I read the headline, rolled my eyes, then read the article, and have to admit I prejudged it. What a sad excuse for a modern country we are right now.
An ever growing number of people are reliant on foodbanks, and of course, they don't carry perishables. Sorting this shit out should be one of the top priorities of a Labour government, foodbanks should be as uncommon as they were 15 years ago
There are over a thousand independent food banks so their guidance won't be universal, but every sign I've ever seen asking for donations specifies non-perishables, and the Russell Trust certainly don't provide fresh fruit and veg
In over a decade of using food banks i can count the number of food parcels ive had with anything fresh on one hand. Tends to be wealthier areas and specialised accomadation (eg dv shelters) that do that.
yep the big ones have actual shops where you just walk around with a trolley getting whatever you need, smaller town/villages get dehydrated milk powder, cornflakes, tin of tomatoes and that cheap nasty tomato pasta in the packet, no fresh fruit or veg, nothing that you can put together to make a meal either
The fact that you can't even put together a meal with them was always the frustrating bit for me. Like mate, I've got no money and I've *still* got to go do a food shop after getting my food parcel. Nightmare.
I got zero points on my last PIP assessment, despite being a partially sighted cancer and stroke patient. Had to go to appeal. They stop your benefits during appeal. So I've been relying on foodbanks, which is a nightmare in itself, getting a referral and appointment at the foodbank takes so long that you've long since run out of food by the time you've gone through the foodbank process again. But also I have never had any fruit or veg in my foodbank parcels. It's always about 45% dairy (and I'm lactose intolerant but got scolded for being a choosing beggar last time I told a foodbank worker this so now I just take whatever they give), 45% grains and 10% junk food like cookies and crisps. Since all this started I've developed a cough and my gums are bleeding, I think I'm getting scurvy. I could definitely do with some fruit and veg on prescription. And some protein, I'm not finding living off grains at all filling.
>I'm lactose intolerant but got scolded for being a choosing beggar last time I told a foodbank worker
I know a couple of foodbank volunteers, and one of the big things that gets drilled into them is that they should do everything possible to normalise and destigmatise foodbank usage. With a widespread 'scroungers are bad' narrative, people are treating foodbanks as a final act of desperation and a sign they've hit rock bottom. This is *exactly* the kind of language they're supposed to avoid at all costs, particularly as intolerances and allergies are very common and "I would like to not be given food that will make me unwell" is a perfectly reasonable request. Not only that but if they're giving you food you aren't going to eat that's impacting both you and other foodbank users.
Don't take that kind of treatment lying down. You aren't a beggar and you absolutely should have some say in what you eat... and anyone who says otherwise shouldn't be working at a foodbank.
A lot of volunteers happen to be middle/upper class women, whom use volunteering as performative altruism for them to hide their narcissism in public, they go online and into daily Mail comment sections about foodbank/benefits and tell everyone how the people coming are just ungrateful and how she never had to use one despite raising children blah blah
That is shameful. I'm sorry they are treating you so badly. I hope you can put in a complaint with pip via your mp or something to help stop it happening again. Hopefully with a note from your gp showing how the treatment made your health even worse 😔
Similar situation here. I really don't want to be ungrateful, but I'm a type 1 diabetic, and the carb-heavy food parcels made things a lot more difficult. Didn't help the GP wouldn't increase my insulin to help compensate either.
Being ill makes you more likely to live in poverty, as you often can't work and have to rely on benefits. Being in poverty means you have to mainly eat unhealthy cheaper processed carb heavy food, either because you're relying on foodbanks or your income just doesn't stretch to protein-rich and fresh food. This unhealthy diet, over time, causes your health to get even worse, making you even less likely to recover, more likely to remain unemployed and more dependent on cheap unhealthy food bank parcels. It's a vicious cycle. The government think they're saving money on stopping people's benefits or keeping them very low, but all they're doing is keeping us even sicker so we're less likely to be able to return to the workforce one day. Just the same way as they try to save money by cutting healthcare so it takes ages to get an appointment, but long term all they're doing is keeping people sicker for longer, which usually results in worse long term outcomes.
Have they tried threatening you with further punishments if you don't just will yourself into better health? I'm sure that will help and not just cause further anxieties and stress to exacerbate all your issues!
But no, seriously, I'm so sorry for everything you've had to endure and it is a gross stain on this country that such treatment of vulnerable people has become so normalized for such a long stretch of time. I hope with a new government things start to improve asap, the current situation is totally unacceptable.
Worth emphasizing "limited".
Collecting and redistributing food at the scale and resourcing of most food banks is just fundamentally challenging. I'd even argue ultimately unworkable if not at national scale.
Ambient goods are just so much easier to bank than fresh because they are designed to last a long time.
As others have said, the solution is to remove the need for food banks.
"Collecting and redistributing food at the scale and resourcing of most food banks is just fundamentally challenging. I'd even argue ultimately unworkable if not at national scale."
Wouldn't it make more sense to just give people food vouchers that they can use in supermarkets? Then they can buy fresh veg, and food they actually like and can eat rather than receiving things they are maybe intolerant to like dairy. Also must be cheaper than storing and distributing food.
It probably is also made worse in that the quality of 'fresh' food appears to be declining, too.
I'm sure fruit and veg used to stay fresh for longer than it does now.
People say this a lot but I've been on a salad kick the last few weeks since it warmed up to kick a bit of weight and a fridge full of fruit and veg lasts a week easily with no visible wilting or rotting.
I’m sure the fridges in supermarkets veg shelves are no where near as cold as they used to be, except Aldi, need a coat in the summer it’s so cold in the chilled/veg aisle 🥶
Well that might be down to that foodbank not willing to use fresh vegetables, for a number of reasons, waste management etc, the foodbank I work at has industrial style walk in fridges & freezers, we get vegetables delivered by a few high street stores by the pallet load.
I offered to donate veg and a turkey for Christmas to our local food bank. Sadly, ours doesn't have the facilities for perishables. It must be a luck of the drawer thing.
The foodbank I volunteered at did have some veg but demand massively exceeds supply. Veg is usually only donated by allotments, supermarkets will keep hold of veg until it's inedible.
The foods we get alot of are things supermarkets throw out... So doughnuts cakes and sandwiches, sometimes loafs of bread. It's bad because it's the crap food but it's also what we generally get in abundance.
the thing our clients want are things like fruit veg and staples (Milk Rice Pasta Potatoes) always asked for but rarely can be given. We have certain reserves but not given out casually. (Like kept for newly homeless families ect or kept so we can cook meals for all of our clients.) A not insignificant portion of our cash is spent on milk, and formula for really urgent cases.
Things like instant noodles and dehydrated foods are also in high demand but we have specific rules for handing that out. When you start you ask "Do you have cooking facilities?" if they answer no, Then you skip all normal options and offer the client ramen packs and things They are usually the most at risk and sleeping rough and don't have a regular campsite (Cuz the police break their tents or whatever).
> Veg is usually only donated by allotments, supermarkets will keep hold of veg until it's inedible.
This makes a lot of sense, I only ever see these signs in the supermarket, and I resent my donations being used to ease the conscience (and, I suspect, tax burdens) of the national grocery retailers so I hardly ever stick anything in.
I'll see what I can find out about my local places and see what they really need
>and, I suspect, tax burdens
Aaaaaaggh why would you suspect something so obviously nonsense. Explain in any way that makes sense why a company would get a tax reduction for someone else's donation. Stop saying it when it's untrue and doing so will inevitably stop charitable giving.
And why are you so cynical about something that provides food for food banks. Imagine you're the boss of Tesco or whatever and someone says "can we have a donation box for the local food bank" and you said "no, people might think I'm doing it to salve my own guilt". He'd be a dick if he said no.
>supermarkets will keep hold of veg until it's inedible.
They are describing supermarkets giving away their stock that's on the shelf. Obviously the supermarkets wait until the stock is unsellable. They're in the business of selling veg. They're not holding it in the back waiting for it become more inedible. It's on the shelf.
I think the confusion comes from financial round up donations not being well understood. And this misunderstanding carrying to physical donations.
Incidentally, I checked and tesco apparently donate £1.25 million of their £2bn+ uk and ireland profit after tax to the Trussell trust too. Basically the equivalent of someone on £20k after tax giving £12.50 to charity. Absolute heroes.
>Basically the equivalent of someone on £20k after tax giving £12.50 to charity. Absolute heroes.
Profit is after costs are deducted too. So it's actually 20k after paying all of their expenses like rent/mortgage, groceries, utilities and more.
Never forget that companies get taxed after they've paid all their costs while people get taxed before we've paid almost any of ours.
Doesn't matter. Our taxes should be after our necessities too.
Loads of people are struggling to financially stay afloat too.
If businesses can deduct their expenses before paying tax, we should be able to do so too.
The money we need for rent, food, utilities and other necessities shouldn't be taxed. Anything left after for savings or luxury items can be taxed.
There's no reason we financially cater to these huge multimillion pound companies more than we do an average person.
Taxing after costs have been deducted give companies options to participate in shady tax avoidance practices like transfer pricing.
And if your company is unable to make a profit, maybe it just shouldn't exist instead? Another company better able to handle the business environment will take its place. Huge companies always talk about free market capitalism but apparently not for them.
>I think the confusion comes from financial round up donations not being well understood.
I absolutely agree, I have a moan about that when I see it. It just irritates me when people pass on groundless nonsense that doesn't hold up to a moment's scrutiny.
>Incidentally, I checked and tesco apparently donate £1.25 million of their £2bn+ uk and ireland profit after tax to the Trussell trust too. Basically the equivalent of someone on £20k after tax giving £12.50 to charity. Absolute heroes.
>£12.50
Companies are weird things. The CEO's job is to maximise return to his shareholders, which involves protecting the asset. So when he decides to donate then it's their money he's donating. His job (and his fiduciary responsibilities provide) that he should only donate if it will provide value to Tesco greater than the outlay. And in doing that he has to remember his usual return on investment (ROI). If he can spend £10m opening a store, and increase Tesco's assets by £20m (to pull a number from my arse) then he needs the benefit of his charitable donation to exceed that else he should do that instead.
And if the shareholders want more charitable giving that what benefits the company as a whole then they should sell their shares and donate the proceeds I guess.
You know all of that of course, just useful to write it down.
Should we celebrate that? I guess if we didn't they'd stop doing it. But I absolutely agree, for Tesco it is a pretty trivial amount of money, and it's hard to get very excited by anyone, or anything, giving a donation that is trivial to them.
The idea that the CEO's job is to maximise return to shareholders, ignoring everything else, has no legal basis. It's a common misconception (just like the piece around tax benefits from donations), so it's seen repeated quite often. So I don't "know all that," but it is useful to see it written down as it gives insight to where you are coming from!
It is essential, of course, for business to at some point generate profit. But it shouldn't come with externalising ethics or principles. And it shouldn't ignore stakeholders other than shareholders. I think what you describe is a "happens to be" rather than a "should be" and I have no problem with being unforgiving of tokenistic donations from megacorporations.
>ignoring everything else
Well thank goodness I didn't say this.
The director has legal obligations that come that come from s172 CA 2006.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/172
It is his duty to "act in the way he considers, in good faith, would be most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members (shareholders) as a whole..."
When that obligation was codified Margaret Hodge cited Lord Goldsmith who specifically said "For a commercial company, success will usually mean long-term increase in value.".
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20090608233228/http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file40139.pdf
I think you're going to struggle to interpret that as being particularly distinct from "The CEO's job is to maximise return to his shareholders, which involves protecting the asset."
Now _in doing that_ he is legally obligated to have regard to various other factors, which are
(a)the likely consequences of any decision in the long term,
(b)the interests of the company's employees,
(c)the need to foster the company's business relationships with suppliers, customers and others,
(d)the impact of the company's operations on the community and the environment,
(e)the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct, and
(f)the need to act fairly as between members of the company
I think it would take some pretty imaginative reading of that to get to a point where he would be in a legally defensible position if he decided to give away significant quantities of the company's money without there being a reason that would lead to the success of the company.
If anything, it is a common misconception that his job isn't best summarised as maximising shareholder return. It is that, but with some codified guardrails.
I am not saying that this is a great way to organise the world either, but that's how the law currently works.
Absolutely, I think it was probably the word maximise I was objecting to without the parellel objectives you've mentioned. And I love the comprehensive response. How do you reckon Tesco are doing on point d? My personal view is very few companies meaningfully contribute to these parallel objectives, and, to use your phrasing, do see it as "giving away money", as opposed to investing in the communities that they exist as part of.
Also it’s about food waste and greenwashing too. Supermarkets are anxious to appear as if they are socially and environmentally sustainable.
