Anthropologists have written a lot about what constitutes a meal and the difference between meals and snacks in different cultures. Meals, they suggest, have courses, snacks do not. Meals contain a certain combination of items (e.g. potatoes, meat and vegetables, or rice, dahl and curry), snacks do not need to follow such rules. People talk about ‘proper meals’, which usually means that they obey the grammatical rules of meals, which are taken sitting down, and often with other people.

I thought about this issue again when I remembered the words of one woman who is a food-bank user. She complained ‘It’s very difficult to make a meal with the items you get given’. Others noted that they had to find additional ingredients to make what they considered to be a ‘proper meal’ out of their food parcel ingredients.

I was to discover this for myself when I joined the challenge issued by one of the food banks I had been visiting. The challenge consisted of being sponsored to spend a week (6 days actually) living off a typical food bank parcel. This would not only raise money for the food bank from sponsors, but also was a minor exercise in participant observation, one of anthropology’s favourite methods. When the food bank manager heard that my husband was also joining in, he wrote that he would issue some extra food but ‘don’t expect double rations’. Of course not, since as is well known, two can live as cheaply as one!

The food bank manager sent us an exhortation just before we started:

If you haven’t already, make sure you’ve rummaged through your food parcel and had a look at what meals you can prepare, so that you don’t get too hungry. You can ONLY eat what you find in the box, and plenty of tap water. Remember, you’re not alone. Thousands of families across the country live the #FoodParcelChallenge week after week.  

As we were living in a rural community at the time, I wrote to the manager and asked if foraged foods like nettles were permissible. He said that would be cheating, as not all urban dwellers would have access to such plants (or know that they were edible) and several of the readers of the daily blog I wrote on my Facebook page agreed with him. Apparently he also got a request from some others doing the challenge asking if wild mushrooms were OK – he said not. I reflected that it would be hard to find any in May in London!

Here’s the ration list we got.

Our shopping list for the food challenge

• Milk (long-life) 1 litre
• Juice/Squash 500ml
• Sugar/Sweetener
• Tea/Coffee 25 bags, small instant coffee
  Jam/Marmalade/Honey (1 jar)
• Cereal/Oats/Porridge (small)
• Biscuits/Crackers (1 packet)
• Cereal Bars
• Instant Noodles
• Rice 500gm
• Pasta 500gm
• Cooking Oil (500ml)
• Pasta Sauce/Curry Sauce
• Lentils (yellow/red) 500gm
• Soup (tins/boxes) 2
• Chick Peas/Kidney Beans 2 (tins)
  2 tins tomatoes
• Fruit & Vegetables (2 tins)
• Stock Cubes (vegetarian)
• Salt/Pepper
  Rice Pudding/Custard

It was very different from the sort of food we normally eat, which includes lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. When we laid out our weekly shop on the dining table, and added the food parcel items at one end, the whole amount covered the table but, when we removed our normal shop, only a small amount remained for the Food Challenge, and it all fitted neatly into a plastic, mouse-proof box, ready to start the challenge the following week.

We felt that a way had to be found for the two of us not only to make it last the required length of time but also to adapt it to the structure of our daily meals. We were determined that we were going to eat proper meals, we did not propose to graze! Lionel set to work and came up with a set of mens which looked like this:

This menu was adequate for a short period of time, but not very enjoyable. It was however made more bearable by the fact that we did it together. In the previous year, someone taking the same food challenge wrote that she had guests staying in her house whom she had to feed normally, while she ate food like this. I admired her greatly! One of the most difficult days of the challenge for me was when interviewing someone in a café, who chomped her way through quite a large meal while I sipped my tea slowly.

Here’s Day 1 of my Facebook page blog.

‘I usually wake up early and like to start my day with a cup of really good coffee. Today was different because it was instant coffee and UHT milk, which was not quite the same. Lionel opted for tea instead and on tasting it said he thought he might have to add sugar.

After gym and swim, I am ready for breakfast. Lionel has doled out the porridge and added lots of water. It is fine although it’s a bit different from our usual porridge which has various things added including bananas. In fact I can almost agree with Lady Jennings that everyone should have porridge for breakfast – she says it only costs 4p per person. You’ll remember that she said that the problem with the poor is that they don’t know how to cook but she had to eat her words! ( see http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/08/poor-cannot-cook-peer-eats-words)

In response to our blog, we got a few comments and questions:

1. Why these particular items? Answer. Because they are typical of what people donate to food banks and the items have to be long-life because most food banks don’t have refrigerators. So lots of tins, packets and bottles! We were allowed to specify vegetarian.
2. Many of the items are heavy – how can people carry this amount? The answer is that food bank clients do struggle with their food parcels, especially if they have to travel by public transport. Food banks in cities do not generally deliver, although some food banks will send a volunteer to help carry stuff out to a car or to the bus stop, while food banks in rural areas might deliver.

Halfway through the challenge, I wrote about some of our thoughts about eating from a food parcel:

‘But it’s also the awareness of the fact that we are actually really fortunate. I got an email last week with a case study of a man who only ate every other day. Two weeks ago I witnessed a distribution at a food bank where about 20 people were waiting for food. A late comer was an elderly man who came in with a walker. I asked him if I could help him to anything but the food bank manager told me that he was not well enough to cook and mostly lived on sandwiches, so they only gave him food which could be eaten without heating or cooking.’

At the end of the six days, we wrote our last blog:

What did we most dislike? Pat – dry Ryvita, Lionel – instant coffee (actually I also hate rice pudding and custard, reminiscent of the school dinners of my youth. Fortunately Lionel did not mind them).

We got to the end of our 6 days with no ill effects and thought about the limitations of a food bank diet: monotony, lack of ingredients for creativity and imagination, blandness of taste.

