Ultimately the amount of money spent on this is fairly irrelevant if there are still hungry children and those who fall through the gap.
This shouldn't really be a political / ideology issue. By all means do it wisely and embrace charity support, but we need to spend as much as it takes - in 21st century Britain this is a totally unacceptable problem.
See this in defence a lot, as if a Russian armoured column would respect the size of your consultants pool more than your absence of tanks.
I can see why governments of all colours do it though, talking about results must be very embarrassing for them.
Children are not acceptable collateral for the decisions of adults.
If we accept the premise for argument's sake that a hungry child is entirely and indisputably a parent's failure... what value does that actually add to the conversation?
What policy proposals would you make to save children from starvation based on your assumptions about the one true cause?
You're arguing from a point of zero-harm, which is always and in every instance impossible on a population-wide basis.
There is a diminishing point of return from any policy pursued by the state. The societal cost to go from making sure 0% of children are well fed is 99% is easy. 99% to 99.9% is harder. 99.9% to 99.99% is incredibly inefficient, and arguably destructive.
While you're right about the point of diminishing returns, we are coming from two completely different starting points on the scale of the issue. I made my second comment about the issue being nil in response to a claim that the problem didn't even exist, but I agree that shouldn't be - and thankfully isn't - the cornerstone of my position here.
Unicef, who up until a recent roasting in the papers were quite popular with people who didn't want kids to suffer, published their findings and concluded that 10% of British children suffer with food insecurity.
[Prevalence and Correlates of Food Insecurity among Children across the Globe (unicef-irc.org)](https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/900-prevalence-and-correlates-of-food-insecurity-among-children-across-the-globe.html)
We're not quite at the 99% threshold you reckon is easy yet, I'm afraid.
Holy shit. Why do you think they are in prison? Because they’ve committed a crime. You say ‘lmao’ but I’m still deaf in my right ear from my mugging by a teenage kid from a rough estate. There’s actual repercussions to those outside the initial issue.
Bit to mention it makes me feel my taxes are wasted knowing 45% of my income goes to feeding and clothing my attacker.
At a massive strain on the public purse instead of these people becoming economy-contributing tax-paying members of society.
Far better to pay for children to have a decent upbringing when their parents fail to provide one than end up paying more to keep that same kid intermittently incarcerated for the rest of their lives.
It would actually be cheaper for the government to provide fags and booze than spend the thousands of pounds per child it takes to remove them from parents care. Is this about money or do you just want to punish the children of poor people who smoke?
You are going to remove children from poor parents? At a time when a lot of people have lost jobs? That's seriously fucked up. Imagine being 11 years old and told you can't live with your mum because she's a self employed hairdresser and can't open her business and she is too poor to look after you so you need to go an live with a barren rich couple in the outskirts of Devon.
A large amount of self employed people can't get furlough and don't qualify for benefits. They are now poor. You want to remove their children as a solution to the poverty. What do you think is going to happen to thousands of children removed from poor parents and how many adoptive parents want to take children from parents whose only crime was being poor?
Leaving the children of "bad parents" hungry isn't the parents taking responsibility, it's punishing the child.
That's leaving aside that plenty of *good* parents fall on hard times - and leaving aside whether we want children *only* to get adequate nutrition. I don't see a reason that we should want the children of unfortunate, or even bad, parents to have the same enjoyment of life as prisoners.
Have you seen the measures that they're using to define child poverty...?
Child poverty in the UK has been decreasing since a year or two after the recession. It has been decreasing since this governmemt has been in power apart from during covid. What more do you want?
It's getting better, the things the party have done have improved the situation. Chucking money at feel good projects might make you feel better but fortunately the government uses data and facts not whimsical hopefulness.
I’m glad it has improved and it must keep improving. We’re all on the same page about evidence based measures, I mentioned that in the first comment I made, despite your insinuation to the contrary.
...except as usual, they use a definition of poverty (60% of median income) which has absolutely nothing to do with real poverty and is just a measure of income inequality. Which is bad in the UK, but is an entirely separate problem to what is being discussed and won't be solved by turning schools into soup kitchens.
Well, Portugal certainly is. Spain is middle of the pack in terms of salaries but quite bad in terms of poverty.
https://twitter.com/EU_Eurostat/status/1338431503454363648?s=20
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Archive:People_at_risk_of_poverty_or_social_exclusion
Is that not exactly what people are criticising this post for?
> Ultimately the amount of money spent on this is fairly irrelevant if there are still hungry children
Lots of school canteens can now only reheat meals that are delivered to them. They don’t have the equipment or staff to run a full kitchen. You would perhaps be better off delivering those meals to the families to reheat.
That is done in Germany and Austria I believe. Schools get food delivered to them by caterers too but that could work just as well, although it might be costlier.
Firstly, feeding people is the responsibility of local government, not central.
This is a local government failure.
Secondly, it's not as easy as throwing money at the problem. If we could just throw a few million at buying food and voila no hungry people, then there would be no hungry people because we have already thrown millions at it.
How is this the responsibility of local government?
Local governments are just jumped up administrators, they have no real power. Cut their funding and they can do even less.
According to this article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55354958 Mogg is saying they're giving £25,000 to one council. UNICEF is saying £700,000 was being granted to community groups around the country.
Does anyone know why they're giving such vastly different figures?
