Too many British families are hungry!

Obesity is a far bigger problem than starvation, food is abundantly available, calories and protein for normal growth are cheap.
It social problems and outright neglect are the cause of malnutrition the one cost that is far too high is housing, affordable housing for the poor is not being provided.

When I was young ,at the end of the month, we would have mashed potato with a bit of cheese because mum had run out of money. She was a terrible money manager ,being from a very rich family herself, with no idea about spreading out her money over the month.

You Gov has a panel over over two million people in the UK (15 million worldwide).

The latest YouGov survey for the Food Foundation questioned over 6000 people. You can see the data here under Round 14. Tab through the slides 1-14 to see the breakdown of the survey. No 14 explains the methodology.

foodfoundation.org.uk/initiatives/food-insecurity-tracking#tabs/Round-14

You can see that numbers have come down slightly from September 2022 when the UK was at the height of a cost of living crisis with spiralling food and energy prices.

The survey:

We asked three questions to assess whether people were food insecure.

If they answered yes to any of these three questions, they are classified as food insecure:

Have you/anyone else in your household:

1.had smaller meals than usual or skip meals because you couldn't afford or get access to food?

2.ever been hungry but not eaten because you couldn't afford or get access to food?

3.not eaten for a whole day because you couldn't afford or get access to food?

We asked them if they had experienced this in a) the last month and b) the last 6 months.

Note the questions are about affordability and accessibility so that would cover people who may have had money to buy food but not the means to get to a shop - just as SeaWoozle has explained.

The British Red Cross define food insecurity as when a person is without reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious, healthy food.

I was thinking of this in the context of somewhere I stayed last year. It was a very elderly person’s home on a large estate of social housing. The only (tiny) shop was just across the road so technically accessible to somebody mobile but most of its stock was alcohol, sugary drinks, crisps and sweets. You could buy a loaf of thin-sliced white bread, milk, a box of eggs, cereals and newspapers but that was about it. It did not sell fresh fruit and vegetables.

The nearest bigger shops were six miles away in town on an infrequent bus service. It was a very steep walk to the nearest bus stop, impossible for someone with impaired mobility. A taxi into town cost £12 one way which would add another £24 to a weekly shop.

Not everybody has a car, cupboards and freezers full of food or easy access to large supermarkets.

In July 2023, Ofcom and ONS reported that 6 per cent of UK households have no access to the internet and 4.2 million adults have either never used the internet or have not used it in the past three months. If someone falls into that category they can’t access online grocery shopping.

So although the newspaper articles focuses on families and cost, we shouldn’t forget that food insecurity could apply to anybody who is isolated.

Wow!

I absolutely despise being on my phone for those things.
I find it a real imposition.

There's a lot of poverty -a lot of it due to high rental costs and low hourly wage rates. The more money you've got the more you can make but it's hard to climb out of difficulties especially if there are care responsibilities to meet. Care responsibilities at home means working extra night shifts etc is tricky. It's tragic anyway, to have to worry about everything, about putting food on the table. It's not a life anyone hopes to lead, always on the breadline, worrying about the future and the next bill. There ARE people in this situation - not sure why the conversation always moves on to who has an iphone!! Without a mobile you can't use the NHS app or easily apply for jobs or keep in touch with the school or care home etc - it's an essential tool whatever we think of it.

Primrose53
War Babies didn’t experience bananas, ice cream, balloons until after WWII ended because none were available. An orange was a very occasional treat. Sweets didnt come off points until about 1953. This was not deprivation but normality as were outside loos for many households up to the 1960s.

Baggs

Thanks seawoozle. Does the link to that site mean that the definition of food insecurity is "needing to use a food bank"?

This is the definition used in the report:

"For the purposes of this study, we define food
insecurity as going without or cutting back
on quality or quantity of food due to a lack of
money. People who are food insecure have, at
some point over the last year, run out of food
and been unable to afford more, and/or reduced
meal size, eaten less, gone hungry or lost weight
due to lack of money.

There are four categories of food security: high,
marginal, low and very low. Food insecurity is
defined as experiencing low or very low food
security, which is a categorisation made based
on a series of survey questions about people’s
experiences in the last 12 months.