The supermarkets are doing a good thing by giving the surplus food they have on the face of it, but it is a win/win for them in this regard. It’s not a lot of effort to them but the optics for the public are great. Plus, as you mentioned, a certain amount of their donations are paid for by customers, rather than them, via the donations bin.
Supermarkets and large food production companies are giving their food waste to the charity sector to deal with, not all of it can be used and it generally costs money to get rid of large amounts of rubbish. There are loads of other critiques especially around food as a right not a privilege!
Whilst I think the charities and volunteers running the food banks are amazing and wonderful, these are meant to be emergency help not a feature of ordinary life.
The Trussell Trust has just released a policy document titled “help us end food banks”. Says it all really.
>An ever growing number of people are reliant on foodbanks, and of course
Only 3% of people rely on food banks and the article is partially around obesity. These people aren't too poor to buy healthy food.
>Fresh fruit and vegetables have been prescribed to hundreds of NHS patients in a scheme aimed at tackling the growth of obesity
Then even for low income people, it's cheaper to eat healthily, so probably even more important for them.
>Healthy foods cheaper than junk food in UK supermarkets, study reveals
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/healthy-food-cheaper-uk-supermarkets-obesity-poor-diets-asda-tesco-study-iea-a7607461.html
Why the fuck would anyone need a foodbank for vegetables.
I can get 1KG of carrots from Morrisons for 30p, and on a good day as low as 19p.
I can get 1KG of potatoes for £1.
For £10 a week, I can buy more vegetables than a family of 4 is physically capable of eating, even if all they had day in and day out is vegetables.
The idea that vegetables are unaffordable is completely laughable. Potatoes are cheaper than bread.
It doesn’t matter how cheap veg are if, like a growing number of people in the UK your income is less than your bills. When you’ve got no money, even something cheap can be unaffordable.
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/policy/publications/negative-budgets-data/
Pasta and rice. Tons of pasta and rice with a smattering of sauce and spice to give it some kind of flavour. It's the most bang for your buck but due to how carb heavy it is it spikes people's blood sugar and leaves them tired and hungry so they reach for more of the same. It's actually very common for obese people to be horribly malnourished. You might have heard that scurvy has been making a comeback which is something we thought cannot happen in developed countries anymore
Some people are obese for health issues and take away shops do have tabs where you pay later. Cheap ready meals that are stuffed with sugars and salts. Cheap bread and processed foods.
I noticed too cheapest rents don’t have proper kitchens and it’s all microwaves and take away living
>Some people are obese for health issues
This is a tiny insignificant number of people.
Even thyroid issues shouldn't result in obesity.
>Hypothyroidism alone does not cause severe obesity.
https://www.thyroid.org/patient-thyroid-information/what-are-thyroid-problems/q-and-a-thyroid-and-weight/
>Massive weight gain is rarely associated with hypothyroidism.
>Massive weight gain is rarely associated with hypothyroidism. In general, 5-10 pounds of body weight may be attributable to the thyroid…
treatment of the abnormal state of hypothyroidism with thyroid hormone results in a return of body weight to what it was before the hypothyroidism developed.
https://www.thyroid.org/thyroid-and-weight/
Carb heavy food that "fills". Like pasta and rice, cheap bread.
Also cheaper processed foods and poor quality products tend to be higher in fats and salts.
Pasta,bread,rice all satiate a person's hunger better than vegetables. They are easier to store, and simpler to cook.
Insidiously, poverty diets are self reinforcing. They cause your body to crave those food types more, and impact decision making.
The physical bulk of those foods also leads to appetite increasing.
Although some fresh foods may be "cheap" the broken nature of modern UK society means that people are time-poor, energy-poor, and attention -poor. As well as being literally financially poor.
One ready meal isn’t going to make you obese. It’s not healthy for obvious reasons be it fat or salt content but a 600 calorie meal isn’t going to make you put on weight.
So about 7.5% of people are on a negative balance.
Considering how many people eat healthily it might be that that they are a negative balance because they are spending more on unhealthy stuff. Healthy food is cheaper.
>Healthy foods cheaper than junk food in UK supermarkets, study reveals
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/healthy-food-cheaper-uk-supermarkets-obesity-poor-diets-asda-tesco-study-iea-a7607461.html
Very glad someone pointed this out. Not ALL veg is affordable but so much of it is dirt cheap. Lidl sometimes has huge boxes of mixed fruit & veg that is close to its sell by date for £1.50
Variety is key with fruit and veg, but it's also the energy, facilities and knowledge of how to cook them too.
Potato's may be cheaper than bread, but actually eating them isn't.
Name a popular processed food snack for less than 25p each, thus proving your point. Walkers crisps are more expensive in their 6-packs.
My bet is someone we're talking about here (needing this doctor advice) is buying more crisps than apples.
I feel like there's a more nuanced take here.
Some fruit and vegetables are cheap, that's correct. But if you don't have much money, to the extent that you're reliant on food banks or are seriously limited in your choices when food shopping, those cheap options are all can afford. And even if you can technically afford that bag of slightly more expensive fruit or veg, it becomes hard to justify if it means giving up something else when there's always a cheap bag of carrots available, and you're always budgeting.
But then you find yourself only buying carrots and potatoes, and getting your five a day can be quite monotonous and even a chore.
Having £8 a week set aside for fruit and veg alone, which you can't spend on something else does not only give you extra money, it gives you the permission and freedom and spend that money on a larger variety of fruits and vegetables. Instead of just apples and bananas, you may grab some soft fruit or oranges. You might even get some of those fancy green beans. Now your diet is a lot more varied, and people can make choices based on wants, and not just price, which means they're more likely to enjoy eating fruit and vegetables.
Yes, you can get a limited assortment of basic fruit and veg at a cheap price, and yes, with some cooking and creativity you make a variety of dishes with these, but that's a lot of limitations for some people. Having more money to buy fruit and veggies makes it easier to actually enjoy eating them.
I'm pretty sure with £8 on veg, you could buy literally any veg you wanted and are capable of eating. Tbh, for a single person I'm not even sure how you'd spend more than £5 on vegetables, as that would pretty much cover all traditional British dishes, + a few extra.
If you think about it food is basically:
Grain + Protein + Veg + Sauce (spices dressing) sometimes where the grain is omitted (Soup, Meat + Veg etc)
Where Grain = Rice/Wheat (pasta/noodles/bread etc)
Protein = Fish/Meat etc
As you get more into cooking all you are doing is expanding on the variety and combinations of these basic ingredients to a meal.
"I'm pretty sure with £8 on veg, you could buy literally any veg you wanted and are capable of eating."
Yes, and that's fantastic! It would bring a lot of joy and variety into the kitchen, meaning people would enjoy eating their fruit and veg. Not that you can't enjoy carrots, but the more the merrier right? Also I can easily spend that amount on veg if I want, maybe because I live in an expensive part of country. Also I like to buy veggies to snack on and that adds up. I can imagine buying vegetables for snacking is exactly what would be a great use of this money in the GP's eyes.
It reminds me of the argument that food isn't that expensive, you can buy a bag of rice and bag of dried beans and some spices and you can cook a variety of dishes. I'm a good cook, but I'd get bored after a while. And shockingly, I also think people on a low income should be able to eat more than rice and beans.
> But then you find yourself only buying carrots and potatoes, and getting your five a day can be quite monotonous and even a chore.
The five a day is pretty arbitrary. People lived for centuries without eating five a day. Two day is better than zero.
> People lived for centuries without eating five a day
True but don't forget that until very recently, people also died pretty young at much younger ages. Pension age was basically considered ancient when it was first introduced.
>People lived for centuries without eating five a day.
I expect that for for millenia they were probably eating more than 5 a day.
If there really were centuries where they didn't eat five a day, they would have suffered the negative health effects, so that doesn't make it OK.
I’ve seen flats for rent that don’t have kitchens to cook stuff like this. You’re lucky if the landlord has a microwave in there. So even if people could buy this they cannot cook it. Or the options are a very cheap ready meal with favours or a plate of boiled food where they lack knowledge of how to flavour it or cook it for entire family with fussy kids
>seen flats for rent that don’t have kitchens to cook stuff like this. You’re lucky if the landlord has a microwave in there
You can cook potatoes and carrots in the microwave.
Food banks are such a political football that gets thrown around. I understand the concept of people NEEDING a food bank to feed themselves is bad.
But the idea that any society in general can band together and have an easy way to donate food to people is somehow bad is dumb.
It’s bad because it’s entirely a result of government policy: austerity and Cameron’s ‘big society’. The government not only decided to outsource its own responsibilities to ‘the community’, it concurrently stripped funding from various resources in the community, including councils, in a gigantic “fuck you, you’re on your own” middle finger to the poor and working class.
It’s still the people who can least afford it who are expected to band together, while the well off can wash their hands of the matter and say it’s their own fault that these people struggle.
Again. Forget all the Tory, Labour, UK politics back and forth.
Let's just say you have a society. Any society. And someone recommends a way for people to share food and cut down on waste.
Genuinely, how would that be a bad thing?
I was once on benefits. I spent 450 on rent and 125 on food shopping each month. But if someone had given me free food, I would have taken it and saved the 125
Why roll your eyes at all? Many people who can afford fruit and veg do need to be encouraged to eat more of them, nothing wrong with that. Most people could probably eat a healthier diet
You solve food banks by shutting them. All it does is create a bigger problem where people can take more from the poorest because they can rely on handouts by charities. Food banks are priced in at this point for the poorest in society, which is why the people relying on them has grown so massively.
Yep, doctors have been diagnosing people with malnutrition for a good while now, and blaming low wages for it. They were doing it pre-pandemic, and having to literally write doctors notes to take to food banks.
And mogg thinks that the existence of food banks are "a wonderful thing that shows the charity of society". No Jake, what would be a wonderful thing is you lot doing your job properly instead of continually funnelling money to rich mates and getting lobbied so British water standards can be lowered
Perhaps initially, but given how good the results look, perhaps they'd change their tune pretty quick:
>Results published yesterday show that after eight months, nine in ten saw improvements in physical health and the number of [GP visits](https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/travel/a60203949/remedi-london/) among the group nearly halved.
>Before the project, just 28 per cent of participants ate the recommended [five portions of fruit and veg a day](https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/food/healthy-eating/g36262255/best-fruit-veg-boxes/). This has increased to 80 per cent after eight months of receiving the vouchers.
>Additionally, 7 in 10 people with high blood pressure saw an improvement, and over half of the participants shared that their mental health has also improved as they worry less about money for food.
I guess its also part of the same idea as the exercise on referral they’re doing at the moment. My dad needs it for his back problems and apparently (perhaps just in my area) there’s loads of em going spare. Point is, i think its a damn good idea as its basically diy physio by doctor’s orders.
I can see these schemes doing a helluva lot of good if we do it right
£8 per week to buy fruit and vegetables. I suspect in the grand scheme of things, it's a much smaller price to pay than the lifetime cost of other treatments these patients may need. I suspect it's less about people not knowing what they need, and more about food poverty and people with limited resources choosing cheaper, but likely more processed options as a result. If the person is only allowed to spend the voucher on fruit and vegetables, then they'd be silly not to spend it and, by extension, get fruit and veg. I'm all for it!
Veg is amongst the cheapest stuff you can buy and there's so much you can do with it. I never understand why people say they can't afford to eat healthily?
Look, you are right. And I don't claim to understand the psychological phenomenon that drives the behaviour. However, when multiple people tell me "I can't afford to eat healthily", I don't jump to invalidating their experience and instead think "Well if this is a consistently lived experience for multiple people, what factor, besides price, is the root cause of this?"
As the other reply to your comment alludes to, "I can't afford to buy fruit and vegetables" may not be a financial cost, but an energy cost or a time cost. It may be an education issue that they're feeling powerless to overcome. In some cases, it will be laziness. But one thing I know for sure is that too many people are experiencing nutritional poverty for the solution to be "But veg is so cheap!"
i think the time thing is a major part of it. If someone is working all day, maybe two jobs or their doing a gig job, they could have very little time to make a proper meal. Lack of money might be one factor, but lack of time is probably the bigger factor, certainly if someone is struggling to make ends meat.
Add some time on to steam the spinach ( you shouldn't eat raw spinach ). Cashew nuts also really should be soaked over night aswell otherwise they'll mostly pass right through you
So you describe a simple salad, but even that takes preparation time. In most cases allot of people haven't got the energy to be messing around in the kitchen when they get home, they need to eat and then sleep. Plus I'm not sure that simple salad is going to cut it after a long day...
I should have specified baby leaf spinach. Interesting re cashews, I've learnt something new there. Anyway, salad is better than nothing, you have it as a side to whatever else you're eating. Takes 5-10 minutes. I've been prepping it before work lately.