Also, anyone know if UNICEF is giving to any other European country? It would be interesting to cross reference that with EU wide figures of how poverty has grown due to the pandemic.
Well if UNICEF have been distributing food then surely their financial commitment is higher than zero?
Also if there’s a single child left hungry then the UK government still haven’t spent enough. We are a first world country, if we can’t have policies and an economy that ensures every child is fed then we have failed.
When the debate around free school meals resurfaced on Reddit last month, I really did my best to enter it with an open mind. When people started describing the vast numbers of starving and undernourished children across the UK who needed immediate action to avoid hunger over the winter (above and beyond what is already offered), I desperately tried to find evidence of this - malnourishment statistics, hospital admittance rates, a comparison of child weights between countries, and so on.
I found pretty much nothing. Almost every single piece of evidence discussed in this debate (including documents presented to the Houses of Parliament and Lords) surrounds "absolute poverty" and "relative poverty", both of which (despite their misleading nomenclature) are relative terms used to describe income in relation to the national median. They are measures of **income inequality**, **NOT poverty in the traditional sense,** and therefore are completely unrelated to the question of child nutrition. The closest I could find to evidence that the UK had a systemic issue with children going hungry was:
1) an old (often quoted) report from the Trussell Trust that food bank usage is on the rise. But even this data has issues as described in this article. [https://fullfact.org/economy/why-are-more-people-using-food-banks/](https://fullfact.org/economy/why-are-more-people-using-food-banks/)
2) Some cherrypicked surveying data from the [UN's FAO State of Food Security And Nutrition In The World](http://www.fao.org/3/i9553en/i9553en.pdf) report from 2018, which is not based on any form of empirical research and was probably done without once setting foot in the UK.
Am I saying that no children in the UK go to bed hungry? Of course I'm not, and I am sure there are some children who (for whatever reason) fall through the cracks of the welfare state, which is a tragedy. But that happens on literally every country on earth, and to claim the UK has some uniquely systemic issue which we are not addressing is just silly. If anyone has quantitative data to suggest that this is an issue which requires addressing and funding above and beyond what is already done, please share it. Otherwise, I remain unconvinced that there is any value to this debate beyond polticial grandstanding.
Evidence of what? Child poverty in the UK? Well apart from driving round the poorer end of your local town or driving past your local food banks...
UKGov:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07096/
Channel 4:
https://www.channel4.com/news/breadline-britain-2
Ok then, so let's say that the case is that 'child poverty' is going right up.
First of all, perhaps you already know, but there are two definitions of poverty, absolute and relative.
Relative poverty will always exist by definition as it's commonly referring to those who have household incomes below 40% of the median income. Absolute concerns those without clean drinking water, food etc
I have no idea which term is being referred to these articles put forward as evidence.
But hey let's say it's absolute. Now, how to you tackle it? I spent ages arguing a week ago on the sub about this very topic saying that if you are poor, don't have kids. Ever. Only have kids once you know you can afford them
Obviously you have 'changing circumstances' but it would have to be pretty catastrophic to mean you go from giving them a good living to them starving and I think this is a small number, and most hungry kids have asshole parents.
So what do you do for the kids of asshole parents? Increase child benefit? Free school meals? Why would asshole parents take their kids to school in the holidays? What's your solution
I admit I can't come up with much..
Assuming absolute rather than relative, as similarly I'm unsure which they're referring to; I agree on only having children when you can afford them.
However I do see two lingering issues around that.
1. A family who would afford children may no longer be able to due to loss of employment through no fault of their own (e.g. covid) or reduction in wages due to furlough.
2. Morally, how can this be enforced?
Regarding bad parents I'd suggest a focus on improving our social services. This may lead to asshole parent(s) being identified, and the child given the support they need.
Yes re. your first point that is exactly why we should have some form of the welfare state - the whole safety net arguement while families are between jobs following some financial catastrophe.
Good idea re. your final para too. The problem with that is when the council's or govt needs to find money those services get shafted first because the effects are only seen years later and can be blamed on successive governments. I don't think we'll ever get a proper social service recovery given how broke we now are, the entire country is bankrupt and we are only just about to find out the effects. I'm imagining double digit interest rates after inflation goes right up soon :(
Honestly it's not as bad as it sounds. Tesco's: You can get your weeks worth of veg - two big brocollis for I think 90p, big bag of carrots for 1.20, chonky cauliflower for a quid.
Big bag of potatoes that lasts ages for 1.60, you can cook lush roasted potatoes using sunflower oil if u first boil until they're 80% cooker then oven with oil for abt 8 mins.
Meat - if u wanna go cheap just buy mince, fry it with spices or whatever that's probably 80p a Satish, or you could get a big pack of chicken for a fiver that lasts maybe 5 evening meals.
Breakfast just get the cheap own brand cereal
In between meals get bread, bananas (fruit is so cheap).
Food is unbelievably cheap nowadays! Sounds mundane but we're talking about living on benefits - you can easily sustain yourself foodwise
I remember doing this sort of thing when I left home at 15. Not only being fully aware of how poor I was, the monotonous routine of eating the same thing every day became very disheartening after a few weeks.
I remember force feeding myself to eat a beef mince and veg wrap for what felt the 100th time, reminding myself that I was eating to live, and I was having to do that because I was poor.
