Feeding Poverty in Britain

13 million people who live in poverty in the UK, suffering what the Joseph Rowntree Trust says are food shortages on a scale not seen since wartime rationing. Food prices have spiked across the world but in Britain, where we import around 40% of our food, prices have risen at more than twice the EU average and families are struggling to afford food that has increased by 32% since 2007. In 2010, the poorest 10% bought 26% less fresh meat than in 2007, 25% less fruit and 15% less vegetables. 900,000 fewer in two years manage 'five-a-day' fruit and vegetables. Food choices of poorer households were driven primarily by price.  "Feeding the family on a special offer pizza or ready meal represents a cheaper alternative to more complex, freshly cooked meals containing multiple ingredients," said Giles Quick of Kantar Worldpanel, consumer analysts.

"Many people don't think that in the UK – the seventh richest country in the world – people go hungry or go hungry for healthy food," said Lindsay Boswell, chief executive of FareShare, the UK charity that feeds 36,500 people every day "But they do. Many families are feeling the pinch financially as a result of unemployment and redundancies, the high cost of living and government spending cuts."

Giselle Cory, a senior research and policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation, says "We're very much not only talking about society's poorest," she said. "We're talking about families who, a short while ago, could afford their weekly shop without a problem. These are the ones who are now struggling to get by. When food prices go up and household incomes go down, people on low to middle incomes buy less healthy food and more unhealthy food. It's a very real causation and, frankly, an unarguable one."

 Research is building up, pointing to the fact that people on what were once regarded as reasonable salaries can no longer afford to eat enough, much less eat enough healthy food. A recent report by Save the Children looked at 5,000 families with incomes of up to £30,000 a year and found that to ensure their children get enough food to eat, nearly two-thirds of parents skip meals, go into debt, avoid paying bills, and put off replacing worn-out clothing.

Two children in every school class are going hungry because their parents fail to provide proper meals, according to a study by the parenting website Netmums and the child welfare charity Kids Company, with an estimated one million children in the UK now living in homes without enough to eat.

A teacher survey in June found that four out of five teachers (83%) saw pupils hungry in the morning and 55% said up to a quarter arrived having not eaten enough. Almost half of teachers had brought food in for pupils who arrived at school with empty stomachs.

Liz Dowler, professor of food and social policy at the University of Warwick, said poor diet in early life stored up health problems for the future. "Children who go hungry and who fill up on monotonous diets based on highly processed carbohydrates, little fresh vegetables and no fruit, are likely to have poor nutritional status – particularly insufficient micronutrients [vitamins and minerals] which are essential for building good immunity, enabling efficient metabolism and full body functioning."

In Bristol, a recent report by Oxfam revealed that 26,500 people can't afford to eat enough. At least one in every 16 parents say they skip one meal a week so their family doesn't go hungry, with 41% saying they have been "forced" to buy cheaper food because healthy food has become unaffordable.

Emma Murray, co-founder of the Bristol North West Food Bank, has seen an increasing number of professional people arrive at her door, needing emergency food parcels. "We don't just get unemployed council house families here by any means," she said. "There's a lot of disbelief about food poverty because families who have always been able to afford to live independently of the state are very ashamed about needing help for something as essential as food,"

Recent political and media debate about the government's welfare reforms - including claims that large numbers of welfare recipients do not really deserve their payments - have influenced attitudes, making people less supportive of benefits and those who receive them.

Tim Nichols from Child Poverty Action Group and explains results of a Demos poll reflect public perceptions regarding benefit claimants: "People do believe that the unemployed are getting on average twice as much in benefits as they actually are. The media and misconceptions are the main factors for this. The stereotypical 'benefit scroungers' stories that the press love to hype up have a huge impact and we are quick to make judgments, assuming it must be the claimants fault they are not working or need assistance." 

The coalition government is ploughing full steam ahead with its plans to cut £18bn ($28.5bn) from the welfare budget by 2014. A further £10bn ($15.8bn) will be slashed by 2016-17, forcing the most vulnerable in society to shoulder the burden of austerity measures. This, incidentally, is the same coalition government who promised: "We will maintain the goal of ending child poverty in the UK by 2020." A promise that research has predicted will not happen. If the Coalition government was to match the rate of progress made by the last government, then it would take till 2027 to meet its target. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has produced analysis to predict what will happen under the coalition's policies. They forecast that 100,000 more children will be forced into child poverty each year while this government is in power.

David Cameron revealed exactly what's on the Conservatives' agenda by asking: "Or is it right that we continue to pay the vast majority of welfare benefits in cash, rather than in benefits in kind, like free school meals?"

He no doubt has in mind the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known as food stamps, that provides low income people in America with vouchers to redeem against food. Handing over food stamps in a supermarket is humiliating and dehumanising. It is really saying is that people on benefits aren't capable and can't be trusted to spend money properly, so must have their money controlled. It would  stigmatise claimants and won't give them flexibility to choose what their family needs. It in fact infantilises the poor.

There is also the public money that will be squandered on private contractors setting this up and the huge profits the scheme will make them in administering and operating. America's 46 million food stamp recipients helped to make JPMorgans a $542 million profit in 2011, up 11 percent over 2010. JPMorgan is not the only processor of food stamp transactions. A Xerox subsidiary administers the food stamp cards in 13 states, enjoying a $69 million contract in California, and defense contractor Northrop Grumman runs food stamp programs in Montana and Illinois that entail a contract of $38 million. Talk about marketing off of misery - the profit made shoots up as workers lose their jobs and can't pay for food. And, of course, it is the giant supermarket chains that would be the destination for food stamp users. Walmart in particular has reaped a windfall from food stamp users. In Oklahoma alone, the chain collected half of the billion dollars in food-stamp aid distributed in the state over two years. A single Tulsa Walmart Supercenter took in over $15 million in SNAP aid during that period.

In the UK there will be many such companies hungry for profit, eager to feed off peoples' poverty and feast on the disadvantaged.

Facts and quotes from The Guardian and Al Jazeera