Food Poverty: An Introduction
Despite being the sixth richest country in the world, the UK’s rate of food poverty is among the worst in Europe. But what does the term ‘food poverty’ actually mean? Food poverty can be defined as the inability to obtain healthy, affordable food. This may be due to a lack of shops in the area in which people live, or having trouble getting to them.
Other factors influencing food access is the lack of availability of healthy goods in local shops, an individual’s income, their access to transport, a fear of being the victim of crime, a lack of knowledge of what constitutes a healthy diet, and the lack of skills to create nutritious meals.
Now we know what food poverty is and some of the causes, let’s take a slightly deeper dive into why it happens.
Most people that fall into food poverty are struggling because their income is too low or unreliable. Unreliable income can be caused by the likes of zero-hour contracts, which is when someone has a job but does not have a guaranteed number of hours per week. As well as low wages, low income can be caused by a patchy social security system and benefit sanctions, which can make it extremely difficult for people to cover rent, fuel, and food costs.
Another factor affecting people is the fast rise in living costs compared to average pay, which has been relatively stagnant for many years. In-work poverty is also on the rise due to low wages, with approximately 72 percent of children in families struggling to afford food having at least one parent in employment.
Millions of people are affected by food poverty in the UK. Between September 2020 and February 2021, nearly 6 million adults and 1.7 million children were struggling to access enough food.
Though it can vary over time, it is mostly older people and people on lower incomes who are most affected. Food poverty can also affect those with no access to private transport, people who feel they cannot afford to buy healthy food, or people who do not know how to cook healthy meals, often due to a lack of education on the subject.
The voluntary and community sector plays a vital role in ensuring that people have access to healthy and nutritious food, and it is one of the reasons that Hartlepool Food Network exists, but it is essential that the work carried out in the sector is complemented by action from the government, councils, health bodies, and other statutory agencies, who must play a central role in reducing food poverty in the UK.
The Right to Food campaign aims to enshrine people’s right to access food in UK law. This would mean that every person has a legal right to food, placing responsibility on our government to end hunger.
The End Hunger UK campaign, as well as the wider food poverty sector, are calling on the UK and devolved governments to address the root causes of food poverty and to ensure that public policy reduces, rather than exacerbates food poverty. The campaign has been successful in gaining a commitment from the UK government to measure household food insecurity.
Sustain, a group of organisations that advocates on food and agricultural policies, suggests that councils and other local statutory bodies must address the root causes of food poverty within their powers and responsibility. Ways in which they can do this could be to increase the uptake of healthy start vouchers, signing up to and promoting the Living Wage, reducing the council tax burden on poorer households, and providing or supporting meals on wheels services within their area.