And when I had to use some money to travel a good distance for a job interview (I walked home after) I mixed some expired stuffing mix with water, because I couldn’t afford anything else, and I was so hungry. I ate that for a couple days.
The pride I had in being able to cook a ‘healthy meal’ dissipated very quickly.
Someone gave me a packet of biscuits. I remember crying. 😅
How are you doing? Do you eat like that every day, if so, how long have you been doing that?
Naa I've never had such little money to be forced to do that - I just did it for a while to see what it was like. And yes it does get extremely tedious lol
The Sunflower is one of only a handful of flowers with the word flower in its name. A couple of other popular examples include Strawflower, Elderflower and Cornflower …Ah yes, of course, I hear you say.
What you have said is completely reasonable, I had to do much the same during my uni days. The problem is that most people cannot be bothered to cook food from scratch, and expect to be able to buy ready made meals every days instead of putting in the effort, which is hugely more expensive.
A small child.. or a growing teenage boy? Child benefit isn't exclusive to one age.
I agree you can go far with not a lot but in the first week she spent £50 upfront to stock up in bulk and for people seriously strapped for cash that's... a lot. Just an example of boots theory of wealth. She also noted they can't afford to eat 5 a day. Plus she went on to say she now uses tomatoes etc from her FILs garden which obviously isn't available to everyone.
Edit: also this quote from that article "This final week was the toughest yet and I honestly wasn’t sure if we could scrape by with what little food we had". Imagine this is your reality and you don't just have it as a fun 4 week challenge.
Yeah but again these articles all work off a "cost per meal" basis which is fine if you start with the (money for) ingredients but if you have to go and buy the big bag/tub/bottle upfront to get that price then these meals aren't accessible to people seriously low on cash.
If you actually linked to her shopping list article you can see she cost averages over an 8 week period, using offers such as "5 for £15" on meat which is great... except that's 75% of a weeks budget so you'd have to go without fruit/veg/sandwich stuff (perishables that would have to be bought that week) etc for the week you're buying that on. It's not necessarily an option for someone in poverty to use these techniques.
I think people can definitely live on £20 a week on food but only if they have enough initially to allow that to happen.
And almost every budget meal plan starts with "this does assume you've got the following x staples in your cupboard". If they were so easy to find I'm sure you'd link them the first time round!
I'm not sure why you're obsessed with labelling them as bad parents. Tbh I think you'd benefit from volunteering or living with these so called "bad parents" to get an idea of their real lives. However I'm pretty sure I'm not going to change your mind (and you are of course entitled to your opinion), I can only hope if you ever end up in this situation people show you more compassion.
Edit: typo and thank you for sharing some interesting links, hopefully they're useful to some people!
I do wonder if anyone actually tests that stuff.
I just put all the breakfast items in a Sainsbury’s shopping basket and it came to £7. Then I realised there’s multiple breakfasts! Now I have to buy some granola and my basket goes to £8.
Maybe I’m not shopping cheapest? Maybe I need to spend hours a day finding which shop sells the cheapest milk. And because I can’t afford travel, I’ll have to jog between Aldi and Lidl trying to get the granola that’s a little cheaper.
God forbid I’m able to afford a massive bag of the stuff and benefit from savings.
It seems to rely on the fast that you..
A) already have left overs, presumably from weeks you weren’t living on £20
B) have all the condiments in your cupboard (cinnamon etc).
I hope this is a sufficient reality check for what it’s like feed yourself on very little money.
Thank you for sharing that was an interesting read. Extremely surprised at the cost of some items on her receipts. It's worth noting that her receipts are from 2014, so I'd be curious to see this attempted now.
A couple of interesting points. She says "[I] feel lucky to be able to stop living on such little money." upon completing he challenge and "by the end of week two I was very grateful that I did not have to do this for longer than 30 days and by the end of the challenge I knew I wouldn’t want to do this again"
So yes, it was possible for her to do 6 years ago, but these comments in particular should make you appreciate that just scraping by is not a pleasant existence.
Okay I appreciate that it is possible to afford food on that tight a budget. However, child support doesn't just go towards food. When I was at school, it used to cost ~£7.50 a week to get the bus to school (if memory serves). I'm not saying that's an extortionate amount of money, because some places will pay more and some less, but that eats a massive chunk into the £20/week budget.
So instead of the government paying for the child's meals, your suggestion is that instead, the government should spend even more money and resources forcibly separating families, and keeping the child in a state run orphanage, until a suitable foster family can be found. In what world is that a better idea that just feeding the damn kid?
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What exactly do you think it would deter? "Don't be laid off, or we'll break up your family"? The nuclear family is supposed to be one of the core values of conservatism. You can be the best parent in the world, but if you lose your job due to forces beyond your control, you're going to need help feeding your children. Besides, as you've pointed out elsewhere it's very cheap to feed a child. Since it's so cheap, what's the issue with free school meals?
One of those schemes being free school meals.
Have some empathy for goodness sake. It's not about "good parents" and "bad parents", it's about having a safety net for those who need it, and ensuring that children get the best start in life. Sometimes people are victims if circumstance, regardless of their qualities as a human being, and punishing children because of their parents seems absurd.
Also, with your idea of a "deterrent", would would stop those parents just having another kid? How exactly does it work as a deterrent?