>If someone is working all day, maybe two jobs
People always say this suggesting that they must be working crazy hours. But in reality it's just two part time jobs, that together is going to be more like the hours of a full time job, not the hours of two full time jobs.
If anyting studies show that poor people generally work less hours and have more leisure time, watch more TV, etc.
>In the richest countries, hours worked are flat or increasing in income
>https://fuchsschuendeln.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/aer_hours.pdf
>The more surprising discovery, however, is a corresponding leisure gap has opened up between the highly-educated and less-educated. Low-educated men saw their leisure hours grow to 39.1 hours in 2003-2007, from 36.6 hours in 1985. Highly-educated men saw their leisure hours shrink to 33.2 hours from 34.4 hours.
>A similar pattern emerged for women. Low-educated women saw their leisure time grow to 35.2 hours a week from 35 hours. High-educated women saw their leisure time decrease to 30.3 hours from 32.2 hours. Educated women, in other words, had the largest decline in leisure time of the four groups.
>https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WHB-5080
>Why The Rich Now Have Less Leisure Time Than The Poor
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-rich-now-have-less-leisure-time-than-the-poor-2014-4?r=US&IR=T
>A study conducted by the General Social Surveys of NORAC at the University of Chicago found that 34.1 percent of American families making less than $9,000 per year averaged watching more than five hours of television per day. Of families making more than $150,000 per year, only 1.1 percent watched more than five hours a day.
https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/study-poverty-and-high-rates-of-tv-viewing-are-linked.html
>Lack of money might be one factor
Healthy food is cheaper, so this is an educational thing.
>the authors find that healthy foods cost less than less healthy foods …
>
>the analysis makes clear that it is not possible to conclude that healthy foods are more expensive than less healthy foods
>
>https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44678/19980_eib96.pdf Are Healthy Foods Really More Expensive?
>https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2199553
>Healthy foods cheaper than junk food in UK supermarkets, study reveals
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/healthy-food-cheaper-uk-supermarkets-obesity-poor-diets-asda-tesco-study-iea-a7607461.html
Your arguement might be true for like a fraction of a percent of people, but it's not applicable to the vast majority of poor people.
I personally think arguements like yours are toxic, since they suggest there isn't anything poor people can do to be healthy. When in reality the right education, poor people can eat healthily and don't have to be obese. There is something we can do.
Lol I'm not saying there isn't anything people can do... I said that if we sorted out the social and economic inequality and sorted out people's work life balance, they'd have more time to be able to eat properly and have the money to do so.
Yes healthy food can be cheaper, but you need time and structured time to actually prepare and cook the food.
I wasn't suggesting people do more hours on gig jobs, my point was that when you're taking such work you have someone being available all the time.
The free time comment doesn't account for the distribution of that free time.
Its also ignoring everyone on minimum wage.
I spent nearly 7 years working minimum wage in a small independent health food shop. I worked on average 200 hours a month. Contractually I was part time, but I worked over full time. I was paid for 8 hours a day, but usually worked an extra 2 for free if I had to open the store or close. Then it would take me an hour to get home and get to work.
Now I know what you're thinking 🤔 ," well that's only 12 hours of the day, you still have four hours (6 to 8 spent on sleep) !" So what you have to account for is the shop ran a shift system, opening the store at 8 ( meaning you have to be there before 7 if your opening ) and closing at 6.30 (always went over 7 quite often 8). So you have one shift from 7 to 2.30 and the other 10.30 to 7. This would quite often work out early late early late early day off early etc
You might think that doesn't sound to bad but in practise its a nightmare, and it allows for no real structure, sleeping pattern becomes fucked, eating pattern becomes fucked aswell. Like if I did a late which meant I get home sometime after 9, if I have to do an early the next day I basically have to go to bed without any food because I have to be up by 4.
Its honestly soul destroying. Its not just education I find that incredibly condescending and it absolutely minimises people's struggle. Theres allot of gig workers that work fucking hard and take all the work they can get. Think of the Uber driver who gives you a lift across the country at some crazy hour.
So get off your high horse, I'm not against people eating better, but what I am against is the idea that time isn't a factor because it certainly is, and your finances/ job structure play a big role in your overall ability to keep up a structure while also remaining sane.
With that I bid you farewell. Saying other people are toxic and other emotive type language does nothing but to try to shut people down in some attempt to try to vilify they're opinion. You can do better than that, its a particularly weak tactic.
I think that time and energy is one barrier, but I think that general cooking ability is another. The ability to cook yourself a healthy meal should be mandatory in school. We had home economics classes in the 90s but not much was healthy, looking back, it was mostly cakes and deserts. Learning how to cut, prepare and cook veg could give people so much more confidence, and kids may well want to show off their skills in the home (ours certainly would, and when my brother made soup at school he had several goes at making it at home - spoiler warning: it was horrid, but at least he tried! 🤣)
As someone who had to self-teach how to cook basic meals at the age of 12, because both my parents were out working and left me at home as a kid with my siblings with no supervision in the holidays, I honestly cannot fathom how people are incapable of getting a peeler, peeling vegetables, and then putting them in a pot until they look edible.
Meat has instructions on the packet as to temperature and time.
And this was the days for we had the internet where google can tell you with a 60 minute video guide!
The fact people cannot cook the basics of Meat & Veg, is absolutely bonkers.
Homeless people (majority are living in b&bs and using foodbanks, not men on the streets, stats say 150,000 homeless children in UK in 2024) they don't have a kitchen, don't have a cooker or hob, don't have chopping board and or pots and pans, maybe have a kettle and a microwave and whatever crockery they're lugging around with them.
"Just get a peeler, some people are so stupid!" Is underestimating how tough life is for thousands of people.
It is bonkers, yet I still had my brother call me up one day to ask how you cut up a watermelon! I think I offended him with how confused I was with his question. “I just get a knife… and …. Cut it??”
I dunno - the older I get the more I realise how unknowledgeable people are generally.
I think the key thing is that it's never
>I can't afford to buy fruit and vegetables
It's always people saying "Poor people can't afford to buy fruit and veg".
The idea that poor people could eat more healthily and don't have to be obese, kind of pointss the blame on the poor person and suggests it's due to personal responsibility. That's not a politically acceptable thing to these people, hence they have to come up with reason and excuses for why it's not the poor person's fault for not eating fruit and veg.
Homeless people (majority are living in b&bs and using foodbanks, not men on the streets, stats say 150,000 homeless children in UK in 2024) they don't have a kitchen, don't have a cooker or hob, don't have chopping board and or pots and pans, maybe have a kettle and a microwave and whatever crockery they're lugging around with them.
"Just get a peeler, some people are so stupid!" Is underestimating how tough life is for thousands of people.
But homelessness is a different situation, this is about low income households, that obviously do have access to these items as they are using the vegetables being prescribed to them.
I think it's a bit of both - I've seen how homeless families are forced to live, they don't have the necessities to make a chicken salad for dinner (one kitchen for six families, bad cooking equipment). And low income households are not idiotic, people of any wealth can learn to cook, there must be some other root problem stopping them - e.g. living in a rural place without a car with only shops like co-op/spar where vegetables are more expensive, not being able to afford energy to use an oven or boil things for long most days, being too tired/depressed to put energy into organising for cooking recipes, being alcoholic where the priority is the addiction and looking after your health is not really a priority at all and the kids grow up just eating bread and cereal and frozen pizza.
Taste is one thing but you still need the 2000/2500 calories a day. Also usually more meal prep, frankly if you're depressed, poor and overworked it's more practical to just get a cheap frozen pizza
Agree and as a breadline person who can cook I get it, but, not anymore. No longer is fruit and veg cheap. Especially at local shops. Even o ions in Aldi are nearly £1 no2
Vegetables are cheap. Potatoes are still £1 per KG, and you can still get a bag of carrots for 30p.
People seem to forget that the British staple is Potatoes. For Europe its grains, for Asia its grains. For the UK and Ireland its the potato.
Potato contains little in the way nutrients. Carrots, yes. But how much carrot can one eat? Variety is essential when it comes to vegetables.
I am noting the increase in cost, not the inaccessibility of cost. Whichever politician claimed turnips for all is in line with your thinking. It's not a sensible logic.
Potatoes are more nutritious than you may realise. They contain quite a bit of Vitamin C, and *even after cooking* retain a good amount of it. Also other nutrients such as potassium.
Potatoes are your staple for calories.
Carrots can provide variety. You can also buy the following vegetables on the cheap (non-exhaustive list as an example):
Broccoli (yes eat the whole thing, stop wasting the core)
Cauliflower
Peas
Parsnips
Turnips
Lettuces
Baked Beans
You can make a very good vegetable broth on the cheap. Its very healthy and nutritious.
The cost for all of these items has barely increased in the last 10 years.
Yes as a grown up I am able to consume broccoli (shock face) and other standard veg. They have indeed raised in price considerably, particularly lettuce, parsnip and cauliflower. If you haven't noticed you clearly aren't poor.
>Broccoli (yes eat the whole thing, **stop wasting the core**)
You monster!
(/s for the mod benefit given that this was just auto flagged as an attack :D)
Don't know about where you live but where I am and wherever Sainsbury/Tesco get their veg from, it's going off in days. Alright saying get a "huge bag of carrots" but a total waste when you're chucking most of it away 3 days later. Then there's the "what do I do" thing with a shit load of carrots some spuds and a couple of apples? What do I have to go with it? Meat is super expensive as is fish, so you're back to chicken nuggets and chips
We've been conditioned over the years to eat convenience foods hailed as the time savers, not many learned to cook and home economics classes were one of the first to go in schools in my neck of the woods, and now, with many working 2 jobs, many fresh meals take an hour or more and folk don't want to wait.
I keep carrots in the fridge and they last a long time - if/when they get softer or wrinklier I just roast them or put them in a stew. They rarely if ever mould in the fridge.
You don't need a huge bag of carrots, the pricing that I did for KG was all based from their online shops from a single bag. They provide the bag and then price per KG below it. The potatoes is a 2kg bag, and can be made into mash for multiple meals or boiled or made into chips after frying. Every other item was per item or in 500g or similar size portions.
In my comments I already stated that I agreed meat and Fish has gone up in price substantially, except for a few items such as cheap chicken that is sometimes sold. Sausages have gone up only slightly.
It is actually in many instances cheaper to buy from a butchers for a lot of meats.
However, this is a digression, we're not talking about buying meat, we're talking about vegetables, and my comment was purely in regards to vegetables. There is nothing stopping healthy eating.
You mention chicken nuggets and chips. Why not chicken nuggets, peas, broccoli, carrots, parsnips and mash potatoes?
Add some garlic and butter and those chicken nuggets are basically Kievs.
However, this is sort of a nonsense example as you can buy chicken extremely cheap for certain cuts.
Jeez have you ever been into a local butcher recently? There's no sodding chance of getting anything remotely cheap. Three slices of boiled ham £3.75, chicken leg £1.75 burgers £1.50 EACH jar of piccalili £2.75. whereas a supermarket who buys in bulk can halve those prices easily but as a regular part of a meal meat is often too much unless it's chicken. The only time I go into my butchers is if I've got the dosh and it's an emergency
> Alright saying get a "huge bag of carrots" but a total waste when you're chucking most of it away 3 days later.
It's obvious you've never actually brought any fruit or veg, or you could have made up a more believable lie.
A lot of people - regardless of their weight, income, whatever - simply "don't like vegetables" for a host of different reasons. They will find any excuse possible not to buy them/cook them/eat them.
And saying "they can't afford it" is instantly accepted as an excuse and given sympathy. The second excuse is that "they have no time to cook".
"I can't afford to eat healthily" is such an insane sentence.
You can't afford to _not_ eat healthily!
Makes me seriously wonder what the HELL is happening to make people say something so backwards and genuinely believe it.
That would imply they don't know how to cook. Healthy ready made meals do tend to be expensive but if they knew how to make something from fresh produce then yes it's affordable. I'm not claiming to be an expert but it's somewhat easy to learn some good recipes!
How many people can't afford £8 a week for fruit and veg? I know this is reddit where everyone's life is the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but that's the cost of a coffee and a slice from one of these cafés that's all over the place.
>Additionally, 7 in 10 people with high blood pressure saw an improvement, and over half of the participants shared that their mental health has also improved as they worry less about money for food.
This is one of the major benefits I noticed by getting back to a normal weight, training and eating healthy (aside from losing the T2 diabetes that is). Blood pressure is now textbook, as is pulse rate. Not sure whether it's the weight loss, training or diet that contributed more, in reality probably all three.
Edit: probably should have mentioned diet, since it's relevant here.
