To ask why there is such food poverty.

[Helendee]

Please no flaming as I genuinely am seeking answers as to why so many children are going to school hungry these days.
This is not a critical or inflammatory post, I just want to know what’s gone wrong.
Obviously many of us are struggling financially because of Covid but food poverty was a huge problem before that.
Is it that benefit levels are too low to adequately feed our children?
What can we do to ameliorate the situation?

I think it can be generational too, it becomes a ever repeating circle where it's near impossible to get out of. One generation grow up poor with limited opportunity, limited education, limited housing and food. They simply don't have the opportunities to get themselves out or the means to get a good education and a good job. They end up unemployed, or in casual work or in low paid jobs, they have children, this is their norm too and so the circle continues. They don't look beyond having anything else as it isn't the reality for them, they are just trying to survive. They know no difference.

The cost of food and cost of living is so high, we are ok off but even I have noticed that everything especially food, is so much more than it just to be.

Anybody else want to share their very true accounts of encounters with openly advertised foodbanks which have people lined up outside they see everyday on their commute?

Lots of reasons, OP. In my personal experience (mine and a few people I know) the main causes were -
Breakdown of relationships where the mother is financially dependent on her partner.
Delays in benefit claims being processed.
Parents not prioritising their children's needs (I'm sorry to say).
Just in my own case, my children never actually went hungry, though it was touch and go sometimes. I put that down to being brought up to know how to cope with poverty, how to cook very basic food, etc. Also I live a mile away from a supermarket, I'm happy to walk to walk there with my granny trolley, and lastly I was never made homeless so always had some cooking facilities (though never a second freezer).

And it also depends on what shops are available in your area ,so where I live in social housing I live about a mile or so from town and tbh I'm surrounded by supermarket,s I have the choice of Lidl ,Aldi ,Asda ,Morrisons Sainsbury's my Dh drives but even if he didn't I could walk to Aldi or Lidl and do a shop and get a taxi back for a couple of quid or if I couldn't afford that walk back with a trolley full of shopping I also have Home bargains,B&M,s etc. within walking distance but imagine only having one local shop to do that obviously it's going to be massively more expensive.

So many reasons. Lack of affordable housing. White goods not lasting as long as they used to. Changes to disability benefits meaning people are being declared for for work when they aren't. Zero hours contracts. Universal credit being paid in arrears. More children with disabilities (who usually need things that cost more than children without disabilities).

I just ran the benefits calculator for me as though I would be unemployed with my son living in a 2 bed flat on the same road I live on now. I would have a tax free income of £18k, approximately £9k would go on rent. Another £312 on council tax. I imagine utilities in small flat would be about £1200 a year, tv licence is £160, broadband is £250 a year. Mobile is say £250 a year too. Netflix is £72 basic.
That leaves about £560 a month. Knock off 160 a month for clothes, transport and toiletries. Leaves £100 a week for food and other things.

That doesn't seem an impossible situation to me. I can cook extremely well on £40 a week with spices, fresh meat and fish and fruit and veg. I could certainly save money out of that for presents at Christmas, I could afford a cheap gym membership.
Okay that wouldnt stretch to going on holidays but then I dont think the government should be paying people to go on holiday. It seems like an adequate safety net to me.

@WhatWouldYouDoWhatWouldJesusDo

I really wish there was a national drive teaching people how to use seasonings and even vouchers for them.

A tin of beans, an onion, a tin of kidney beans, a tin of tomatoes and some rice will fill bellies really cheaply, but let's face it won't taste of much.

Add to that a load of paprika, chilli flakes, garlic and cumin and you have a very tasty, veggie chilli that people want to eat. Not just a plate of calories being forced down.

We need to bring back basic cooking lessons for budget food which doesn't happen. Kids should be taught how to cook cheap, nutritious meals and how to use what's available. As a skint person I keep my spice rack topped up and make a point of buying a jar of some sort of seasoning each week. Just Aldi ones which are absolutely fine and half the price of branded ones.

This was the point I was trying to make earlier re knowing how to cook. Yes you can boil plain rice and call it dinner, but knowing what to add to make it tasty and nutritious is another level of cooking.

I built up a massive 'spice rack' when I had more money. And now only need to replace a jar or 2 every month. Its rare I don't have the herbs/ spices I need.