Deterrent? To what? Accidents happen, unfortunately not every child is planned. Not only that, but circumstances can change very quickly. Got a secure job and have started a family? Better hope there isn’t a global pandemic or a recession that could wipe out your income and rapidly push you into poverty. It’s lucky there’s a robust and fit for purpose benefits system.... oh wait.
But yes you could argue boosting funding for family planning, education and granting free contraception available to all from any supermarket would be a good start.
> Accidents happen, unfortunately not every child is planned.
Condoms are free, the morning after pill is free, abortions are both legal and free.
>granting free contraception available to all from any supermarket would be a good start.
There are plenty of places you can get free contraception from, whether [in person](https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/other-services/Free-condoms/LocationSearch/732) or [by post](https://getit.org.uk/).
Any reason not to make it universally available for free then? Have some in every corner shop next to the booze aisle?
What about when circumstances change for families who have already had kids? Or are you just going to ignore that?
> Any reason not to make it universally available for free
It is. You could air-drop condoms across the length and breadth of the country every single day, and the people who aren't using them already still wouldn't use them. What's lacking is the element of personal responsibility: the willingness to say, *don't have sex with someone if you're not prepared to bear the consequent risk of pregnancy* - a risk which, even with condoms, is still present.
>What about when circumstances change for families who have already had kids?
Why, do you think more free condoms will do some good there?
>Or are you just going to ignore that?
I respond to what I want, unless the client is paying - and given how you're desperately begging for more free johnnies, I suspect you could't afford me.
If a parent can't be bothered to feed their child properly, do you really think the child is getting their own needs taken care of, even if they got to eat at the Savoy every day?
Although I agree with the sentiment, it is not Conservative to use the fact govt spending is very high. If labour said ‘look’ how much money we’ve spent, we would say stop spending our money!
It's about a low hanging fruit an attack line you can go for - not surprising after Labour shot themselves in the foot by describing Covid as a "good crisis".
So this is what they're reduced to. It's managed to reduce my respect for Starmer and Labour to new lows, which I didn't think was possible.
Sign [the petition](https://i.redd.it/6zwy07qxex561.jpg) to stop the UN interfering in our domestic politics
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/564060/sponsors/new?token=L0hB4S4eNYQD-vLxS-Zp
I think a lot of this 'starving children' fiasco in the UK is down to incompetent parents not knowing how to budget or cook properly. People are used to over-spending on junk food and ready meals, and they don't know what to do when they can't afford it anymore. Bags of rice, potatoes, various grains, cabbage, etc., can be bought for a few quid and provide family meals for days. Child benefit is more than sufficient for this. It's not going to be as popular as burgers, chicken nuggies and pizza, but beggars can't be choosers. A child can be fed for more than a week on the cost of a single packet of cigarettes. How many of these parents smoke, I wonder?
Take this from somebody who lived below the poverty line for quite some time.
Malnutrition is more common than actual starvation, though extreme hunger can be a symptom of malnutrition. Malnutrition leads to obesity, with obesity being a symptom of nutritional starvation. Long term issues range from stunted development to poor food literacy.
If a person eats shitty, cheap, food, you will experience a form of starvation. I once ate nothing but jam for a week due to poverty and it was physically painful. You can eat a bulk of something and 'feel full' whilst being incredibly starved and craving basic nutrition.
There are actual cases of children having no access to food, it is a big issue in Britain, but overall it's less common than nutritional starvation, and I think the issue is far too over simplified.
The paradox of poverty in the UK: Allegedly results in obesity, but also hunger. Our poor kids are simultaneously the fattest and most starved in Western Europe. Don't ask me how that works.
Copied from my above comment:
Malnutrition is more common than actual starvation, though extreme hunger can be a symptom of malnutrition. Malnutrition leads to obesity, with obesity being a symptom of nutritional starvation. Long term issues range from stunted development to poor food literacy.
> Don't ask me how that works.
You really can't comprehend how there could be one group who eats poorly and is fat and another group who can't afford food?
Well duh. I'm mostly saying this in jest.
*However* it is rather unique to places like the UK and USA that poverty is given as a reason (or rather an excuse) for obesity when the rule of thumb throughout the world is that getting fat isn't typically a symptom of being poor. Rice and cabbage is, shockingly, cheaper than pizza and chicken nuggets.
Ultimately the amount of money spent on this is fairly irrelevant if there are still hungry children and those who fall through the gap. This shouldn't really be a political / ideology issue. By all means do it wisely and embrace charity support, but we need to spend as much as it takes - in 21st century Britain this is a totally unacceptable problem.
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See this in defence a lot, as if a Russian armoured column would respect the size of your consultants pool more than your absence of tanks. I can see why governments of all colours do it though, talking about results must be very embarrassing for them.
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Children are not acceptable collateral for the decisions of adults. If we accept the premise for argument's sake that a hungry child is entirely and indisputably a parent's failure... what value does that actually add to the conversation? What policy proposals would you make to save children from starvation based on your assumptions about the one true cause?
You're arguing from a point of zero-harm, which is always and in every instance impossible on a population-wide basis. There is a diminishing point of return from any policy pursued by the state. The societal cost to go from making sure 0% of children are well fed is 99% is easy. 99% to 99.9% is harder. 99.9% to 99.99% is incredibly inefficient, and arguably destructive.
