils or bus fare to go get some is ludicrous to suggest to someone who has no money for food. How is a £2 pan going to help someone who has to make a paltry sum stretch for days? Yes you need pans to cook, but that's a luxury if you're poor.

"I know one girl with depression, but this is not related to her working." How can you POSSIBLY know that?!

Working such long hours particularly when at least one of those jobs is physically demanding is not advisable long term. As a dancer you are presumably still fairly young and quite fit - how many of your colleagues are late 30's or older? Or with health conditions? It's not sustainable.

That's also why older people are railing against govt expecting people to work into their 70's and 80's - that's possibly all well and good if it's a fairly relaxed office job, but it's ridiculously unrealistic for people of that age in manual/physical jobs! My uncle works in construction, he's already struggling and awaiting a knee op as a result of the work, he's in his late 50's, barely knows how to operate his phone and honestly not an academic/cerebral person. He's panicking what's going to happen when he's no longer able to do the job he's done since he was 15! He has no qualifications and this is his only work experience, what employer is going to take him on?

Cathf - nobody is making out everyone on benefits or nmw is in food poverty but we're saying there's a significant number of people who ARE struggling for a variety of reasons. I've just read elsewhere of UC claimants waiting up to 6 MONTHS for a simple reply on their journals!

Courtney55 while I kinda understand your argument re working hard now to safeguard the future, I can't help but also think that the way you're currently working could CAUSE the future issue you're safeguarding for ie ill health. I genuinely mean this kindly, please pay attention to your health and don't push it too hard. There will come a point when this IS too much for your body and mind to cope with.

Why shouldn't someone working full time in ANY job not expect that to be enough to live on? Someone working full time SHOULDN'T need to work a 2nd job. Also this being the case means there's fewer jobs to go around everyone.

"you are obviously someone who has been blessed with good genes" exactly - that's LUCK not being more deserving!

"Don't make childish references to likening this to dismissing mental health issues thank you, the two are far removed." No it's not, you're making judgments on people based on YOUR health, YOUR circumstances - the kind of people that are dismissive in that way tend to be those LUCKY enough not to have suffered personally.

"Blue lady, just to clarify, you think you're entitled to say my client yesterday, for example, on a profit of £2k this year and a loss the year before, should not be allowed to claim assistance for the government.

On the basis he can pay his accountancy bill. By instalments. Over 12mths." I agree with BlueLady - being able to afford to pay an accountant AT ALL shows that client is NOT struggling in the way those most in need are, and benefits are supposed to be for those in need - was that £2k profit before or after their salary/living costs were included?

"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." So true. They seem to want benefits to be punitive. Kicking people when they're down isn't exactly inspirational!

"It's getting a bit 'let them eat cake' on here." To be fair that's how it started!

As for £4 on utensils at a car boot - that's not having nothing is it? It's having at least £4!

By the time people are referred to food banks they've used every penny they had or need to keep a certain amount aside for eg heating