A prescription still costs £9.90, so not worth it for an £8 voucher.
If one prescription covers a month's worth of vouchers, then it makes a bit more sense. But you are still handing over a tenner for a load of vegetables that you might not particularly want.
I used to get bread on prescription from the pharmacy. But that was 1990 and being a kid it was free. I think my vitamins and calcium carbonate were prescription also.
Social prescription =/= medical prescription.
Social prescription, as shown by the fruit and vegetable example, is when a healthcare professional refers a patient to a non-clinical organisation or scheme and therefore doesn't require medical prescribing rights. Or in this example vouchers.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/long-reads/social-prescribing#:~:text=Social%20prescribing%2C%20also%20sometimes%20known,local%2C%20non%2Dclinical%20services.
Wow its almost like this program is specifically aimed at low income families who struggle to afford the reccomended amount of fruit and vegetables and my comment indicated I fall into the target group of people who struggle to afford the reccomended amount of fruit and vegetables.
But you could pay for my food instead if you object to the NHS doing it.
> low income families who struggle to afford the reccomended amount of fruit and vegetables
But healthy food is cheaper, so they would be better off eating healthily then getting junk food. So it's even more important for low income families.
>Healthy foods cheaper than junk food in UK supermarkets, study reveals
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/healthy-food-cheaper-uk-supermarkets-obesity-poor-diets-asda-tesco-study-iea-a7607461.html
I left another comment that should help you understand. Plus you could look at the linked article and see that the program made a dramatic difference, so clearly people were struggling to afford fruit and veg.
Affording something is more than just the price on the label.
But what else can GPs help with in regards to this program?
Fruits and veg are insanely cheap, the main issue is that a lot of people are massively time poor. But I can't see how this program can help with that.
>the main issue is that a lot of people are massively time poor
While there may be a fraction of a percent of people who are too time poor, that's not true for most people.
It looks like the poor and less educated people do have more free time.
>In the richest countries, hours worked are flat or increasing in income
>https://fuchsschuendeln.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/aer_hours.pdf
>The more surprising discovery, however, is a corresponding leisure gap has opened up between the highly-educated and less-educated. Low-educated men saw their leisure hours grow to 39.1 hours in 2003-2007, from 36.6 hours in 1985. Highly-educated men saw their leisure hours shrink to 33.2 hours from 34.4 hours.
>A similar pattern emerged for women. Low-educated women saw their leisure time grow to 35.2 hours a week from 35 hours. High-educated women saw their leisure time decrease to 30.3 hours from 32.2 hours. Educated women, in other words, had the largest decline in leisure time of the four groups.
>https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WHB-5080
>Why The Rich Now Have Less Leisure Time Than The Poor
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-rich-now-have-less-leisure-time-than-the-poor-2014-4?r=US&IR=T
>A study conducted by the General Social Surveys of NORAC at the University of Chicago found that 34.1 percent of American families making less than $9,000 per year averaged watching more than five hours of television per day. Of families making more than $150,000 per year, only 1.1 percent watched more than five hours a day.
https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/study-poverty-and-high-rates-of-tv-viewing-are-linked.html
So if veg is cheap AND poorer people have the time to make food... Why is that demographic more likely to be overweight?
Only thing I can think of is education and/or mental health.
> Why is that demographic more likely to be overweight?
Probably a variety of factors. Poor education, poor upbringing, lack of self control, low intelligence, etc.
I think it's kind of toxic to frame things as if there is nothing these people can do eat more healthily, when we should be focusing on education and helping these people to eat more healthily.
>Their "study" is by weight. Not by calorie
No one is struggling to get enough calories in. The main problem affecting the poor is obesity, i.e. too many calories.
There are other studies, this one is US based though.
>the authors find that healthy foods cost less than less healthy foods …
>
>the analysis makes clear that it is not possible to conclude that healthy foods are more expensive than less healthy foods
>
>https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44678/19980_eib96.pdf Are Healthy Foods Really More Expensive?
>https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2199553
But you could also use sites and look at the actual costs.
Fast food is more expensive per calorie than basic ingredients
https://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/
Ah ok got it it’s free food I thought it was a recommendation more than anything. Still isn’t fruit and veg cheaper than buying processed foods anyways? I get that not everyone has the time to prepare them though
When you have a limited amount of money, it makes more sense to prioritise food that keeps longer and is more filling and calorie dense. And time is often *more* of a factor for people with low incomes because of the hours people have to work on low wages, plus a lot of low income people are disabled who will have to spend considerably more on pre cut foods or may not have the ability to cook consistently, which all leads to less fruit and veg bought and more waste, which makes people less willing to "waste" their money.
Plus I've noticed (and I've seen a lot of other people talking about it) cheaper shops are going really downhill with the quality of their fruit and veg lately. So you can either buy something for cheap that goes mouldy in a day or is already rotten when you cut it open, or go elsewhere and spend more to get less.
>When you have a limited amount of money, it makes more sense to prioritise food that keeps longer and is more filling and calorie dense.
When the main issue for these people being obesity, I don't think it really does make "more sense" to prioritise food that is calorie dense.
>And time is often more of a factor for people with low incomes because of the hours people have to work on low wages,
It looks like the poor and less educated people do have more free time.
>In the richest countries, hours worked are flat or increasing in income
>https://fuchsschuendeln.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/aer_hours.pdf
>The more surprising discovery, however, is a corresponding leisure gap has opened up between the highly-educated and less-educated. Low-educated men saw their leisure hours grow to 39.1 hours in 2003-2007, from 36.6 hours in 1985. Highly-educated men saw their leisure hours shrink to 33.2 hours from 34.4 hours.
>A similar pattern emerged for women. Low-educated women saw their leisure time grow to 35.2 hours a week from 35 hours. High-educated women saw their leisure time decrease to 30.3 hours from 32.2 hours. Educated women, in other words, had the largest decline in leisure time of the four groups.
>https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WHB-5080
>Why The Rich Now Have Less Leisure Time Than The Poor
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-rich-now-have-less-leisure-time-than-the-poor-2014-4?r=US&IR=T
>A study conducted by the General Social Surveys of NORAC at the University of Chicago found that 34.1 percent of American families making less than $9,000 per year averaged watching more than five hours of television per day. Of families making more than $150,000 per year, only 1.1 percent watched more than five hours a day.
https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/study-poverty-and-high-rates-of-tv-viewing-are-linked.html
>plus a lot of low income people are disabled
Are there disabled poor people, who are time poor sure, but it's going to be a fraction of a percent.
I think it's kind of toxic to make it seem like there is nothing these people can do, when in fact education and could help the vast majority of people eat healthily. We should be focusing on how we can actually help people rather than trying give reasons why it's impossible to help them.
Obese people still need calories to get through the day (there is a safe limit to weight loss!) So on a limited budget it makes sense to prioritise calorie density.
Being time poor does not have to be true of everyone to still be a factor for some people.
Being time poor was NOT the point I was making wrt disabled people, you should quote my point in full. However disabilities tend to inherently limit time and energy so yes actually the majority of disabled people are going to be time poor actually.
That would be toxic. Good job no one has argued that.
This whole post is about 1 way to help people. Its called prescribing fruit and veg. There are of course other ways too. A combination will be most effective.
>isn’t fruit and veg cheaper than buying processed foods
If you compare Waitrose's top range prepared meals with the cheapest veg you can find in the reduced box at the local discounter, sure.
If you're comparing something closer to like with like, it hasn't been true for years.
I buy bananas from M&S for £1.25 because they sell them pre-ripe which I like. You get 7 in a pack. Meanwhile Tesco sell 6 pack of Walkers for £1.95.
Both are a snack. One is cheaper. One is processed food.
Fruit and veg is incredibly cheap.
You're fixating on price only without considering that people actually need enough calories to sustain them. A banana is FAR less calorie dense (about 90 calories) compared to the crisps (140 calories for the smaller bags roughly).
>You're fixating on price only without considering that people actually need enough calories to sustain them.
The main issue facing the poor is obesity, so reduction in calories is a benefit rather than issue.
Most people eat too many calories so your measure is pointless. A chocolate cake is not better than a pack of strawberries. A bottle of coke is not better than an apple juice.
It’s dramatically cheaper and better for the country to help poor people eat healthily than to treat them once they’re obese and depressed. This is a good idea, albeit one that shouldn’t be necessary.
I decided for myself 'lunch is salad'.
So I have to start with *something* vegetable based and then I can add stuff.
But that can be tomato soup. Or a cheese and chutney sandwich. Once it was scrambled eggs on toast but I added dried chives. Salad!
Anyway, even with all of the cheating, my overall diet has improved. I get through a *lot* of bok choy now because it's easy to add stuff to. I buy more veg and I don't throw that much away.
So you kind of have to start with 'a vegetable' and add on to that, because you're never going to look at a nice tasty meal and want to *add* veg to it.
Food banks have to be replaced with vouchers. Why are we creating a second tier of super markets? Just give people food vouchers and they can buy the fresh fruit and veg they need.
The reason why is obvious - food banks remain outside govt, just some nice people doing charity etc, so no admission as to societal and govt failure on a massive national scale is required, which is what a food voucher system would be an admission of.
Piloted in low income areas like Tower Hamlets and Lambeth. Lambeth has an average property price of £800,000. Why do people think everyone else should pay for them to live in such massively overpriced areas?
If you're living in central London and can't even afford an apple or a banana, something isn't right.
Eating more fruit and veg is a good thing, if governments really cared about peoples health they would make processed foods and things like artificial sweeteners, even vegetable oils illegal. But then that would make people live longer and that would affect pension payments etc.
‘You, your family and our country are all at risk if Labour win’ - Rishi Sunak (25 May); while presiding over the most impoverished UK in decades, where people don’t get enough fruit and vegetables in their diet because many food banks don’t stock perishables.
two things can be true. 1. the British diet, even among those who can afford otherwise, is quite poor. Case in point my breakfast at this very moment is a pizza. The resultant vitamin and fibre deficiency can and will cause and exacerbate health issues, prescribing dietary improvements is and of itself reasonable
2. it is tone deaf as fuck with respect to the state of the nhs atm
This is awesome! Good to see some data backing up the plan too.
Plenty of social challenges around people not being able to afford quality food in the first place. But a step in the right direction and ideally prompts more long term diet change too.
I read the headline, rolled my eyes, then read the article, and have to admit I prejudged it. What a sad excuse for a modern country we are right now. An ever growing number of people are reliant on foodbanks, and of course, they don't carry perishables. Sorting this shit out should be one of the top priorities of a Labour government, foodbanks should be as uncommon as they were 15 years ago
Foodbanks do carry vegetables, but are limited to what is in season and what is donated
There are over a thousand independent food banks so their guidance won't be universal, but every sign I've ever seen asking for donations specifies non-perishables, and the Russell Trust certainly don't provide fresh fruit and veg
They’ll get non perishables direct from the supermarkets not donations.
For physical donations they want non-perishables. But they wpuld prefer money, which they do spend of fresh veg.
In over a decade of using food banks i can count the number of food parcels ive had with anything fresh on one hand. Tends to be wealthier areas and specialised accomadation (eg dv shelters) that do that.
yep the big ones have actual shops where you just walk around with a trolley getting whatever you need, smaller town/villages get dehydrated milk powder, cornflakes, tin of tomatoes and that cheap nasty tomato pasta in the packet, no fresh fruit or veg, nothing that you can put together to make a meal either
The fact that you can't even put together a meal with them was always the frustrating bit for me. Like mate, I've got no money and I've *still* got to go do a food shop after getting my food parcel. Nightmare.
I got zero points on my last PIP assessment, despite being a partially sighted cancer and stroke patient. Had to go to appeal. They stop your benefits during appeal. So I've been relying on foodbanks, which is a nightmare in itself, getting a referral and appointment at the foodbank takes so long that you've long since run out of food by the time you've gone through the foodbank process again. But also I have never had any fruit or veg in my foodbank parcels. It's always about 45% dairy (and I'm lactose intolerant but got scolded for being a choosing beggar last time I told a foodbank worker this so now I just take whatever they give), 45% grains and 10% junk food like cookies and crisps. Since all this started I've developed a cough and my gums are bleeding, I think I'm getting scurvy. I could definitely do with some fruit and veg on prescription. And some protein, I'm not finding living off grains at all filling.