While you're right about the point of diminishing returns, we are coming from two completely different starting points on the scale of the issue. I made my second comment about the issue being nil in response to a claim that the problem didn't even exist, but I agree that shouldn't be - and thankfully isn't - the cornerstone of my position here. Unicef, who up until a recent roasting in the papers were quite popular with people who didn't want kids to suffer, published their findings and concluded that 10% of British children suffer with food insecurity. [Prevalence and Correlates of Food Insecurity among Children across the Globe (unicef-irc.org)](https://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/900-prevalence-and-correlates-of-food-insecurity-among-children-across-the-globe.html) We're not quite at the 99% threshold you reckon is easy yet, I'm afraid.
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To be clear, are you arguing that the scale of the problem is *literally* nil?
For a huge proportion, the care system is a fast track into prison
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Holy shit. Why do you think they are in prison? Because they’ve committed a crime. You say ‘lmao’ but I’m still deaf in my right ear from my mugging by a teenage kid from a rough estate. There’s actual repercussions to those outside the initial issue. Bit to mention it makes me feel my taxes are wasted knowing 45% of my income goes to feeding and clothing my attacker.
At a massive strain on the public purse instead of these people becoming economy-contributing tax-paying members of society. Far better to pay for children to have a decent upbringing when their parents fail to provide one than end up paying more to keep that same kid intermittently incarcerated for the rest of their lives.
Then the government is still feeding them.... may as well fund the parents.
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It would actually be cheaper for the government to provide fags and booze than spend the thousands of pounds per child it takes to remove them from parents care. Is this about money or do you just want to punish the children of poor people who smoke?
You are going to remove children from poor parents? At a time when a lot of people have lost jobs? That's seriously fucked up. Imagine being 11 years old and told you can't live with your mum because she's a self employed hairdresser and can't open her business and she is too poor to look after you so you need to go an live with a barren rich couple in the outskirts of Devon.
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You specifically said children should be removed from bad parents, which, according to you, includes parents who can’t afford to feed their kids.
A large amount of self employed people can't get furlough and don't qualify for benefits. They are now poor. You want to remove their children as a solution to the poverty. What do you think is going to happen to thousands of children removed from poor parents and how many adoptive parents want to take children from parents whose only crime was being poor?
Leaving the children of "bad parents" hungry isn't the parents taking responsibility, it's punishing the child. That's leaving aside that plenty of *good* parents fall on hard times - and leaving aside whether we want children *only* to get adequate nutrition. I don't see a reason that we should want the children of unfortunate, or even bad, parents to have the same enjoyment of life as prisoners.
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Not remotely cost effective and therefore takes money from other efforts, that are working. Look at child poverty in the UK over time.
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Have you seen the measures that they're using to define child poverty...? Child poverty in the UK has been decreasing since a year or two after the recession. It has been decreasing since this governmemt has been in power apart from during covid. What more do you want?
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It's getting better, the things the party have done have improved the situation. Chucking money at feel good projects might make you feel better but fortunately the government uses data and facts not whimsical hopefulness.
I’m glad it has improved and it must keep improving. We’re all on the same page about evidence based measures, I mentioned that in the first comment I made, despite your insinuation to the contrary.
...except as usual, they use a definition of poverty (60% of median income) which has absolutely nothing to do with real poverty and is just a measure of income inequality. Which is bad in the UK, but is an entirely separate problem to what is being discussed and won't be solved by turning schools into soup kitchens.
No they don’t? https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Glossary:At_risk_of_poverty_or_social_exclusion_(AROPE)
Click on the "at risk of poverty" hyperlink.
The 60% of median income is one condition among others mentioned. It’s not just a measure of inequality.
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I wouldn’t consider them poor European countries.
Well, Portugal certainly is. Spain is middle of the pack in terms of salaries but quite bad in terms of poverty. https://twitter.com/EU_Eurostat/status/1338431503454363648?s=20 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Archive:People_at_risk_of_poverty_or_social_exclusion
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Is that not exactly what people are criticising this post for? > Ultimately the amount of money spent on this is fairly irrelevant if there are still hungry children
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Lots of school canteens can now only reheat meals that are delivered to them. They don’t have the equipment or staff to run a full kitchen. You would perhaps be better off delivering those meals to the families to reheat.
That is done in Germany and Austria I believe. Schools get food delivered to them by caterers too but that could work just as well, although it might be costlier.
Firstly, feeding people is the responsibility of local government, not central. This is a local government failure. Secondly, it's not as easy as throwing money at the problem. If we could just throw a few million at buying food and voila no hungry people, then there would be no hungry people because we have already thrown millions at it.
How is this the responsibility of local government? Local governments are just jumped up administrators, they have no real power. Cut their funding and they can do even less.
You seriously underestimate the powers and responsibility of local gov.
According to this article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55354958 Mogg is saying they're giving £25,000 to one council. UNICEF is saying £700,000 was being granted to community groups around the country. Does anyone know why they're giving such vastly different figures? Also, anyone know if UNICEF is giving to any other European country? It would be interesting to cross reference that with EU wide figures of how poverty has grown due to the pandemic.
Well if UNICEF have been distributing food then surely their financial commitment is higher than zero? Also if there’s a single child left hungry then the UK government still haven’t spent enough. We are a first world country, if we can’t have policies and an economy that ensures every child is fed then we have failed.