Some precarious living, so just getting ends to meet and then an unexpected event tips the balance through no fault of victim and some miss management of funds. Sadly the latter means there is less sympathy and help for the former. I know people who complain bitterly about benefits not being enough to ‘feed the kids’ and they have run out of money halfway through the month but they buy a packet of cigarettes a day.

I think a lot of people manage, just about, then an unexpected expense comes along and they’re screwed. So someone on UC or minimum wage is budgeting carefully then the boiler breaks down or their phone is stolen and the knock-on effects are horrendous.

@WhatWouldYouDoWhatWouldJesusDo

Some families don't have an oven/hob/fridge, they can't read the label, they wouldn't know what cumin or paprika is.
they don't go to school anymore so they aren't going to be learning anytime soon.
who wants to live on veggie chilli for 3 meals a day x 364 ? its ridiculous.

Social enterprise schemes have tried to introduce cooking skills in some areas of the UK, not least in getting mums to be to cook/eat healthily and carry that on into parenthood... it ran for 2 years and then the tories pulled the plug... as it didn't show a good enough cost benefit.

We are/were supposed to be the worlds 5th richest country, shouldn't even be having this discussion.

I was brought up on processed food that could be thrown in the oven and never learnt to cook in school. I ended up in poverty by leaving a violent relationship (years ago). I had to learn to cook very cheaply during this time and it was incredibly stressful. I feel like cooking is completely different when you don't have the money to go buy replacements if you mess up. I can see why people wouldn't want to risk making a cheap healthy meal and would rather go for beans on toast. Thankfully my DC likes most food and will eat veg and lentil soup or whatever I could buy reduced. Being on prepayment meters was expensive but I found a slow cooker paid for itself.

Since then housing costs have increased massively in my area. I was just managing years ago but the switch to UC seems to have made people worse off and they are expected to make up the difference on private rents as no social housing is available. The extra few pounds that I scraped together to buy a slow cooker or bulk buy rice, lentils or pasta is now being spent on rent.

Forgot to add more people don't know their neighbours or have family close by, so less childcare given free by friends/relatives. More rules and regulations surrounding jobs like child minding (which is a good thing for the children but it does mean you can't just decide to be a childminder and look after loads of children like you could in the 60's/70's). More rules and regulations surrounding children working as well.

I wanted to say the same as PPs. It's bloody expensive to be poor. Such extremes with it too.

Can't buy best value, buy quality, in bulk or shop around
Can't get cheap credit
Can't get best savings rates

More affluent people can take advantage of all the ways there are to save money.

Really wealthy people get things for free!

Also poverty is a trap. Once you are there it's really hard to get out of.

Our grandparents and great grandparents could really teach us a thing or two. Women who managed to make nutritious meals on a tiny budget, stretch ingredients and waste nothing. The loss of these skills within a couple of generations means that although we have never been richer or more privileged there are still many who aren’t managing to get by. My mum was talking the other day about how they had a bath on a Sunday, the bath was taken off the wall and set in the kitchen and filled with water from the stove, one bath, same bath water, entire family in turns. Unimaginable now but this was happening just 50 odd years ago. Shoes were new in September, toes cut out as they became too tight in summer, one pair, seven days a week, everyone did the same, no one felt out of place. Lifestyle expectations have gone through the roof and that is going to make keepIng to a modest budget really hard.

@whatdoesthismeaneh
Do you think it's an 'adequate' safety net for disabled people on £74 a week. Or singles made redundant. With housing benefits less than rents, they pay say £20 a week for rent. Leaves them with £54 a week - for food, electric, gas, water, council tax (full council tax benefit no longer exists), phone and internet (needed to claim benefits and look for work and/or contact doctor/hospital), occasional clothes, medicines, bus fares, etc.
You think that's manageable?

Or the family with full-time working parents but needing UC because wages are low and housing costs high. Who need to pay for childcare as well as all the other essentials. Emergencies and unexpected expenses, i.e. the washing machine breaks. No money to get a new one. Try going to a launderette. It's expensive.

How about the families with disabled children. All the extra costs associated with that.

Or the woman who's fled domestic abuse, leaving everything she owns behind and therefore faced with finding the money to replace it all - clothes including underwear, cooking utensils, toys for the children, etc.

Benefit recipients are not one homogeneous group. A minority might do ok or be spending it on drugs. The majority are not.

