Something different

There's been a lot of talk in Britain recently about the issue of food poverty. Despite being a G8 country, despite being a supposed world leader with a high GDP, despite being a world leader in global development aid assistance, Britain isn't sorting itself out very well, and there is a growing issue of food poverty here. There are two types of food poverty - there's the type where people can afford to eat, btu through ignorance or convenience, are choosing foods which mean they have a deficit of the appropriate nutrition. But then there's the other type. The type that A Girl Called Jack has documented in heart-breaking fashion in her blog. People who - through circumstances that have changed, through a shitty economy and the crappy state of the banks - are going hungry. Jacks' story is better told in her voice, so do read her blog. She's become the 'face of food poverty' in Britain, which is a title I'm certain she'd rather not have claimed. But her story has helped to raise awareness of what's happening in towns and cities across this country. And her recipes are so wonderfully budget friendly and healthy that they are now being handed out with food parcels across Britain.

The BBC did a special episode of its Great British Menu show a month or so back: called the Great British Budget Menu. In it, three celebrity chefs were assigned to three people/families who were struggling to eat on the tiny budget they had. It was deeply humbling and so very sad to hear their stories. One man, a pensioner, had worked his whole life and paid into the state pension, but the amount he was receiving meant that he could afford little more than packets of soup after he paid the rent on his tiny studio flat with its sad single bed. He split one of those watery packets of soup and had half for lunch and half for dinner - if he was lucky, he could have a slice of bread with it. This is someone who worked his whole life, and now he can hardly afford to feed himself?! That's wrong. As is the family of 5 who - even with two incomes - haven't got enough of a food budget to feed the family healthy meals. Processed food is so cheap. So incredibly cheap. Their budget didn't allow for anything else. And the working single mum who routinely went hungry so that her 12 year old daughter could eat regular meals. I think you can watch the TV show on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM6Vm8M_vnSdMohB99KL7tSEyDXplunNC

The thing that was wrong with this well-intentioned show, is that the chefs were completely incapable of sticking to a budget. One of them decided, to hell with the budget - I'll buy the family a side of SALMON and let them enjoy it (?!) A nice enough thought, perhaps, but a total misunderstanding of the dire state fo these people's budgets. They don't have money to 'splurge' on a big piece of protein just 'because'. They're trying to decide whether they can afford to have the extra slice of bread with their soup. There's no room to run 'just a wee bit over' the budget. It was frankly outrageous (and I was not the only one to think so!) As if that wasn't bad enough, the solutions offered by policy-makers in the show were that supermarkets need to do more. Passing the buck. Well, perhaps, but that's not the whole problem. If supermarkets cut prices, they're going to take that out of the money they pay farmers, and they're already struggling. The bigger issue is that people aren't earning a sufficient wage to account for the rising costs of electricity, gas, rent and food. Salaries have not kept pace with inflation, and since the economic downturn in Britain, the number of people visiting food banks has been rising exponentially.

It all makes me so incredibly mad. Watching the show and reading Jack's blog, I felt guilty at my own good fortune, but also angry as hell that I live in a country that can allow this to happen. And I know many other 'Western' nations are the same. I'm sure there are families in Auckland and Christchurch in NZ who have similar experiences.

Food banks aren't the solution. They're a band-aid on the problem, but until policy-makers can really try to fix this (and not just spout empty rhetoric), food banks are a vital part of ensuring that people aren't going hungry.

A Girl Called Jack posted an idea on Twitter this week. Her idea was that for £3 - the price of a coffee - you could buy sufficient food for 22 meals for one person. She asked people to sacrifice one of their weekly coffees, go to their supermarket and buy these items and donate them to their local food bank. They don't provide a well-rounded meal, but like she said, it's better than going hungry.

I had been thinking about joining a group called 'Foodie Penpals' where you basically send a parcel of nice foodie treats to another person in another country each month with a £10 budget. After reading Jack's post, I realised that I'd much rather put that £10 towards helping to ensure other people have enough to eat. I have more than enough. We are incredibly lucky that we are able to eat whatever we want, whenever we want. The very least we can do is share that. So today I took that £10 to the supermarket and bought some food.

Bread, baked beans, tinned tomatoes, sliced carrots, sweetcorn, tuna, sardines, vege stock cubes, mixed herbs, pasta, jam, soap

To be honest, I was a bit surprised at how much I was able to buy, by sticking to the budget branded products. I was also a bit surprised, once I started shopping to see how expensive legumes and pulses have become. I would always have considered them the lifeblood of budget cooking - protein and nutrition at a fraction of the cost of meat. But the two tins of mixed pulses I bought were the most expensive items in this basket by far - £1.09 each, compared to 33p for the baked beans.

This has become a bit evangelical, and it wasn't meant to. But it's been on my mind a lot, so I wanted to share. Read Jack's blog if you have time. Her words paint a much better picture than mine have.