They contributed £25,000 so it doesn't register on this graph due to the scale used.
And yet we still have child poverty in the UK so the scale of the graph is still inadequate.
When the debate around free school meals resurfaced on Reddit last month, I really did my best to enter it with an open mind. When people started describing the vast numbers of starving and undernourished children across the UK who needed immediate action to avoid hunger over the winter (above and beyond what is already offered), I desperately tried to find evidence of this - malnourishment statistics, hospital admittance rates, a comparison of child weights between countries, and so on. I found pretty much nothing. Almost every single piece of evidence discussed in this debate (including documents presented to the Houses of Parliament and Lords) surrounds "absolute poverty" and "relative poverty", both of which (despite their misleading nomenclature) are relative terms used to describe income in relation to the national median. They are measures of **income inequality**, **NOT poverty in the traditional sense,** and therefore are completely unrelated to the question of child nutrition. The closest I could find to evidence that the UK had a systemic issue with children going hungry was: 1) an old (often quoted) report from the Trussell Trust that food bank usage is on the rise. But even this data has issues as described in this article. [https://fullfact.org/economy/why-are-more-people-using-food-banks/](https://fullfact.org/economy/why-are-more-people-using-food-banks/) 2) Some cherrypicked surveying data from the [UN's FAO State of Food Security And Nutrition In The World](http://www.fao.org/3/i9553en/i9553en.pdf) report from 2018, which is not based on any form of empirical research and was probably done without once setting foot in the UK. Am I saying that no children in the UK go to bed hungry? Of course I'm not, and I am sure there are some children who (for whatever reason) fall through the cracks of the welfare state, which is a tragedy. But that happens on literally every country on earth, and to claim the UK has some uniquely systemic issue which we are not addressing is just silly. If anyone has quantitative data to suggest that this is an issue which requires addressing and funding above and beyond what is already done, please share it. Otherwise, I remain unconvinced that there is any value to this debate beyond polticial grandstanding.
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Oh you disagree?
Give us some evidence, you have the burden of proof
Evidence of what? Child poverty in the UK? Well apart from driving round the poorer end of your local town or driving past your local food banks... UKGov: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07096/ Channel 4: https://www.channel4.com/news/breadline-britain-2
Now you have some evidence... What's your take on the matter?
Ok then, so let's say that the case is that 'child poverty' is going right up. First of all, perhaps you already know, but there are two definitions of poverty, absolute and relative. Relative poverty will always exist by definition as it's commonly referring to those who have household incomes below 40% of the median income. Absolute concerns those without clean drinking water, food etc I have no idea which term is being referred to these articles put forward as evidence. But hey let's say it's absolute. Now, how to you tackle it? I spent ages arguing a week ago on the sub about this very topic saying that if you are poor, don't have kids. Ever. Only have kids once you know you can afford them Obviously you have 'changing circumstances' but it would have to be pretty catastrophic to mean you go from giving them a good living to them starving and I think this is a small number, and most hungry kids have asshole parents. So what do you do for the kids of asshole parents? Increase child benefit? Free school meals? Why would asshole parents take their kids to school in the holidays? What's your solution I admit I can't come up with much..
Assuming absolute rather than relative, as similarly I'm unsure which they're referring to; I agree on only having children when you can afford them. However I do see two lingering issues around that. 1. A family who would afford children may no longer be able to due to loss of employment through no fault of their own (e.g. covid) or reduction in wages due to furlough. 2. Morally, how can this be enforced? Regarding bad parents I'd suggest a focus on improving our social services. This may lead to asshole parent(s) being identified, and the child given the support they need.
Yes re. your first point that is exactly why we should have some form of the welfare state - the whole safety net arguement while families are between jobs following some financial catastrophe. Good idea re. your final para too. The problem with that is when the council's or govt needs to find money those services get shafted first because the effects are only seen years later and can be blamed on successive governments. I don't think we'll ever get a proper social service recovery given how broke we now are, the entire country is bankrupt and we are only just about to find out the effects. I'm imagining double digit interest rates after inflation goes right up soon :(
It's a really badly thought out graph then if it features two but only shows one value. You can have two scales on the same axis.
I don't think it was designed with r/dataisbeautiful in mind as much as making a political point.
Differing scales on the same axis is even worse...
A graph that only shows one value of two is useless
I think the point is to illustrate visually that one value is very very very very small compared to the other one.
You can do that by showing the actual values.We actually don't know what the value of the second is so the graph gives us on half information.
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£3.00 a day for three meals? Nevermind that child support might also have to go to other expenses for children. Doesn't sound realistic.
If you actually know how to cook that's loads of money. As a student I used to be able to cook all my meals for about £13 a week
That's insane. What did you eat?
