Too poor to eat properly

That sounds nice and easy, I may well try that.

I might try charred 1/4rd romaine lettuce too.
Carrots sliced with a Y shaped veg peeler seasoned and baked with something weighty (or a baking sheet) on top to keep them flat, taste like bacon and are crisp when slightly cooled. I have 2 or 3 pieces on top of chilli scrambled eggs on a toasted muffin. Mad? Probably.

I think a lot of the trouble here is with young mothers who do not know how to cook a meal. I worked with young single mums for years, and most of their meals consisted of frozen food or 'ready meals'. (The course I ran was not about nutrition, but on self-confidence, intending to get these young people back into work.) But I would set them challenges. One of them was to cook a meal for them and their children, from scratch. (Weekend 'homework'!) I was amazed at how thrilled they were, come Monday morning, at swapping their experiences (and recipes).
"I made a roast dinner - with chicken and vegetables!"
"I did spaghetti bolognese - it was great!"
They were all so pleased with themselves! (And rightly so!)
More education with food preparation and cooking is badly needed. These girls didn't learn anything from their own mothers.
My only worry here, is the expense of some fresh food. It's an fact that a shop-bought, frozen pie, is half the price of a home-made one! You can buy a freshly-made, family-sized apple crumble for £1. (Morrisons) It would cost you far more, to buy the cooking apples, flour, margarine, etc.
It's a weird change in circumstances over the years ... my mum used to knit all of our jumpers, cardigans, etc., because she couldn't afford to buy these items - but nowadays home-knitting is vastly more expensive than shop-bought knitwear.
But that we need food banks, here in the UK, is appalling!

Jalima1108

fresh fruit, vegetables are not allowed to be donated
In 'I Daniel Blake' there were fresh vegetables (don't know about fruit) at the food bank, probably donated by supermarkets. A lot of 'wonky' and surplus fruit and veg is donated to Shelter, Crisis, soup kitchens and food banks in London, that I do know.

Sarah quite possibly but I can assure you that the biggest food manufacturer did not make own label products when I worked for them.

The teaching of 'Food Technology' in schools has a lot to answer for. When my DD was at school she was making spaghetti bolognese one week. She was told to take in the minced beef and anything else she wanted to add but not the tomato sauce base which was provided. When she brought it home I asked what was in the tomato sauce base. She hadn't been told! She was just given a portion to add to her mince and mushrooms. This is teaching people to go to the supermarket and buy a jar of pasta sauce, not to cook from scratch. Next time I made spag bol she was in the kitchen with me learning how to make the sauce using onions, herbs and tinned tomatoes and all the other things I add to make it healthy from scratch - grated carrot and celery etc. She cooks a lot from scratch now, but sadly learnt very little at school.
My mother was a cookery teacher and was horrified to find me using packaged crumble mix (I find 'rubbing in' for crumble or pastry particularly difficult so I buy ready done) so she set to and made a huge plastic box full for me which lasted weeks! She retired long before the changes to the curriculum that have resulted in so many young people knowing how to design a product but not how to cook a meal!
As for people falling on hard times, I lost my job a few years ago when 2 students in the school where I worked falsely accused me of assault. I was suspended on full pay but eventually decided to leave as I didn't know if I would be able to clear my name and didn't actually want to go back there. I was out of work for a few months so signed on for job seekers allowance. After a week and a half I signed off because the hoops I had to jump through to get the benefit, which was a fraction of what I needed to get by, were just too great. I realised I'd never have time to apply for a job I wanted or could get, as I had to apply for so many unsuitable jobs they sent to me which I didn't want and probably couldn't have got anyway. I was lucky that I had savings and decided to live on those instead. Had I not been in that position I'd have had to stay on benefits, and may have ended up using a food bank myself. It could happen to anyone. The small amount I was entitled to would have only covered my mortgage and council tax, if that!
I'm one of the lucky ones. I got another job although I now work longer hours for less money! I manage on a very low income mainly as I don't have as much to buy as younger people. I have all the household equipment I'll ever need, including things that make cooking from scratch economically possible for me. I only recently upgraded to a smart phone when my DD gave me her old one because she has a newer one. I can afford some treats as I am careful most of the time, and I still have some of my savings left which I use to top up my income if I have an expensive month. I retire in about 18 months and estimate my income will be higher then!

So many comments on here that I agree with, on all sides of the argument. Some seem to have experience and some clearly have no clue what poverty is about.