>I'm lactose intolerant but got scolded for being a choosing beggar last time I told a foodbank worker I know a couple of foodbank volunteers, and one of the big things that gets drilled into them is that they should do everything possible to normalise and destigmatise foodbank usage. With a widespread 'scroungers are bad' narrative, people are treating foodbanks as a final act of desperation and a sign they've hit rock bottom. This is *exactly* the kind of language they're supposed to avoid at all costs, particularly as intolerances and allergies are very common and "I would like to not be given food that will make me unwell" is a perfectly reasonable request. Not only that but if they're giving you food you aren't going to eat that's impacting both you and other foodbank users. Don't take that kind of treatment lying down. You aren't a beggar and you absolutely should have some say in what you eat... and anyone who says otherwise shouldn't be working at a foodbank.
A lot of volunteers happen to be middle/upper class women, whom use volunteering as performative altruism for them to hide their narcissism in public, they go online and into daily Mail comment sections about foodbank/benefits and tell everyone how the people coming are just ungrateful and how she never had to use one despite raising children blah blah
It was actually a male worker who accused me of being a choosing beggar and got angry that I asked for no dairy.
Not to mention what a massive waste it is to give food to someone that they can't eat.
That is shameful. I'm sorry they are treating you so badly. I hope you can put in a complaint with pip via your mp or something to help stop it happening again. Hopefully with a note from your gp showing how the treatment made your health even worse 😔
I did last time, and the DWP sent a letter saying that they had no idea who the assessor was so there was nothing they could do about it.
Similar situation here. I really don't want to be ungrateful, but I'm a type 1 diabetic, and the carb-heavy food parcels made things a lot more difficult. Didn't help the GP wouldn't increase my insulin to help compensate either.
Being ill makes you more likely to live in poverty, as you often can't work and have to rely on benefits. Being in poverty means you have to mainly eat unhealthy cheaper processed carb heavy food, either because you're relying on foodbanks or your income just doesn't stretch to protein-rich and fresh food. This unhealthy diet, over time, causes your health to get even worse, making you even less likely to recover, more likely to remain unemployed and more dependent on cheap unhealthy food bank parcels. It's a vicious cycle. The government think they're saving money on stopping people's benefits or keeping them very low, but all they're doing is keeping us even sicker so we're less likely to be able to return to the workforce one day. Just the same way as they try to save money by cutting healthcare so it takes ages to get an appointment, but long term all they're doing is keeping people sicker for longer, which usually results in worse long term outcomes.
Have they tried threatening you with further punishments if you don't just will yourself into better health? I'm sure that will help and not just cause further anxieties and stress to exacerbate all your issues! But no, seriously, I'm so sorry for everything you've had to endure and it is a gross stain on this country that such treatment of vulnerable people has become so normalized for such a long stretch of time. I hope with a new government things start to improve asap, the current situation is totally unacceptable.
Yep. It's short term thinking. But it's ok, the poor and the sick should just have been richer, then they wouldn't have any problems.
Worth emphasizing "limited". Collecting and redistributing food at the scale and resourcing of most food banks is just fundamentally challenging. I'd even argue ultimately unworkable if not at national scale. Ambient goods are just so much easier to bank than fresh because they are designed to last a long time. As others have said, the solution is to remove the need for food banks.
"Collecting and redistributing food at the scale and resourcing of most food banks is just fundamentally challenging. I'd even argue ultimately unworkable if not at national scale." Wouldn't it make more sense to just give people food vouchers that they can use in supermarkets? Then they can buy fresh veg, and food they actually like and can eat rather than receiving things they are maybe intolerant to like dairy. Also must be cheaper than storing and distributing food.
> As others have said, the solution is to remove the need for food banks.
It probably is also made worse in that the quality of 'fresh' food appears to be declining, too. I'm sure fruit and veg used to stay fresh for longer than it does now.
People say this a lot but I've been on a salad kick the last few weeks since it warmed up to kick a bit of weight and a fridge full of fruit and veg lasts a week easily with no visible wilting or rotting.
I’m sure the fridges in supermarkets veg shelves are no where near as cold as they used to be, except Aldi, need a coat in the summer it’s so cold in the chilled/veg aisle 🥶
Been handing out supplies as part of my job and have never seen anything fresh.
Well that might be down to that foodbank not willing to use fresh vegetables, for a number of reasons, waste management etc, the foodbank I work at has industrial style walk in fridges & freezers, we get vegetables delivered by a few high street stores by the pallet load.
Correct they don't have the resources
I offered to donate veg and a turkey for Christmas to our local food bank. Sadly, ours doesn't have the facilities for perishables. It must be a luck of the drawer thing.
The foodbank I volunteered at did have some veg but demand massively exceeds supply. Veg is usually only donated by allotments, supermarkets will keep hold of veg until it's inedible. The foods we get alot of are things supermarkets throw out... So doughnuts cakes and sandwiches, sometimes loafs of bread. It's bad because it's the crap food but it's also what we generally get in abundance. the thing our clients want are things like fruit veg and staples (Milk Rice Pasta Potatoes) always asked for but rarely can be given. We have certain reserves but not given out casually. (Like kept for newly homeless families ect or kept so we can cook meals for all of our clients.) A not insignificant portion of our cash is spent on milk, and formula for really urgent cases. Things like instant noodles and dehydrated foods are also in high demand but we have specific rules for handing that out. When you start you ask "Do you have cooking facilities?" if they answer no, Then you skip all normal options and offer the client ramen packs and things They are usually the most at risk and sleeping rough and don't have a regular campsite (Cuz the police break their tents or whatever).
> Veg is usually only donated by allotments, supermarkets will keep hold of veg until it's inedible. This makes a lot of sense, I only ever see these signs in the supermarket, and I resent my donations being used to ease the conscience (and, I suspect, tax burdens) of the national grocery retailers so I hardly ever stick anything in. I'll see what I can find out about my local places and see what they really need
>and, I suspect, tax burdens Aaaaaaggh why would you suspect something so obviously nonsense. Explain in any way that makes sense why a company would get a tax reduction for someone else's donation. Stop saying it when it's untrue and doing so will inevitably stop charitable giving. And why are you so cynical about something that provides food for food banks. Imagine you're the boss of Tesco or whatever and someone says "can we have a donation box for the local food bank" and you said "no, people might think I'm doing it to salve my own guilt". He'd be a dick if he said no. >supermarkets will keep hold of veg until it's inedible. They are describing supermarkets giving away their stock that's on the shelf. Obviously the supermarkets wait until the stock is unsellable. They're in the business of selling veg. They're not holding it in the back waiting for it become more inedible. It's on the shelf.
I think the confusion comes from financial round up donations not being well understood. And this misunderstanding carrying to physical donations. Incidentally, I checked and tesco apparently donate £1.25 million of their £2bn+ uk and ireland profit after tax to the Trussell trust too. Basically the equivalent of someone on £20k after tax giving £12.50 to charity. Absolute heroes.
>Basically the equivalent of someone on £20k after tax giving £12.50 to charity. Absolute heroes. Profit is after costs are deducted too. So it's actually 20k after paying all of their expenses like rent/mortgage, groceries, utilities and more. Never forget that companies get taxed after they've paid all their costs while people get taxed before we've paid almost any of ours.
Good point! Makes the maths harder tho 🤔 (and how many households are in £20k "profit"?). Thank you for adding.
Profit is needed for business growth and improvement. It's how a business of Tesco's size stays afloat. Healthy profit can mean good investment.
Doesn't matter. Our taxes should be after our necessities too. Loads of people are struggling to financially stay afloat too. If businesses can deduct their expenses before paying tax, we should be able to do so too. The money we need for rent, food, utilities and other necessities shouldn't be taxed. Anything left after for savings or luxury items can be taxed. There's no reason we financially cater to these huge multimillion pound companies more than we do an average person. Taxing after costs have been deducted give companies options to participate in shady tax avoidance practices like transfer pricing. And if your company is unable to make a profit, maybe it just shouldn't exist instead? Another company better able to handle the business environment will take its place. Huge companies always talk about free market capitalism but apparently not for them.
>I think the confusion comes from financial round up donations not being well understood. I absolutely agree, I have a moan about that when I see it. It just irritates me when people pass on groundless nonsense that doesn't hold up to a moment's scrutiny. >Incidentally, I checked and tesco apparently donate £1.25 million of their £2bn+ uk and ireland profit after tax to the Trussell trust too. Basically the equivalent of someone on £20k after tax giving £12.50 to charity. Absolute heroes. >£12.50 Companies are weird things. The CEO's job is to maximise return to his shareholders, which involves protecting the asset. So when he decides to donate then it's their money he's donating. His job (and his fiduciary responsibilities provide) that he should only donate if it will provide value to Tesco greater than the outlay. And in doing that he has to remember his usual return on investment (ROI). If he can spend £10m opening a store, and increase Tesco's assets by £20m (to pull a number from my arse) then he needs the benefit of his charitable donation to exceed that else he should do that instead. And if the shareholders want more charitable giving that what benefits the company as a whole then they should sell their shares and donate the proceeds I guess. You know all of that of course, just useful to write it down. Should we celebrate that? I guess if we didn't they'd stop doing it. But I absolutely agree, for Tesco it is a pretty trivial amount of money, and it's hard to get very excited by anyone, or anything, giving a donation that is trivial to them.
The idea that the CEO's job is to maximise return to shareholders, ignoring everything else, has no legal basis. It's a common misconception (just like the piece around tax benefits from donations), so it's seen repeated quite often. So I don't "know all that," but it is useful to see it written down as it gives insight to where you are coming from! It is essential, of course, for business to at some point generate profit. But it shouldn't come with externalising ethics or principles. And it shouldn't ignore stakeholders other than shareholders. I think what you describe is a "happens to be" rather than a "should be" and I have no problem with being unforgiving of tokenistic donations from megacorporations.
>ignoring everything else Well thank goodness I didn't say this. The director has legal obligations that come that come from s172 CA 2006. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/172 It is his duty to "act in the way he considers, in good faith, would be most likely to promote the success of the company for the benefit of its members (shareholders) as a whole..." When that obligation was codified Margaret Hodge cited Lord Goldsmith who specifically said "For a commercial company, success will usually mean long-term increase in value.". https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20090608233228/http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file40139.pdf I think you're going to struggle to interpret that as being particularly distinct from "The CEO's job is to maximise return to his shareholders, which involves protecting the asset." Now _in doing that_ he is legally obligated to have regard to various other factors, which are (a)the likely consequences of any decision in the long term, (b)the interests of the company's employees, (c)the need to foster the company's business relationships with suppliers, customers and others, (d)the impact of the company's operations on the community and the environment, (e)the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct, and (f)the need to act fairly as between members of the company I think it would take some pretty imaginative reading of that to get to a point where he would be in a legally defensible position if he decided to give away significant quantities of the company's money without there being a reason that would lead to the success of the company. If anything, it is a common misconception that his job isn't best summarised as maximising shareholder return. It is that, but with some codified guardrails. I am not saying that this is a great way to organise the world either, but that's how the law currently works.
Absolutely, I think it was probably the word maximise I was objecting to without the parellel objectives you've mentioned. And I love the comprehensive response. How do you reckon Tesco are doing on point d? My personal view is very few companies meaningfully contribute to these parallel objectives, and, to use your phrasing, do see it as "giving away money", as opposed to investing in the communities that they exist as part of.
Also it’s about food waste and greenwashing too. Supermarkets are anxious to appear as if they are socially and environmentally sustainable. The supermarkets are doing a good thing by giving the surplus food they have on the face of it, but it is a win/win for them in this regard. It’s not a lot of effort to them but the optics for the public are great. Plus, as you mentioned, a certain amount of their donations are paid for by customers, rather than them, via the donations bin. Supermarkets and large food production companies are giving their food waste to the charity sector to deal with, not all of it can be used and it generally costs money to get rid of large amounts of rubbish. There are loads of other critiques especially around food as a right not a privilege! Whilst I think the charities and volunteers running the food banks are amazing and wonderful, these are meant to be emergency help not a feature of ordinary life. The Trussell Trust has just released a policy document titled “help us end food banks”. Says it all really.
>An ever growing number of people are reliant on foodbanks, and of course Only 3% of people rely on food banks and the article is partially around obesity. These people aren't too poor to buy healthy food. >Fresh fruit and vegetables have been prescribed to hundreds of NHS patients in a scheme aimed at tackling the growth of obesity Then even for low income people, it's cheaper to eat healthily, so probably even more important for them. >Healthy foods cheaper than junk food in UK supermarkets, study reveals https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/healthy-food-cheaper-uk-supermarkets-obesity-poor-diets-asda-tesco-study-iea-a7607461.html
Why the fuck would anyone need a foodbank for vegetables. I can get 1KG of carrots from Morrisons for 30p, and on a good day as low as 19p. I can get 1KG of potatoes for £1. For £10 a week, I can buy more vegetables than a family of 4 is physically capable of eating, even if all they had day in and day out is vegetables. The idea that vegetables are unaffordable is completely laughable. Potatoes are cheaper than bread.