We have chosen household food insecurity
as our indicator of hardship as it is an
internationally recognised indicator of hunger
with specific measurement tools. The broad
structure and sequence of the questions we
use is the same as those used in the UK, for
instance by the Food Standards Agency and the
Department for Work and Pensions.

It is important to note that food insecurity is
only one indicator of severe hardship. People
on very low incomes overwhelmingly find they
cannot afford many of the basics of life, but
what they go without can vary at any one time.
Many go without food to try and keep up with
the rent or with bills, although most people who
go without food have also had to cut back on
other essentials."

Thank you.
I shall have a read up.

What people are failing to understand, *Deedaa' is that sometimes they don't have any food to cook.

the trouble with cookery books in charity shops is that a lot of them will be nice colourful books that expect you to have a basic knowledge of cooking and a cupboard full of useful ingredients. Also you have to remember the people who have no facilities for cooking. I know our local food bank is always happy to receive ring pull tins because so many people don't even have a tin opener.

The 'richness' of a country is usually a measure of its total wealth. It tells you nothing about the distribution of that wealth. England was a very rich country in the 19th century because it was at the forefront of the industrial revolution and it had an empire from which it imported very cheap raw materials and to which it exported its expensive finished goods.
However, if you read Mayhew's account of the poor in London, or Engel's account of the poor of Manchester, or Dickens' fiction you will soon find that there was a large degree of appalling, almost unimaginable, poverty underlying the wealth.

We still have terrible levels of poverty and we still have Victorian attitudes to it as well, it seems.

MissAdventure

I think it is based in a collection of different data.
Use of food banks, for example, and hospital admissions with nutrition issues.

MissAdventure

nanna8

You might find this interesting. A few links to look through but will hopefully give you the answers you're looking for.

foodfoundation.org.uk/data-hub

You can't give cookery books away. Charity shops don't want them.
As I never had cookery lessons at school I had to learn from books.

Perhaps the teaching of cookery should be criticised not the concept
Remember the saying Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime

I think it is based in a collection of different data.
Use of food banks, for example, and hospital admissions with nutrition issues.

MissAdventure

The annoying thing is, I thought a seawoozle was actually a plant.
I could picture it in my head, growing around the sand dunes in Cornwall.

Hehe.

Maybe I am.... Creeping around the dunes of Penhale!

Or maybe I'm just a bothered ole silly billy from Mid Wales?!

I wonder how many people Food Foundation tracker is in touch with? If it is like here people keep their poverty quiet and pretend everything is ok. No way on earth would they take part in any surveys, so just how do they get their figures ? It could be a lot higher than they are saying or, conversely, lower. I know round here, an average semi rural suburb, the number of homeless has increased a lot . I know this because of the number of people fronting up for free meals and sleeping bags in doorways. We are supposed to be a ‘rich’ country and so we are ,if everything is going well but I have to say it is worse under this government , disappointingly so because it is a Labour government. They talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.

The annoying thing is, I thought a seawoozle was actually a plant.
I could picture it in my head, growing around the sand dunes in Cornwall.

MissAdventure

My grandson has had lessons on cooking, and budgeting, by the way, at school.
He cooked something neither of us would eat, refused to bring it home, and ended up with a detention.
So that went well.

🤣🤣

Both my kids made a chocolate log and both ended up in the bin on the walk home. Logs, not kids!

HousePlantQueen

Seawoozle; if you are new, welcome

Fairly'ish. Thank you 😊

My grandson has had lessons on cooking, and budgeting, by the way, at school.
He cooked something neither of us would eat, refused to bring it home, and ended up with a detention.
So that went well.

Seawoozle; if you are new, welcome

I hope you all tell your adult children to learn to budget, before helping them?
Because one of the main topics on here is people talking about looking after their grandchildren, picking them up from school, buying all sorts of things, and helping out, moneywise.

Gwyllt

All this debate about can’t cook won’t cook or whatever
Perhaps if both girls and boys were taught how to cook at school along with basic budgeting they might find things a bit easier

If the government hadn't cut the budget for such things then that would be the perfect solution. As it is, any lessons involving cookery means that parents have to pay. Yes, it always states in the letters sent home that if parents need support to pay then it's available, but it's always with a bit of a guilt trip. Well it was when my kids were at school. I'd often send them with extra just in case other kids needed something.