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.

Yeah, let's only feel sorry for the deserving poor. Fucksake, are we back in 1918 now?

Maybe the parish can send some upstanding citizens round to the poor people to see if they have sold everything they own and live a moral life to be suitable for help

I also live on the 9th/18th floor of a tower block I say it like that as the flat has an upstairs and downstairs so it's split over two levels. It's around 250ft high. I love my home but I hate the height I worry for my children but also relying on council housing you do not get a choice on where you live. However some of us are in the same boat regarding housing and money so we all help each other out, lend one another things and the children play nicely with each other, and with the "posher" kids from round the corner.
Growing veg is also madness to people living in high rise buildings lol

Can you feed, replace the clothes they grow out of, the shoes that wear out, the school supplies that they need, pay rent, pay for the gas that's needed to heat the home they live in, pay for the electric so that there's light in said home, pay for the fuel to cook the food?

Err... But aren't parents living in the same accommodation, using the heating, light etc? So the problem is not the kids, but actually grown ups unable to afford the basics, which is a separate topic.

I obsessively stock up food now and get anxious if my fridge and cupboards aren’t groaning. And I give to food bank every week.

This is us now I pray that I never end up like that again I stockpile everything just incase

Try having a key meter with less than a fiver on it and oil heating and walking a mile carrying a 20 gallon drum of heating oil in December in the pissing sleet. And then tell me I should have the time energy and money to make ducking chickpea fucking curry.

Err... But aren't parents living in the same accommodation, using the heating, light etc? So the problem is not the kids, but actually grown ups unable to afford the basics, which is a separate topic.

if you're unwilling to try to understand something that you've clearly never lived, you're best of not commenting at all because you come across and insensitive at best, and pretty ridiculous as worst.

Being on benefits also does give us abit more security in a way as another poster has put we get £140 winter fuel allowance
And if the temperature outside drops to -1 for 7 days in a row we get £25 for more fuel etc but that goes into your bank.

Some people dont have working cookers or microwaves and cant afford one

I have a £20 per week food budget for me, 2 children and the cat for the next year. I say food, but cleaning stuff, toiletries ect too. My children are fussy, me being skint doesn't change this. I feed them well, I can cook well, I have a kitchen full of equipment so it's acheivable. I have a well stocked spice cupboard and I live right by aldi. They still won't eat aubergine casserole though. They're fucking kids. I'd rather they had their normal food and were happy and I took the hit than we all ate lentils every single night

Mainly it works because I feed them balanced meals and I eat porridge and odds and sods of leftovers though.

If you offered me seeds and told me aubergines were only 50p each, I'd laugh in your face - that's almost 9 loo rolls. 8 sausages. 6 pints of milk. Almost a weeks cat food. 3 kg of carrots. 2.5 kg of potatos. 3 kg of flour. 2 kg of oats. A packet of mince. You think I'd spent that on aubergines? And I do seasonally forage, yet I'd still think you were a twat.

Some privileged twats on this thread.

I hope some of the people on here being deliberately goady never find themselves in a situation where they have to choose between heating and eating.

There by the grace of god and all that!

See that was always my understanding. And I'd never been told otherwise, or seen a situation that would suggest anything different.

This thread is a horrible wake up call to the problems so many households are facing.

I'd think, well you get the £20 child benefit. Plus the child tax credit. Plus if you even work a handful of hours a week, working tax credit. That's an extra £140 a week or so, for one child, on tax credit alone, then your add on your wages, say another £100?Your rent and council tax subsidised or paid in full if on a low income.

I'd think, how can you not have £30 for food after all that. I see quite clearly from this thread that it's an all too common occurance, that I had no idea about, and that's the bigger picture here.

I feel sickened at my lack of awareness, genuinely sickened. And I think a lot of people are as clueless over this situation.

the problem is not the kids, but actually grown ups unable to afford the basics, which is a separate topic

No, it's the same topic. Families and individuals in the UK in 2018 are routinely unable to afford the basic necessities of life, in terms of food, fuel, clothing and rent. Why do you think that might be?

This is the kind of attitude that has caused such widespread suffering.

If your only income was Universal Credit what do you think you'd do for six weeks with zero....and I mean zero income? You have no savings because prior to being forced into Universal Credit you were on a very low income anyway.

Your only option would be to go to your doctor and ask to be referred to a food bank. Begging for food.

You can tell people how wonderful your chickpeas taste all you like, but people living the reality of food poverty still have nothing.

I'm hiding this thread now. It's genuinely upsetting to me to see posters so determined to find a reason to blame poverty on the poor. Or hunger on them being the wrong kind of poor person.
I suppose it helps to keep away the feeling of collective responsibility, that we should all be doing something to lift all of us up. But it makes me feel sick.

Single people on JSA get £73 a week

if you're unwilling to try to understand something that you've clearly never lived, you're best of not commenting at all because you come across and insensitive at best, and pretty ridiculous as worst.
It is quite a ridiculous statement as I am originally from a bottom-of-the-barrel third world country, and I actually saw and felt hunger, real hunger, first hand. But you obviously know better . This UK poverty fashion really puzzles me.

I remember having to scrabble around for enough loose change to top-up my leccy key as the meter ran out one Sunday afternoon. It was pretty humiliating having to stand there in the garage whilst the attendant counted it all up. Having to forgo the 'luxury' of a bit of cheese because I couldn't afford to buy that with the tinned tomatoes and packet of pasta that was to be a weeks worth of dinner.

This was all whilst working full time living in a house share. Once rent, council tax, travel costs and other bills were paid, there wasn't very much left over.

Courtney don't beat yourself up about it. funnily enough before I lost my job and started this process I used to find it amazing how people lived with not much & thought benefits was this golden pass to just not do fuck all. It's really not my tax credits are £115 a week and my child benefit is £34.80. I Top up my rent by a certain amount a week due to arrears, I pay council tax of £45 a month. My food shopping is around £40. Travel to the children's school is £20 something a week. I've got one pair of shoes that I got for my birthday last year but yet we all go to bed warm, full up and well. That's all I can ask for

And the most common reason to use foodbanks is sanctions

Single people do get £73 a week but for them it is harder than having children as they don't receive the amounts we do like child tax, child benefit etc. And the council doesn't really house single peoples only helps you find rooms to rent if your under the age of 35. So they tend to have more to pay out for in regards to rent top ups, council tax contributions and food etc

Oh fuck off SilverCuckoo!

As PP said it's a race to the bottom.

And just to answer Courtney555 near the top. Yes I am on benefits BUT I don't get housing benefit. I pay the mortgage out of income support, child benefit and tax credits. So after I've paid the bills and clothed the kids, no there's not £30 a week for food.

Poverty fashion? What the fuck's that supposed to mean?

I still remember the ratio of cheap powedered milk make up and mixed in with milk that I can get away with before the kids would notice.

Black tea. Black coffee. Because I couldn’t afford the milk.

No I don’t eat breakfast. No won’t come for coffee break I will just work through. Shitting yourself of DS put a hole in his trainers. Or bust his school shoes.

I thought most common reason was fleeing violence ( including but not exclusively domestic). Not that one is more deserving than the other!

It’s desperately sad when people have no concept of what others may be going through.