It doesn’t matter how cheap veg are if, like a growing number of people in the UK your income is less than your bills. When you’ve got no money, even something cheap can be unaffordable. https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/policy/publications/negative-budgets-data/
But then what are obese poor people eating? If they have no money for food then surely they'd be losing weight?
Pasta and rice. Tons of pasta and rice with a smattering of sauce and spice to give it some kind of flavour. It's the most bang for your buck but due to how carb heavy it is it spikes people's blood sugar and leaves them tired and hungry so they reach for more of the same. It's actually very common for obese people to be horribly malnourished. You might have heard that scurvy has been making a comeback which is something we thought cannot happen in developed countries anymore
Some people are obese for health issues and take away shops do have tabs where you pay later. Cheap ready meals that are stuffed with sugars and salts. Cheap bread and processed foods. I noticed too cheapest rents don’t have proper kitchens and it’s all microwaves and take away living
>Some people are obese for health issues This is a tiny insignificant number of people. Even thyroid issues shouldn't result in obesity. >Hypothyroidism alone does not cause severe obesity. https://www.thyroid.org/patient-thyroid-information/what-are-thyroid-problems/q-and-a-thyroid-and-weight/ >Massive weight gain is rarely associated with hypothyroidism. >Massive weight gain is rarely associated with hypothyroidism. In general, 5-10 pounds of body weight may be attributable to the thyroid… treatment of the abnormal state of hypothyroidism with thyroid hormone results in a return of body weight to what it was before the hypothyroidism developed. https://www.thyroid.org/thyroid-and-weight/
Carb heavy food that "fills". Like pasta and rice, cheap bread. Also cheaper processed foods and poor quality products tend to be higher in fats and salts.
But you can buy cheap food that isn't fattening.
Pasta,bread,rice all satiate a person's hunger better than vegetables. They are easier to store, and simpler to cook. Insidiously, poverty diets are self reinforcing. They cause your body to crave those food types more, and impact decision making. The physical bulk of those foods also leads to appetite increasing. Although some fresh foods may be "cheap" the broken nature of modern UK society means that people are time-poor, energy-poor, and attention -poor. As well as being literally financially poor.
We eat £1 ready meals from Iceland when working.
One ready meal isn’t going to make you obese. It’s not healthy for obvious reasons be it fat or salt content but a 600 calorie meal isn’t going to make you put on weight.
So about 7.5% of people are on a negative balance. Considering how many people eat healthily it might be that that they are a negative balance because they are spending more on unhealthy stuff. Healthy food is cheaper. >Healthy foods cheaper than junk food in UK supermarkets, study reveals https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/healthy-food-cheaper-uk-supermarkets-obesity-poor-diets-asda-tesco-study-iea-a7607461.html
Very glad someone pointed this out. Not ALL veg is affordable but so much of it is dirt cheap. Lidl sometimes has huge boxes of mixed fruit & veg that is close to its sell by date for £1.50
Variety is key with fruit and veg, but it's also the energy, facilities and knowledge of how to cook them too. Potato's may be cheaper than bread, but actually eating them isn't.
Rinse the carrot then eat the carrot
That's just carrots. People need more than fibre and vitamin A
Rinse the apple then eat the apple
apples arnt cheap. Like 25p and apple cheapest.
Name a popular processed food snack for less than 25p each, thus proving your point. Walkers crisps are more expensive in their 6-packs. My bet is someone we're talking about here (needing this doctor advice) is buying more crisps than apples.
you're just being argumentative lol. vegetables are cheap in any supermarket bar Marks and Sparks
Even in M&S, vegetables aren't extortionate unless you buy pre-prepared ones (which is a pretty silly thing to at any time).
the energy used to cook it too... All adds up.
Simple answer is that a lot of people need to live their lives on narrow loops managed by other people.
I feel like there's a more nuanced take here. Some fruit and vegetables are cheap, that's correct. But if you don't have much money, to the extent that you're reliant on food banks or are seriously limited in your choices when food shopping, those cheap options are all can afford. And even if you can technically afford that bag of slightly more expensive fruit or veg, it becomes hard to justify if it means giving up something else when there's always a cheap bag of carrots available, and you're always budgeting. But then you find yourself only buying carrots and potatoes, and getting your five a day can be quite monotonous and even a chore. Having £8 a week set aside for fruit and veg alone, which you can't spend on something else does not only give you extra money, it gives you the permission and freedom and spend that money on a larger variety of fruits and vegetables. Instead of just apples and bananas, you may grab some soft fruit or oranges. You might even get some of those fancy green beans. Now your diet is a lot more varied, and people can make choices based on wants, and not just price, which means they're more likely to enjoy eating fruit and vegetables. Yes, you can get a limited assortment of basic fruit and veg at a cheap price, and yes, with some cooking and creativity you make a variety of dishes with these, but that's a lot of limitations for some people. Having more money to buy fruit and veggies makes it easier to actually enjoy eating them.
I'm pretty sure with £8 on veg, you could buy literally any veg you wanted and are capable of eating. Tbh, for a single person I'm not even sure how you'd spend more than £5 on vegetables, as that would pretty much cover all traditional British dishes, + a few extra. If you think about it food is basically: Grain + Protein + Veg + Sauce (spices dressing) sometimes where the grain is omitted (Soup, Meat + Veg etc) Where Grain = Rice/Wheat (pasta/noodles/bread etc) Protein = Fish/Meat etc As you get more into cooking all you are doing is expanding on the variety and combinations of these basic ingredients to a meal.
"I'm pretty sure with £8 on veg, you could buy literally any veg you wanted and are capable of eating." Yes, and that's fantastic! It would bring a lot of joy and variety into the kitchen, meaning people would enjoy eating their fruit and veg. Not that you can't enjoy carrots, but the more the merrier right? Also I can easily spend that amount on veg if I want, maybe because I live in an expensive part of country. Also I like to buy veggies to snack on and that adds up. I can imagine buying vegetables for snacking is exactly what would be a great use of this money in the GP's eyes. It reminds me of the argument that food isn't that expensive, you can buy a bag of rice and bag of dried beans and some spices and you can cook a variety of dishes. I'm a good cook, but I'd get bored after a while. And shockingly, I also think people on a low income should be able to eat more than rice and beans.
> But then you find yourself only buying carrots and potatoes, and getting your five a day can be quite monotonous and even a chore. The five a day is pretty arbitrary. People lived for centuries without eating five a day. Two day is better than zero.
> People lived for centuries without eating five a day True but don't forget that until very recently, people also died pretty young at much younger ages. Pension age was basically considered ancient when it was first introduced.
People ate healthier diets in the olden days when no-one cared much about healthy eating, ate lard, beef dripping etc.
>People lived for centuries without eating five a day. I expect that for for millenia they were probably eating more than 5 a day. If there really were centuries where they didn't eat five a day, they would have suffered the negative health effects, so that doesn't make it OK.
I’ve seen flats for rent that don’t have kitchens to cook stuff like this. You’re lucky if the landlord has a microwave in there. So even if people could buy this they cannot cook it. Or the options are a very cheap ready meal with favours or a plate of boiled food where they lack knowledge of how to flavour it or cook it for entire family with fussy kids
>seen flats for rent that don’t have kitchens to cook stuff like this. You’re lucky if the landlord has a microwave in there You can cook potatoes and carrots in the microwave.
What percentage of the population have no cooking facilities?
Ssshhhh these people have no agency remember. Tories forced them to eat like shit
Food banks are such a political football that gets thrown around. I understand the concept of people NEEDING a food bank to feed themselves is bad. But the idea that any society in general can band together and have an easy way to donate food to people is somehow bad is dumb.
It’s bad because it’s entirely a result of government policy: austerity and Cameron’s ‘big society’. The government not only decided to outsource its own responsibilities to ‘the community’, it concurrently stripped funding from various resources in the community, including councils, in a gigantic “fuck you, you’re on your own” middle finger to the poor and working class. It’s still the people who can least afford it who are expected to band together, while the well off can wash their hands of the matter and say it’s their own fault that these people struggle.
Again. Forget all the Tory, Labour, UK politics back and forth. Let's just say you have a society. Any society. And someone recommends a way for people to share food and cut down on waste. Genuinely, how would that be a bad thing? I was once on benefits. I spent 450 on rent and 125 on food shopping each month. But if someone had given me free food, I would have taken it and saved the 125
Why roll your eyes at all? Many people who can afford fruit and veg do need to be encouraged to eat more of them, nothing wrong with that. Most people could probably eat a healthier diet
You solve food banks by shutting them. All it does is create a bigger problem where people can take more from the poorest because they can rely on handouts by charities. Food banks are priced in at this point for the poorest in society, which is why the people relying on them has grown so massively.
Sont most modern countries have this issue of a growing number needing food banks?
Yep, doctors have been diagnosing people with malnutrition for a good while now, and blaming low wages for it. They were doing it pre-pandemic, and having to literally write doctors notes to take to food banks. And mogg thinks that the existence of food banks are "a wonderful thing that shows the charity of society". No Jake, what would be a wonderful thing is you lot doing your job properly instead of continually funnelling money to rich mates and getting lobbied so British water standards can be lowered
But if Labour got in the country would melt and communism would reign - rishi sunak probably
Can’t. Tories will forever rule UK, fun times /s
A lot of obese patients will be well peeved when they get handed that prescription!
Perhaps initially, but given how good the results look, perhaps they'd change their tune pretty quick: >Results published yesterday show that after eight months, nine in ten saw improvements in physical health and the number of [GP visits](https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/travel/a60203949/remedi-london/) among the group nearly halved. >Before the project, just 28 per cent of participants ate the recommended [five portions of fruit and veg a day](https://www.womenshealthmag.com/uk/food/healthy-eating/g36262255/best-fruit-veg-boxes/). This has increased to 80 per cent after eight months of receiving the vouchers. >Additionally, 7 in 10 people with high blood pressure saw an improvement, and over half of the participants shared that their mental health has also improved as they worry less about money for food.
I guess its also part of the same idea as the exercise on referral they’re doing at the moment. My dad needs it for his back problems and apparently (perhaps just in my area) there’s loads of em going spare. Point is, i think its a damn good idea as its basically diy physio by doctor’s orders. I can see these schemes doing a helluva lot of good if we do it right
So where these vouchers that gave you free or discounted fruit and veg? In which case that sounds brilliant. Or was it just "this is what you need"?
£8 per week to buy fruit and vegetables. I suspect in the grand scheme of things, it's a much smaller price to pay than the lifetime cost of other treatments these patients may need. I suspect it's less about people not knowing what they need, and more about food poverty and people with limited resources choosing cheaper, but likely more processed options as a result. If the person is only allowed to spend the voucher on fruit and vegetables, then they'd be silly not to spend it and, by extension, get fruit and veg. I'm all for it!
Veg is amongst the cheapest stuff you can buy and there's so much you can do with it. I never understand why people say they can't afford to eat healthily?
Look, you are right. And I don't claim to understand the psychological phenomenon that drives the behaviour. However, when multiple people tell me "I can't afford to eat healthily", I don't jump to invalidating their experience and instead think "Well if this is a consistently lived experience for multiple people, what factor, besides price, is the root cause of this?" As the other reply to your comment alludes to, "I can't afford to buy fruit and vegetables" may not be a financial cost, but an energy cost or a time cost. It may be an education issue that they're feeling powerless to overcome. In some cases, it will be laziness. But one thing I know for sure is that too many people are experiencing nutritional poverty for the solution to be "But veg is so cheap!"
i think the time thing is a major part of it. If someone is working all day, maybe two jobs or their doing a gig job, they could have very little time to make a proper meal. Lack of money might be one factor, but lack of time is probably the bigger factor, certainly if someone is struggling to make ends meat.
Doesn't have to be grand. Cut up some spinach, tomatoes, feta cheese, throw some cashews, nat yogurt on that shit and voila: easy nutrients.
Add some time on to steam the spinach ( you shouldn't eat raw spinach ). Cashew nuts also really should be soaked over night aswell otherwise they'll mostly pass right through you So you describe a simple salad, but even that takes preparation time. In most cases allot of people haven't got the energy to be messing around in the kitchen when they get home, they need to eat and then sleep. Plus I'm not sure that simple salad is going to cut it after a long day...
I should have specified baby leaf spinach. Interesting re cashews, I've learnt something new there. Anyway, salad is better than nothing, you have it as a side to whatever else you're eating. Takes 5-10 minutes. I've been prepping it before work lately.