I think people often miss how much of an issue having very limited money is by focusing on one thing at a time and not looking at the whole picture. If you have a low income then it impacts everything. You’ll struggle to borrow money if you need it for repairing something essential like a fridge or an oven or the laptop you use for job searches/kids homework/managing money, paying bills wtc and if you can borrow money it will be expensive and thus more difficult to pay back. You will likely have a gas/electric card rather than a monthly bill so your fuel for heating/lighting/cooking will be more expensive and have to be paid in advance. You’ll likely have to get a bus to go to a large supermarket and shopping locally will generally cost more. You won’t have a starting point of cupboards full of herbs/spices, flours, pulses, rice, tinned goods etc that you can dip into at will & you’ll struggle to buy in bulk for a saving. You’ll often have to buy cheaper clothing/shoes/goods because you’ve limited funds and something is needed now so things won’t last as well as if you could afford to buy more expensive but better quality ones to start with. It’s harder to get a bargain or free stuff from local pass it on/selling groups because you don’t have access to a car to go and pick things up. If you have a zero hours contract planning budgets is harder as your income isn’t steady and it also will make it harder to borrow money. Im sure there are some problems with people not having sufficient knowledge about how to cook & to repair clothes/household goods etc and there are undoubtedly instances where people get themselves in a bit of a financial mess by not making do with what they have/what they can get cheaply or for free second hand. Addressing that won’t solve the basic problem that people just have too little money to survive on.

I do believe there are so many factors. Another problem is unhealthy processed food is much cheaper but isn't the ideal health food to keep you mentally healthy and physically healthy. It's such a vicious cycle. Cost of living in general is so expensive, some people just can't handle money, they never have much so when they do have much they enjoy themselves whilst they can be find themselves back at square one. It's such a hard cycle to break, with poverty, lack of education and resources.

Local shops can be eye wateringly expensive now. Coops are very expensive. Me and DP are not on benefits, have a pretty good household income, and we had to get out of our coop habit as it was destroying our budget. It was a mile from our house. The nearest supermarket was 3 miles from our village, that only had a few very expensive buses a day. I don't know how anyone on a low income coped.

We've moved. Our nearest shop is 1.5 miles away and is a Spar. We went once. It was even more expensive. £3 for a very ordinary loaf of bread. The next nearest shop is a Tesco extra, not much choice, better prices, but still dear. The nearest budget supermarket - Aldi- is 6 miles away and would mean 2 buses each way.

I was a single mum on benefits for a while in the 90s. Local shops were much more normally priced, a small premium over supermarkets, but not like this.

@whatdoesthismeaneh

I just ran the benefits calculator for me as though I would be unemployed with my son living in a 2 bed flat on the same road I live on now. I would have a tax free income of £18k, approximately £9k would go on rent. Another £312 on council tax. I imagine utilities in small flat would be about £1200 a year, tv licence is £160, broadband is £250 a year. Mobile is say £250 a year too. Netflix is £72 basic. That leaves about £560 a month. Knock off 160 a month for clothes, transport and toiletries. Leaves £100 a week for food and other things.

That doesn't seem an impossible situation to me. I can cook extremely well on £40 a week with spices, fresh meat and fish and fruit and veg. I could certainly save money out of that for presents at Christmas, I could afford a cheap gym membership.
Okay that wouldnt stretch to going on holidays but then I dont think the government should be paying people to go on holiday. It seems like an adequate safety net to me.

So just imagine then that you had 2 dc, but still only got (just over) 18k because of the benefit cap. My rent is slightly higher than you budgeted for. My CT is 3x yours. I've got 2 teenagers who seem to grow inches overnight so always need clothes and shoes. Not to mention how much they eat!

When I was a Sixth Form Tutor in a secondary school I taught students how to cook a few basic cheap meals before they went to uni. I always did an omelette, a thick vegetable soup, spagetti Bolognese, toad in the hole and I showed them how to steam rice and vegetables. Honestly a couple did not even know how to do a jacket potato. Schools should all teach not just cooking but basic budgeting which is another thing I did with them. All schools should do budgeting in PHSE. Benefits will cover accommdation, food and fuel but obviously not to a lavish level. They will cover basic food. I got students to do the 'live for £1 per day for a week' challenge for charity. It is bloody hard to do, I got staff doing it too.

@SciFiScream your post reminded me of the Terry Pratchett quote about boots and why it is expensive to be poor.