I'll make a few observations:

1) I can't remember ever living near a market.
2) Some people do abuse the system, how do we know which they are?
3) If you have the facilities it is cheaper and healthier to cook from scratch.
4) In my DS lessons we learnt to make nice things like cake, never anything basic.
5) UC is a good idea in principle, it should be better to be in work. It is administered badly and I'm glad that now some rents will be paid directly.
6) Does the nanny state make it harder for people to learn to do things for themselves? I'm in a quandary about this because, for example, there is a move to stop companies renewing insurance policies or fuel deals which are more expensive than shopping around. Most people are quite capable of shopping around but some are too lazy to do so. Of course some are not able to do it for themselves. The result will inevitably be to make these things dearer for those who have always shopped around and I wonder if such rules make people less likely to think for themselves.
7) I think convenience foods have reduced people's ability to prepare and cook for themselves.
8) How do we help those in food poverty?

I could go on.................

I'm glad that now some rents will be paid directly.

Which rents will be paid directly?

I am very much against rents being paid directly, unless the person has shown themselves incapable of managing money.

A relative of mine had rent payments missed by the DWP, in error, but did not know about it right away as the rent was going straight to the landlord.
As a result, the landlord then regarded my relative as unreliable even though the rent was paid right away, as soon as the landlord brought it to her attention.

If everyone could manage their budget properly, probably everyone could be accountants, and we know that's not possible. I read that the minimum IQ needed to comfortably manage clerical work (ie office work, writing, arithmetic, adding up columns of money) is 110. The average IQ of our people is 100. The average person therefore will have some degree of challenge doing a predictive budget so that they always have money left for bills. It's all very well saying "we pay monthly so people learn to budget" but you don't learn during the test! You're meant to be taught first and then be tested. What exactly do the universal credit teams do to ensure people changing onto UC have the skills needed to manage their budgets before they get into debt?

Ready please give a link about that IQ level. I would be interested to read it.

In 'I Daniel Blake' there were fresh vegetables (don't know about fruit) at the food bank, probably donated by supermarkets. A lot of 'wonky' and surplus fruit and veg is donated to Shelter, Crisis, soup kitchens and food banks in London, that I do know.
Yes, you're right.
I was thinking of the items we can donate ie tins, packets. Our local Tesco make it easier to donate now, there is a huge wire crate by the tills where donations can be placed and they say they top it up by 20%.

A good summing up Nonnie - if it's possible to sum up such a complex problem.

I agree with all you've said. As you long to be able to pass on your knowledge, I wonder if there's any opportunity for you locally, to work with a voluntary organisation/charity, to show poorer families how to feed themselves? It would be such a worthwhile thing to do, I'm sure. Just a thought.

I buy items at Lidl, cheaper than Tesco, then donate them in Tesco's food box.
Our generosity to food banks doesn't have to mean increased spending at Tesco.

Thanks Jalima not sure it is possible to sum up but did want to get across that most of the posts have some validity and it is not necessary to 'take sides'.

FarNorth Other supermarkets also have buckets for food banks.

I'm not sure that budgeting money is IQ dependent ReadyMeals. Some people are 'good managers' and others are not although I agree that having help with learning how to budget would be a good thing.

People may, too, be coping with large amounts of debt and higher than normal interest rates.

Nonnie it was a long time ago. My first husband was always making mistakes in his office job and ended up as a minicab driver. We all took IQ tests one day and he scored just under the level that I had read was the minimum to work comfortably in his job, and I thought to myself ah that explains it! I bet it's completely politically incorrect to publish works saying that sort of thing now :D

I have a BPS qualification Ready which is why that surprised me. IQ tests only test one sort of intelligence so it seems unfair to judge someone's ability to perform clerical tasks based on that. It is quite possible your husband had other types of intelligence.

What you can find with Google, even these days, is that people with higher IQs can teach themselves skills when they need them (eg suddenly finding themselves on UC!) while the lower than average IQs (by definition 50% of us) need some instruction in the skill. Who is teaching the 50% of UC claimants who need that instruction - before they get into debt?

Presumably it's a sliding scale, how much instruction you need for how long, but there will be those who need it and they're not helped through those first months to find out if they're coping before it becomes obvious they don't know how.

How did I fail miserably to teach DD with a Master's degree how to budget?
Where did I go wrong?
The others manage just fine.

Not quite as simple as that Ready if you look at the bell curves for these sort of things you will find that very few are at the lower and higher ends, most of us are quite close to the average. Not enough difference to affect our ability. What I would like to know is what we can do to help those at the lower end.

Well I do think that when a person is going to be changed from income support to UC they should be invited to come in and discuss how they currently deal with their budgeting, and then have a discussion about how the change might affect their budgeting methods, and during the conversation make some assessment of whether they have at least understood the principles of keeping some money back for periodic expenses. Then have some instruction sessions - maybe group classes - to offer them if it seems it could be helpful.

It does sound like a sensible idea.
Some ways of 'budgeting' are not in the least cost-effective - eg Christmas hamper savings schemes.

I don't think that will happen Ready. In an ideal world but can you imagine how many civil servants would be required? What the media would make of it? The Opposition would say it was an invasion of privacy etc.....................