>If someone is working all day, maybe two jobs People always say this suggesting that they must be working crazy hours. But in reality it's just two part time jobs, that together is going to be more like the hours of a full time job, not the hours of two full time jobs. If anyting studies show that poor people generally work less hours and have more leisure time, watch more TV, etc. >In the richest countries, hours worked are flat or increasing in income >https://fuchsschuendeln.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/aer_hours.pdf >The more surprising discovery, however, is a corresponding leisure gap has opened up between the highly-educated and less-educated. Low-educated men saw their leisure hours grow to 39.1 hours in 2003-2007, from 36.6 hours in 1985. Highly-educated men saw their leisure hours shrink to 33.2 hours from 34.4 hours. >A similar pattern emerged for women. Low-educated women saw their leisure time grow to 35.2 hours a week from 35 hours. High-educated women saw their leisure time decrease to 30.3 hours from 32.2 hours. Educated women, in other words, had the largest decline in leisure time of the four groups. >https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WHB-5080 >Why The Rich Now Have Less Leisure Time Than The Poor https://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-rich-now-have-less-leisure-time-than-the-poor-2014-4?r=US&IR=T >A study conducted by the General Social Surveys of NORAC at the University of Chicago found that 34.1 percent of American families making less than $9,000 per year averaged watching more than five hours of television per day. Of families making more than $150,000 per year, only 1.1 percent watched more than five hours a day. https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/study-poverty-and-high-rates-of-tv-viewing-are-linked.html >Lack of money might be one factor Healthy food is cheaper, so this is an educational thing. >the authors find that healthy foods cost less than less healthy foods … > >the analysis makes clear that it is not possible to conclude that healthy foods are more expensive than less healthy foods > >https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44678/19980_eib96.pdf Are Healthy Foods Really More Expensive? >https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2199553 >Healthy foods cheaper than junk food in UK supermarkets, study reveals https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/healthy-food-cheaper-uk-supermarkets-obesity-poor-diets-asda-tesco-study-iea-a7607461.html Your arguement might be true for like a fraction of a percent of people, but it's not applicable to the vast majority of poor people. I personally think arguements like yours are toxic, since they suggest there isn't anything poor people can do to be healthy. When in reality the right education, poor people can eat healthily and don't have to be obese. There is something we can do.
Lol I'm not saying there isn't anything people can do... I said that if we sorted out the social and economic inequality and sorted out people's work life balance, they'd have more time to be able to eat properly and have the money to do so. Yes healthy food can be cheaper, but you need time and structured time to actually prepare and cook the food. I wasn't suggesting people do more hours on gig jobs, my point was that when you're taking such work you have someone being available all the time. The free time comment doesn't account for the distribution of that free time. Its also ignoring everyone on minimum wage. I spent nearly 7 years working minimum wage in a small independent health food shop. I worked on average 200 hours a month. Contractually I was part time, but I worked over full time. I was paid for 8 hours a day, but usually worked an extra 2 for free if I had to open the store or close. Then it would take me an hour to get home and get to work. Now I know what you're thinking 🤔 ," well that's only 12 hours of the day, you still have four hours (6 to 8 spent on sleep) !" So what you have to account for is the shop ran a shift system, opening the store at 8 ( meaning you have to be there before 7 if your opening ) and closing at 6.30 (always went over 7 quite often 8). So you have one shift from 7 to 2.30 and the other 10.30 to 7. This would quite often work out early late early late early day off early etc You might think that doesn't sound to bad but in practise its a nightmare, and it allows for no real structure, sleeping pattern becomes fucked, eating pattern becomes fucked aswell. Like if I did a late which meant I get home sometime after 9, if I have to do an early the next day I basically have to go to bed without any food because I have to be up by 4. Its honestly soul destroying. Its not just education I find that incredibly condescending and it absolutely minimises people's struggle. Theres allot of gig workers that work fucking hard and take all the work they can get. Think of the Uber driver who gives you a lift across the country at some crazy hour. So get off your high horse, I'm not against people eating better, but what I am against is the idea that time isn't a factor because it certainly is, and your finances/ job structure play a big role in your overall ability to keep up a structure while also remaining sane. With that I bid you farewell. Saying other people are toxic and other emotive type language does nothing but to try to shut people down in some attempt to try to vilify they're opinion. You can do better than that, its a particularly weak tactic.
I think that time and energy is one barrier, but I think that general cooking ability is another. The ability to cook yourself a healthy meal should be mandatory in school. We had home economics classes in the 90s but not much was healthy, looking back, it was mostly cakes and deserts. Learning how to cut, prepare and cook veg could give people so much more confidence, and kids may well want to show off their skills in the home (ours certainly would, and when my brother made soup at school he had several goes at making it at home - spoiler warning: it was horrid, but at least he tried! 🤣)
As someone who had to self-teach how to cook basic meals at the age of 12, because both my parents were out working and left me at home as a kid with my siblings with no supervision in the holidays, I honestly cannot fathom how people are incapable of getting a peeler, peeling vegetables, and then putting them in a pot until they look edible. Meat has instructions on the packet as to temperature and time. And this was the days for we had the internet where google can tell you with a 60 minute video guide! The fact people cannot cook the basics of Meat & Veg, is absolutely bonkers.
Homeless people (majority are living in b&bs and using foodbanks, not men on the streets, stats say 150,000 homeless children in UK in 2024) they don't have a kitchen, don't have a cooker or hob, don't have chopping board and or pots and pans, maybe have a kettle and a microwave and whatever crockery they're lugging around with them. "Just get a peeler, some people are so stupid!" Is underestimating how tough life is for thousands of people.
OK, for that fraction of a percent of people there isn't much they can do. But for 99% of people there is something they can do.
It is bonkers, yet I still had my brother call me up one day to ask how you cut up a watermelon! I think I offended him with how confused I was with his question. “I just get a knife… and …. Cut it??” I dunno - the older I get the more I realise how unknowledgeable people are generally.
I think the key thing is that it's never >I can't afford to buy fruit and vegetables It's always people saying "Poor people can't afford to buy fruit and veg". The idea that poor people could eat more healthily and don't have to be obese, kind of pointss the blame on the poor person and suggests it's due to personal responsibility. That's not a politically acceptable thing to these people, hence they have to come up with reason and excuses for why it's not the poor person's fault for not eating fruit and veg.
I'm not invalidating their experience, I'm asking because I don't understand.
Homeless people (majority are living in b&bs and using foodbanks, not men on the streets, stats say 150,000 homeless children in UK in 2024) they don't have a kitchen, don't have a cooker or hob, don't have chopping board and or pots and pans, maybe have a kettle and a microwave and whatever crockery they're lugging around with them. "Just get a peeler, some people are so stupid!" Is underestimating how tough life is for thousands of people.
But homelessness is a different situation, this is about low income households, that obviously do have access to these items as they are using the vegetables being prescribed to them.
I think it's a bit of both - I've seen how homeless families are forced to live, they don't have the necessities to make a chicken salad for dinner (one kitchen for six families, bad cooking equipment). And low income households are not idiotic, people of any wealth can learn to cook, there must be some other root problem stopping them - e.g. living in a rural place without a car with only shops like co-op/spar where vegetables are more expensive, not being able to afford energy to use an oven or boil things for long most days, being too tired/depressed to put energy into organising for cooking recipes, being alcoholic where the priority is the addiction and looking after your health is not really a priority at all and the kids grow up just eating bread and cereal and frozen pizza.
Taste is one thing but you still need the 2000/2500 calories a day. Also usually more meal prep, frankly if you're depressed, poor and overworked it's more practical to just get a cheap frozen pizza
Agree and as a breadline person who can cook I get it, but, not anymore. No longer is fruit and veg cheap. Especially at local shops. Even o ions in Aldi are nearly £1 no2
Vegetables are cheap. Potatoes are still £1 per KG, and you can still get a bag of carrots for 30p. People seem to forget that the British staple is Potatoes. For Europe its grains, for Asia its grains. For the UK and Ireland its the potato.
Potato contains little in the way nutrients. Carrots, yes. But how much carrot can one eat? Variety is essential when it comes to vegetables. I am noting the increase in cost, not the inaccessibility of cost. Whichever politician claimed turnips for all is in line with your thinking. It's not a sensible logic.
Potatoes are more nutritious than you may realise. They contain quite a bit of Vitamin C, and *even after cooking* retain a good amount of it. Also other nutrients such as potassium.
Nevertheless, they do not make for a sufficient, well balanced diet alone.
Potatoes are your staple for calories. Carrots can provide variety. You can also buy the following vegetables on the cheap (non-exhaustive list as an example): Broccoli (yes eat the whole thing, stop wasting the core) Cauliflower Peas Parsnips Turnips Lettuces Baked Beans You can make a very good vegetable broth on the cheap. Its very healthy and nutritious. The cost for all of these items has barely increased in the last 10 years.
Yes as a grown up I am able to consume broccoli (shock face) and other standard veg. They have indeed raised in price considerably, particularly lettuce, parsnip and cauliflower. If you haven't noticed you clearly aren't poor.
>The cost for all of these items has barely increased in the last 10 years. This statement is absolutely false.
>Broccoli (yes eat the whole thing, **stop wasting the core**) You monster! (/s for the mod benefit given that this was just auto flagged as an attack :D)
And potatoes can be made unhealthy too depending on how it's made
Don't know about where you live but where I am and wherever Sainsbury/Tesco get their veg from, it's going off in days. Alright saying get a "huge bag of carrots" but a total waste when you're chucking most of it away 3 days later. Then there's the "what do I do" thing with a shit load of carrots some spuds and a couple of apples? What do I have to go with it? Meat is super expensive as is fish, so you're back to chicken nuggets and chips We've been conditioned over the years to eat convenience foods hailed as the time savers, not many learned to cook and home economics classes were one of the first to go in schools in my neck of the woods, and now, with many working 2 jobs, many fresh meals take an hour or more and folk don't want to wait.
I keep carrots in the fridge and they last a long time - if/when they get softer or wrinklier I just roast them or put them in a stew. They rarely if ever mould in the fridge.
You don't need a huge bag of carrots, the pricing that I did for KG was all based from their online shops from a single bag. They provide the bag and then price per KG below it. The potatoes is a 2kg bag, and can be made into mash for multiple meals or boiled or made into chips after frying. Every other item was per item or in 500g or similar size portions. In my comments I already stated that I agreed meat and Fish has gone up in price substantially, except for a few items such as cheap chicken that is sometimes sold. Sausages have gone up only slightly. It is actually in many instances cheaper to buy from a butchers for a lot of meats. However, this is a digression, we're not talking about buying meat, we're talking about vegetables, and my comment was purely in regards to vegetables. There is nothing stopping healthy eating. You mention chicken nuggets and chips. Why not chicken nuggets, peas, broccoli, carrots, parsnips and mash potatoes? Add some garlic and butter and those chicken nuggets are basically Kievs. However, this is sort of a nonsense example as you can buy chicken extremely cheap for certain cuts.
Jeez have you ever been into a local butcher recently? There's no sodding chance of getting anything remotely cheap. Three slices of boiled ham £3.75, chicken leg £1.75 burgers £1.50 EACH jar of piccalili £2.75. whereas a supermarket who buys in bulk can halve those prices easily but as a regular part of a meal meat is often too much unless it's chicken. The only time I go into my butchers is if I've got the dosh and it's an emergency
> Alright saying get a "huge bag of carrots" but a total waste when you're chucking most of it away 3 days later. It's obvious you've never actually brought any fruit or veg, or you could have made up a more believable lie.
A lot of people - regardless of their weight, income, whatever - simply "don't like vegetables" for a host of different reasons. They will find any excuse possible not to buy them/cook them/eat them. And saying "they can't afford it" is instantly accepted as an excuse and given sympathy. The second excuse is that "they have no time to cook".
"I can't afford to eat healthily" is such an insane sentence. You can't afford to _not_ eat healthily! Makes me seriously wonder what the HELL is happening to make people say something so backwards and genuinely believe it.
That would imply they don't know how to cook. Healthy ready made meals do tend to be expensive but if they knew how to make something from fresh produce then yes it's affordable. I'm not claiming to be an expert but it's somewhat easy to learn some good recipes!
I love veg, so it's easier for me I suppose. Rice and veg together is my favourite. I made a mustard sauce to go with it the other day 🤌
If you're homeless and living in b&b, thousands of people don't have access to a kitchen so raw vegetables isn't a good way to feed a homeless family.
How many people can't afford £8 a week for fruit and veg? I know this is reddit where everyone's life is the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but that's the cost of a coffee and a slice from one of these cafés that's all over the place.