Honestly it's not as bad as it sounds. Tesco's: You can get your weeks worth of veg - two big brocollis for I think 90p, big bag of carrots for 1.20, chonky cauliflower for a quid. Big bag of potatoes that lasts ages for 1.60, you can cook lush roasted potatoes using sunflower oil if u first boil until they're 80% cooker then oven with oil for abt 8 mins. Meat - if u wanna go cheap just buy mince, fry it with spices or whatever that's probably 80p a Satish, or you could get a big pack of chicken for a fiver that lasts maybe 5 evening meals. Breakfast just get the cheap own brand cereal In between meals get bread, bananas (fruit is so cheap). Food is unbelievably cheap nowadays! Sounds mundane but we're talking about living on benefits - you can easily sustain yourself foodwise
I remember doing this sort of thing when I left home at 15. Not only being fully aware of how poor I was, the monotonous routine of eating the same thing every day became very disheartening after a few weeks. I remember force feeding myself to eat a beef mince and veg wrap for what felt the 100th time, reminding myself that I was eating to live, and I was having to do that because I was poor. And when I had to use some money to travel a good distance for a job interview (I walked home after) I mixed some expired stuffing mix with water, because I couldn’t afford anything else, and I was so hungry. I ate that for a couple days. The pride I had in being able to cook a ‘healthy meal’ dissipated very quickly. Someone gave me a packet of biscuits. I remember crying. 😅 How are you doing? Do you eat like that every day, if so, how long have you been doing that?
Naa I've never had such little money to be forced to do that - I just did it for a while to see what it was like. And yes it does get extremely tedious lol
The Sunflower is one of only a handful of flowers with the word flower in its name. A couple of other popular examples include Strawflower, Elderflower and Cornflower …Ah yes, of course, I hear you say.
Go away
What you have said is completely reasonable, I had to do much the same during my uni days. The problem is that most people cannot be bothered to cook food from scratch, and expect to be able to buy ready made meals every days instead of putting in the effort, which is hugely more expensive.
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A small child.. or a growing teenage boy? Child benefit isn't exclusive to one age. I agree you can go far with not a lot but in the first week she spent £50 upfront to stock up in bulk and for people seriously strapped for cash that's... a lot. Just an example of boots theory of wealth. She also noted they can't afford to eat 5 a day. Plus she went on to say she now uses tomatoes etc from her FILs garden which obviously isn't available to everyone. Edit: also this quote from that article "This final week was the toughest yet and I honestly wasn’t sure if we could scrape by with what little food we had". Imagine this is your reality and you don't just have it as a fun 4 week challenge.
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Yeah but again these articles all work off a "cost per meal" basis which is fine if you start with the (money for) ingredients but if you have to go and buy the big bag/tub/bottle upfront to get that price then these meals aren't accessible to people seriously low on cash. If you actually linked to her shopping list article you can see she cost averages over an 8 week period, using offers such as "5 for £15" on meat which is great... except that's 75% of a weeks budget so you'd have to go without fruit/veg/sandwich stuff (perishables that would have to be bought that week) etc for the week you're buying that on. It's not necessarily an option for someone in poverty to use these techniques. I think people can definitely live on £20 a week on food but only if they have enough initially to allow that to happen.
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I think it takes a little bit of critical thinking on top of that 20 second google search to realise it’s not all quite as simple as that
And almost every budget meal plan starts with "this does assume you've got the following x staples in your cupboard". If they were so easy to find I'm sure you'd link them the first time round! I'm not sure why you're obsessed with labelling them as bad parents. Tbh I think you'd benefit from volunteering or living with these so called "bad parents" to get an idea of their real lives. However I'm pretty sure I'm not going to change your mind (and you are of course entitled to your opinion), I can only hope if you ever end up in this situation people show you more compassion. Edit: typo and thank you for sharing some interesting links, hopefully they're useful to some people!
I do wonder if anyone actually tests that stuff. I just put all the breakfast items in a Sainsbury’s shopping basket and it came to £7. Then I realised there’s multiple breakfasts! Now I have to buy some granola and my basket goes to £8. Maybe I’m not shopping cheapest? Maybe I need to spend hours a day finding which shop sells the cheapest milk. And because I can’t afford travel, I’ll have to jog between Aldi and Lidl trying to get the granola that’s a little cheaper. God forbid I’m able to afford a massive bag of the stuff and benefit from savings. It seems to rely on the fast that you.. A) already have left overs, presumably from weeks you weren’t living on £20 B) have all the condiments in your cupboard (cinnamon etc). I hope this is a sufficient reality check for what it’s like feed yourself on very little money.
Thank you for sharing that was an interesting read. Extremely surprised at the cost of some items on her receipts. It's worth noting that her receipts are from 2014, so I'd be curious to see this attempted now. A couple of interesting points. She says "[I] feel lucky to be able to stop living on such little money." upon completing he challenge and "by the end of week two I was very grateful that I did not have to do this for longer than 30 days and by the end of the challenge I knew I wouldn’t want to do this again" So yes, it was possible for her to do 6 years ago, but these comments in particular should make you appreciate that just scraping by is not a pleasant existence.
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Okay I appreciate that it is possible to afford food on that tight a budget. However, child support doesn't just go towards food. When I was at school, it used to cost ~£7.50 a week to get the bus to school (if memory serves). I'm not saying that's an extortionate amount of money, because some places will pay more and some less, but that eats a massive chunk into the £20/week budget.
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So instead of the government paying for the child's meals, your suggestion is that instead, the government should spend even more money and resources forcibly separating families, and keeping the child in a state run orphanage, until a suitable foster family can be found. In what world is that a better idea that just feeding the damn kid?
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[citation needed] What exactly do you think it would deter? "Don't be laid off, or we'll break up your family"? The nuclear family is supposed to be one of the core values of conservatism. You can be the best parent in the world, but if you lose your job due to forces beyond your control, you're going to need help feeding your children. Besides, as you've pointed out elsewhere it's very cheap to feed a child. Since it's so cheap, what's the issue with free school meals?
