The Problem The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant increase in the number of people who experience food insecurity and hunger worldwide. Simultaneously, new solidarity alliances have emerged to bridge the gap between food destined to be wasted and the rising need. Hunger is life-threatening. In 1948 the United Nations General Assembly first recognized the right to food as a universal human right. The current pandemic deepens the global hunger crisis, thereby jeopardizing much more than the right to food. The European Food Banks
Introduction In the UK, 10 per cent of all children experience food insecurity – defined as those who have limited or unreliable access to food due to a lack of financial resources ( Power et al, 2020 ). This amounts to 2.6 million children living in food insecure households ( The Food Foundation, 2022 ). Food insecurity is pervasive, has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and inflicts damaging consequences on parents and children ( Aceves-Martins et al, 2018 ; Heflin et al, 2020 ; Loopstra 2020 ; Parnham et al, 2020 ; Power et al, 2020 ). This is
essentials of paid work: neither wages sufficient to meet their needs, nor active participation in upholding their employment rights, nor as having parental responsibilities. Rather, at the nexus of employment and welfare law, workers are expected to endure unwanted insecurity of terms and conditions, and their increased engagement with poor-quality work is a condition of access to welfare benefits. ‘Workers using foodbanks’ is an aphorism that captures a contemporary reality in which the risk of food insecurity is embedded in contractual agreements to work. Future
Introduction In the last decade, rising food bank usage has become a source of escalating public concern in the United Kingdom (UK), where it has come to symbolise the country’s endemic problems with poverty and inequality ( Cooper and Dumpleton, 2013 ). The UK’s largest provider of food banks, the Trussell Trust, distributed 2.5 million emergency food parcels in 2020/21, up from 61,000 in 2010/11 ( Bramley et al, 2021 ). The significant increase in food bank usage has seen food insecurity become the subject of increasing scrutiny, intensified further by the
Introduction Within the UK, there has been limited research on food aid and food insecurity that has focused on the experiences of single men, despite them frequently presenting at food banks ( Perry et al, 2014 ; Loopstra and Lalor, 2017 ; Sosenko et al, 2019 ; Bramley et al, 2021 ). Existing research from Power et al (2020) , Lambie-Mumford (2017) , Garratt (2017 ; 2019 ) and Loopstra and Lalor (2017) has identified that single male households are the most common household type to visit Trussell Trust foodbanks. This is also supported by the
The problem Food access and food insecurity are topics of great consequence within public health, city planning, and public policy conversations. Food insecurity is a “lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active, healthy life.” 1 While food access conversations have rightfully interrogated institutional policies and practices, the central stakeholders—the community and citizens experiencing limited food access—have been mainly silenced from these conversations. This chapter will analyze the problem of current
Introduction: what is the need for theory? In a study of a topic such as food insecurity – or hunger – it is justifiable to ask why a theoretical framework is needed at all. What difference can theory make to those reluctantly visiting food banks or parents skipping meals to ensure enough food for their children? This is an important and worthwhile question which should be asked of all research – theoretical and empirical. But, however abstract, theory has a purpose: while we may be unaware of it, theoretical frameworks shape how we think, how we act, and
British Association of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (BAPEN) has highlighted that at least 1.3 million people aged 65 or over in the UK are not receiving enough protein or energy in their diet ( BAPEN, 2016 ; Age UK, 2022 ). This is in addition to malnutrition regularly being identified during hospital and care home admissions for older people, as well as residents in sheltered accommodation ( BAPEN, 2016 ; Purdam et al, 2019 ; Malnutrition Task Force, 2021 ). Food insecurity continues to increase in the UK and encompasses not having adequate resources (economic
Addressing food insecurity via charitable and private sector responses Food insecurity 1 and UK food charity have been rising since the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent austerity measures ( Warshawsky, 2011 ; Booth and Whelan, 2014 ; Loopstra et al, 2015 ; Lambie-Mumford and Green, 2017 ; May et al, 2020 ; Jenkins et al, 2021 ). Covid-19 added further complexity, placing new pressures on previously food-secure households as a result of loss of employment/incomes, and further exacerbating food insecurity for others ( Hagger and Aslam, 2021 ). The