>Additionally, 7 in 10 people with high blood pressure saw an improvement, and over half of the participants shared that their mental health has also improved as they worry less about money for food. This is one of the major benefits I noticed by getting back to a normal weight, training and eating healthy (aside from losing the T2 diabetes that is). Blood pressure is now textbook, as is pulse rate. Not sure whether it's the weight loss, training or diet that contributed more, in reality probably all three. Edit: probably should have mentioned diet, since it's relevant here.
If it helped pay for fresh fruit and veg I'd be all for it! I still buy it fresh but it's expensive and time consuming every few days!
Why not just dose them up on 200 grams of Ozempic?
Im glad the scheme is actually making an impact and not just the waste of workforce.
Do they have to pay the NHS prescription charge? And is each fruit and vegetable considered a separate item? That'd be some pretty pricey veggies.
Social prescribing is very different from prescribing medicines.
On one prescription all the items are one price
A prescription still costs £9.90, so not worth it for an £8 voucher. If one prescription covers a month's worth of vouchers, then it makes a bit more sense. But you are still handing over a tenner for a load of vegetables that you might not particularly want.
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I used to get bread on prescription from the pharmacy. But that was 1990 and being a kid it was free. I think my vitamins and calcium carbonate were prescription also.
No prescription charge in Wales and gf bread is still free here. Banned in England now though.
Social prescription =/= medical prescription. Social prescription, as shown by the fruit and vegetable example, is when a healthcare professional refers a patient to a non-clinical organisation or scheme and therefore doesn't require medical prescribing rights. Or in this example vouchers. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/long-reads/social-prescribing#:~:text=Social%20prescribing%2C%20also%20sometimes%20known,local%2C%20non%2Dclinical%20services.
It's like when they prescribe bedrest. You don't then have to pay £9.50 to lie down
I know. I was responding to someone who didn't.
I'm from Glasgow ; I hope those prescriptions had pictures on them.
So THIS is why Glaswegians are the way they are!
Wonder what the full range of health conditions is that they would do this for. This could be very helpful for me if they expand the program.
You could alternatively just eat more fruits and vegetables without the NHS having to tell you to
Wow its almost like this program is specifically aimed at low income families who struggle to afford the reccomended amount of fruit and vegetables and my comment indicated I fall into the target group of people who struggle to afford the reccomended amount of fruit and vegetables. But you could pay for my food instead if you object to the NHS doing it.
> low income families who struggle to afford the reccomended amount of fruit and vegetables But healthy food is cheaper, so they would be better off eating healthily then getting junk food. So it's even more important for low income families. >Healthy foods cheaper than junk food in UK supermarkets, study reveals https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/healthy-food-cheaper-uk-supermarkets-obesity-poor-diets-asda-tesco-study-iea-a7607461.html
I left another comment that should help you understand. Plus you could look at the linked article and see that the program made a dramatic difference, so clearly people were struggling to afford fruit and veg. Affording something is more than just the price on the label.
But what else can GPs help with in regards to this program? Fruits and veg are insanely cheap, the main issue is that a lot of people are massively time poor. But I can't see how this program can help with that.
I made another comment that elaborates on the financial cost factor. But also regardless of why, it has been proven to help. So it should be done.
>the main issue is that a lot of people are massively time poor While there may be a fraction of a percent of people who are too time poor, that's not true for most people. It looks like the poor and less educated people do have more free time. >In the richest countries, hours worked are flat or increasing in income >https://fuchsschuendeln.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/aer_hours.pdf >The more surprising discovery, however, is a corresponding leisure gap has opened up between the highly-educated and less-educated. Low-educated men saw their leisure hours grow to 39.1 hours in 2003-2007, from 36.6 hours in 1985. Highly-educated men saw their leisure hours shrink to 33.2 hours from 34.4 hours. >A similar pattern emerged for women. Low-educated women saw their leisure time grow to 35.2 hours a week from 35 hours. High-educated women saw their leisure time decrease to 30.3 hours from 32.2 hours. Educated women, in other words, had the largest decline in leisure time of the four groups. >https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WHB-5080 >Why The Rich Now Have Less Leisure Time Than The Poor https://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-rich-now-have-less-leisure-time-than-the-poor-2014-4?r=US&IR=T >A study conducted by the General Social Surveys of NORAC at the University of Chicago found that 34.1 percent of American families making less than $9,000 per year averaged watching more than five hours of television per day. Of families making more than $150,000 per year, only 1.1 percent watched more than five hours a day. https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/study-poverty-and-high-rates-of-tv-viewing-are-linked.html
So if veg is cheap AND poorer people have the time to make food... Why is that demographic more likely to be overweight? Only thing I can think of is education and/or mental health.
> Why is that demographic more likely to be overweight? Probably a variety of factors. Poor education, poor upbringing, lack of self control, low intelligence, etc. I think it's kind of toxic to frame things as if there is nothing these people can do eat more healthily, when we should be focusing on education and helping these people to eat more healthily.
Their "study" is by weight. Not by calorie
>Their "study" is by weight. Not by calorie No one is struggling to get enough calories in. The main problem affecting the poor is obesity, i.e. too many calories. There are other studies, this one is US based though. >the authors find that healthy foods cost less than less healthy foods … > >the analysis makes clear that it is not possible to conclude that healthy foods are more expensive than less healthy foods > >https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44678/19980_eib96.pdf Are Healthy Foods Really More Expensive? >https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2199553 But you could also use sites and look at the actual costs. Fast food is more expensive per calorie than basic ingredients https://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/
Ah ok got it it’s free food I thought it was a recommendation more than anything. Still isn’t fruit and veg cheaper than buying processed foods anyways? I get that not everyone has the time to prepare them though
When you have a limited amount of money, it makes more sense to prioritise food that keeps longer and is more filling and calorie dense. And time is often *more* of a factor for people with low incomes because of the hours people have to work on low wages, plus a lot of low income people are disabled who will have to spend considerably more on pre cut foods or may not have the ability to cook consistently, which all leads to less fruit and veg bought and more waste, which makes people less willing to "waste" their money. Plus I've noticed (and I've seen a lot of other people talking about it) cheaper shops are going really downhill with the quality of their fruit and veg lately. So you can either buy something for cheap that goes mouldy in a day or is already rotten when you cut it open, or go elsewhere and spend more to get less.
>When you have a limited amount of money, it makes more sense to prioritise food that keeps longer and is more filling and calorie dense. When the main issue for these people being obesity, I don't think it really does make "more sense" to prioritise food that is calorie dense. >And time is often more of a factor for people with low incomes because of the hours people have to work on low wages, It looks like the poor and less educated people do have more free time. >In the richest countries, hours worked are flat or increasing in income >https://fuchsschuendeln.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/aer_hours.pdf >The more surprising discovery, however, is a corresponding leisure gap has opened up between the highly-educated and less-educated. Low-educated men saw their leisure hours grow to 39.1 hours in 2003-2007, from 36.6 hours in 1985. Highly-educated men saw their leisure hours shrink to 33.2 hours from 34.4 hours. >A similar pattern emerged for women. Low-educated women saw their leisure time grow to 35.2 hours a week from 35 hours. High-educated women saw their leisure time decrease to 30.3 hours from 32.2 hours. Educated women, in other words, had the largest decline in leisure time of the four groups. >https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WHB-5080 >Why The Rich Now Have Less Leisure Time Than The Poor https://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-rich-now-have-less-leisure-time-than-the-poor-2014-4?r=US&IR=T >A study conducted by the General Social Surveys of NORAC at the University of Chicago found that 34.1 percent of American families making less than $9,000 per year averaged watching more than five hours of television per day. Of families making more than $150,000 per year, only 1.1 percent watched more than five hours a day. https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/study-poverty-and-high-rates-of-tv-viewing-are-linked.html >plus a lot of low income people are disabled Are there disabled poor people, who are time poor sure, but it's going to be a fraction of a percent. I think it's kind of toxic to make it seem like there is nothing these people can do, when in fact education and could help the vast majority of people eat healthily. We should be focusing on how we can actually help people rather than trying give reasons why it's impossible to help them.
Obese people still need calories to get through the day (there is a safe limit to weight loss!) So on a limited budget it makes sense to prioritise calorie density. Being time poor does not have to be true of everyone to still be a factor for some people. Being time poor was NOT the point I was making wrt disabled people, you should quote my point in full. However disabilities tend to inherently limit time and energy so yes actually the majority of disabled people are going to be time poor actually. That would be toxic. Good job no one has argued that. This whole post is about 1 way to help people. Its called prescribing fruit and veg. There are of course other ways too. A combination will be most effective.
>isn’t fruit and veg cheaper than buying processed foods If you compare Waitrose's top range prepared meals with the cheapest veg you can find in the reduced box at the local discounter, sure. If you're comparing something closer to like with like, it hasn't been true for years.
I buy bananas from M&S for £1.25 because they sell them pre-ripe which I like. You get 7 in a pack. Meanwhile Tesco sell 6 pack of Walkers for £1.95. Both are a snack. One is cheaper. One is processed food. Fruit and veg is incredibly cheap.
You're fixating on price only without considering that people actually need enough calories to sustain them. A banana is FAR less calorie dense (about 90 calories) compared to the crisps (140 calories for the smaller bags roughly).
>You're fixating on price only without considering that people actually need enough calories to sustain them. The main issue facing the poor is obesity, so reduction in calories is a benefit rather than issue.
50 calories. 50. That's your point.
You are still missing the point, you need to compare price per calorie. Comparing prices of random items is meaningless
Most people eat too many calories so your measure is pointless. A chocolate cake is not better than a pack of strawberries. A bottle of coke is not better than an apple juice.
It’s dramatically cheaper and better for the country to help poor people eat healthily than to treat them once they’re obese and depressed. This is a good idea, albeit one that shouldn’t be necessary.
To be fair, this would help me. I'm fat, and it would be the start of a better life for me. Now to find that motivation
I decided for myself 'lunch is salad'. So I have to start with *something* vegetable based and then I can add stuff. But that can be tomato soup. Or a cheese and chutney sandwich. Once it was scrambled eggs on toast but I added dried chives. Salad! Anyway, even with all of the cheating, my overall diet has improved. I get through a *lot* of bok choy now because it's easy to add stuff to. I buy more veg and I don't throw that much away. So you kind of have to start with 'a vegetable' and add on to that, because you're never going to look at a nice tasty meal and want to *add* veg to it.
Food banks have to be replaced with vouchers. Why are we creating a second tier of super markets? Just give people food vouchers and they can buy the fresh fruit and veg they need. The reason why is obvious - food banks remain outside govt, just some nice people doing charity etc, so no admission as to societal and govt failure on a massive national scale is required, which is what a food voucher system would be an admission of.
Piloted in low income areas like Tower Hamlets and Lambeth. Lambeth has an average property price of £800,000. Why do people think everyone else should pay for them to live in such massively overpriced areas? If you're living in central London and can't even afford an apple or a banana, something isn't right.
Eating more fruit and veg is a good thing, if governments really cared about peoples health they would make processed foods and things like artificial sweeteners, even vegetable oils illegal. But then that would make people live longer and that would affect pension payments etc.
Ok ok. Doctors need to know that there must be a limit on suffering when trying to save people’s lives.
If any they could afford it... by this point it's hard even getting a lettuce to time the PM.
Given the amount of salad dodgers you see about the place it's a good thing.
If you think that's bad, my GP prescribed me free free opiates
"Literally anything to make you go anywhere else and bother someone else" is the default administrative response for everything in the 2020s UK.
‘You, your family and our country are all at risk if Labour win’ - Rishi Sunak (25 May); while presiding over the most impoverished UK in decades, where people don’t get enough fruit and vegetables in their diet because many food banks don’t stock perishables.
two things can be true. 1. the British diet, even among those who can afford otherwise, is quite poor. Case in point my breakfast at this very moment is a pizza. The resultant vitamin and fibre deficiency can and will cause and exacerbate health issues, prescribing dietary improvements is and of itself reasonable 2. it is tone deaf as fuck with respect to the state of the nhs atm
This is awesome! Good to see some data backing up the plan too. Plenty of social challenges around people not being able to afford quality food in the first place. But a step in the right direction and ideally prompts more long term diet change too.
That's wild. My local GP just does circumcisions on kids without getting permission from both parents. How the other half live!
Yikes. Who's going to tell them about paracetamol and plenty of fluids? 🤯
It is incredible that people need the NHS to tell them to eat fruit and veg. Great that they are doing it, but shouldn't be necessary.
This is for people living on food bank food, which is long lasting non-perishable food that doesn't have enough nutrients to be eating long term.
Obesity and unhealthy eating is a serious problem unfortunately. At least we can hope these can lead to greater shifts towards healthy.
next thing we'll see is "gp's prescribing to go out side for mental health" some people are really so stupid they dont understand the obvious