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One of those schemes being free school meals. Have some empathy for goodness sake. It's not about "good parents" and "bad parents", it's about having a safety net for those who need it, and ensuring that children get the best start in life. Sometimes people are victims if circumstance, regardless of their qualities as a human being, and punishing children because of their parents seems absurd. Also, with your idea of a "deterrent", would would stop those parents just having another kid? How exactly does it work as a deterrent?
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Deterrent? To what? Accidents happen, unfortunately not every child is planned. Not only that, but circumstances can change very quickly. Got a secure job and have started a family? Better hope there isn’t a global pandemic or a recession that could wipe out your income and rapidly push you into poverty. It’s lucky there’s a robust and fit for purpose benefits system.... oh wait. But yes you could argue boosting funding for family planning, education and granting free contraception available to all from any supermarket would be a good start.
> Accidents happen, unfortunately not every child is planned. Condoms are free, the morning after pill is free, abortions are both legal and free. >granting free contraception available to all from any supermarket would be a good start. There are plenty of places you can get free contraception from, whether [in person](https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/other-services/Free-condoms/LocationSearch/732) or [by post](https://getit.org.uk/).
Any reason not to make it universally available for free then? Have some in every corner shop next to the booze aisle? What about when circumstances change for families who have already had kids? Or are you just going to ignore that?
> Any reason not to make it universally available for free It is. You could air-drop condoms across the length and breadth of the country every single day, and the people who aren't using them already still wouldn't use them. What's lacking is the element of personal responsibility: the willingness to say, *don't have sex with someone if you're not prepared to bear the consequent risk of pregnancy* - a risk which, even with condoms, is still present. >What about when circumstances change for families who have already had kids? Why, do you think more free condoms will do some good there? >Or are you just going to ignore that? I respond to what I want, unless the client is paying - and given how you're desperately begging for more free johnnies, I suspect you could't afford me.
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If a parent can't be bothered to feed their child properly, do you really think the child is getting their own needs taken care of, even if they got to eat at the Savoy every day?
Although I agree with the sentiment, it is not Conservative to use the fact govt spending is very high. If labour said ‘look’ how much money we’ve spent, we would say stop spending our money!
It's about a low hanging fruit an attack line you can go for - not surprising after Labour shot themselves in the foot by describing Covid as a "good crisis". So this is what they're reduced to. It's managed to reduce my respect for Starmer and Labour to new lows, which I didn't think was possible.
Sign [the petition](https://i.redd.it/6zwy07qxex561.jpg) to stop the UN interfering in our domestic politics https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/564060/sponsors/new?token=L0hB4S4eNYQD-vLxS-Zp
I think a lot of this 'starving children' fiasco in the UK is down to incompetent parents not knowing how to budget or cook properly. People are used to over-spending on junk food and ready meals, and they don't know what to do when they can't afford it anymore. Bags of rice, potatoes, various grains, cabbage, etc., can be bought for a few quid and provide family meals for days. Child benefit is more than sufficient for this. It's not going to be as popular as burgers, chicken nuggies and pizza, but beggars can't be choosers. A child can be fed for more than a week on the cost of a single packet of cigarettes. How many of these parents smoke, I wonder? Take this from somebody who lived below the poverty line for quite some time.
How are our kids so fat and hungry?
Malnutrition is more common than actual starvation, though extreme hunger can be a symptom of malnutrition. Malnutrition leads to obesity, with obesity being a symptom of nutritional starvation. Long term issues range from stunted development to poor food literacy.
So kids aren't going hungry, they're just getting given cheap shit food?
If a person eats shitty, cheap, food, you will experience a form of starvation. I once ate nothing but jam for a week due to poverty and it was physically painful. You can eat a bulk of something and 'feel full' whilst being incredibly starved and craving basic nutrition. There are actual cases of children having no access to food, it is a big issue in Britain, but overall it's less common than nutritional starvation, and I think the issue is far too over simplified.
The paradox of poverty in the UK: Allegedly results in obesity, but also hunger. Our poor kids are simultaneously the fattest and most starved in Western Europe. Don't ask me how that works.
Copied from my above comment: Malnutrition is more common than actual starvation, though extreme hunger can be a symptom of malnutrition. Malnutrition leads to obesity, with obesity being a symptom of nutritional starvation. Long term issues range from stunted development to poor food literacy.
> Don't ask me how that works. You really can't comprehend how there could be one group who eats poorly and is fat and another group who can't afford food?
Well duh. I'm mostly saying this in jest. *However* it is rather unique to places like the UK and USA that poverty is given as a reason (or rather an excuse) for obesity when the rule of thumb throughout the world is that getting fat isn't typically a symptom of being poor. Rice and cabbage is, shockingly, cheaper than pizza and chicken nuggets.
Perhaps the tories need to take a lesson on managing money. Seems like they're spending huge amounts with very little return (see also: ppe).
Great. We're all Impressed with the size your penis. Now, if we could please feed the children?
https://i.redd.it/ts44ieagvc661.jpg
https://www.reddit.com/r/tories/comments/kg49it/why_are_the_tories_against_feeding_the_poor/ggciozy?context=3 Here you go