But – we feel OK, we chose to do this (unlike most others), so far no ill effects and we raised #550 plus gift aid for the food bank.

?

When the Bank of England’s Chief Economist  wanted to find out about hardship in the UK at first hand, his first tour was to Wales (see  https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/29/bank-chief-tours-wales-help-make-policies-for-hardest-hit). Wales has some of the poorest areas of the UK and this includes west Wales, one of the sites for my research on food poverty in the UK.

We’re almost at the end of the school holidays and there have been reports in the national media that many food banks have run out of food. One reason for this is that children who get free school meals in term time are not getting them now which increases demand on food banks (see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/food-banks-hungry-children-summer-holidays-no-free-school-lunches-trussel-trust-low-supplies-a7870546.html).

Here in west Wales, where I’ve been researching food poverty for three years now, the story is no different. One food bank manager told me that there had definitely been a rise in demand over the school holidays. I have noticed that unlike the situation in some other parts of the UK, where there are volunteer-run (usually church-led) lunch clubs for the school holidays (see for example https://www.makelunch.org.uk/ – see photo) , these seem to be lacking here. A report in a national paper today suggests that a child not getting his or her school meals costs the parents £30-40 per week per child and that there is a proposal for a bill in the next Parliament for schools to continue providing free lunches even in the holidays (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/aug/30/high-profile-tories-back-labour-bill-on-free-meals-in-school-holidays).

But there are other reasons why food banks are running out and one is the continued impact of austerity policies, including benefit sanctions and the roll-out of Universal Credit (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/16/austerity-causing-suffering-record-number-food-banks-stock-shortage). The Pembrokeshire Herald newspaper for July 21^st reported that a PATCH (Pembrokeshire Action to Combat Poverty) food bank had run out of stock. The PATCH manager did not mince her words: ‘There are people here in Pembrokeshire who haven’t eaten for days (yes days) as they wait for their benefits to arrive. One client lost their job and went straight on to Universal Credit, with a six to eight-week wait for any money.’

At another food bank, the manager tells a similar story: ‘There has definitely been a rise in demand because of the caps on benefits’ and goes on to remark ‘I notice they are trying to put more people onto PIP (Personal Independence Allowance)  as it will decrease costs and also make it appear that unemployment has fallen but it’s just massaging the figures’.

During a visit to a Pembrokeshire food bank last April, I bumped into a worker from another agency who was collecting some food for her own clients. She looked exhausted and despairing: ’I’m fire-fighting, yet if I can’t write up reports on my increasing number of cases, they will cut the funding further’.  She goes on to explain that many people have turned to her agency because they have had their disability allowances stopped while their entitlement is assessed:  ‘They should employ proper doctors for the ESA (assessment for disability) not people who just tick boxes. So clients end up having to go for mandatory reconsideration.’ The result of this situation is that for frontline agencies like hers ‘There is absolutely no wriggle room’.

Four months later, the situation had become so bad that Citizens Advice Bureau Pembrokeshire called publicly upon the (Westminster) government to fix the many problems already evident with its new Universal Credit scheme before rolling it out to all claimants from 2018. Pembrokeshire’s chief executive of CAB warned: ‘Many families across Pembrokeshire may be put at financial risk, which in turn can put huge pressure on other local services such as food banks, health, housing and social care’ (County Echo 18/8/17 p. 7). Such concerns were shared by every food bank manager to whom I have talked over the last few months.

This is my third summer researching food poverty in West Wales, and last week I re-visited four of the food banks where I’ve been observing. In an interview with a food bank manager, she told me the following anecdote.

Like many charities, her food bank had set up a stall at one of the large agricultural shows held over the summer and there she was verbally assailed by an angry farmer who made the following points:

• Food has never been cheaper since the supermarkets treat the farmers badly. It’s a low proportion of family budgets, lower than it ever used to be, so people shouldn’t be in food poverty.
• Food banks give out the wrong kinds of food: vegetables are cheap and they could give out more of them.
• One reason why people are in food poverty is because they often don’t know how to cook and the food banks should be doing something about this

These are common arguments used to criticise food banks and their users, so I offer the following suggestions as responses.

• Food has never been cheaper and it’s a low proportion of family budgets, lower than it used to be. This is because today the supermarkets treat the farmers badly

It’s true that food is often a smaller part of the household budget than it was some decades ago, and a general expectation has grown up that this is appropriate. The supermarkets, with their special offers, ‘value’ products and heavy advertising, foster this view and compete with each other to maintain low prices, a policy only made possible by their high volume sales.

But the actual proportion of the household budget spent on food is heavily class-dependent. Those with higher incomes may spend more money, but they spend a lower proportion than do the poor (this is known as ‘Engels’ law’). Most importantly, food prices have to be viewed alongside wages. In the UK in the last few years, wages have stagnated or even dropped in value while many people are employed part-time, on zero-hours contracts, and for minimum wages.

Furthermore, food is the most elastic part of the budget and most people choose to pay rent, council tax and energy bills first and foremost, since the sanctions for falling into arrears can be severe. Indeed, lack of money to buy food after a meagre income has been spent on such items is a common reason for coming to a food bank.

In any case, food prices have actually been rising recently (see https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/apr/04/sharp-rise-in-uk-food-prices-inflates-household-shopping-bill), a factor which was mentioned by many food bank users to whom I talked. Furthermore, while it’s a common idea that cooking from scratch is cheaper than eating processed food, that’s not always the case (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11149644/Healthy-diet-costs-three-times-that-of-junk-food.html , a fact confirmed by food bank users like the woman who told me: ‘Some dishes it’s cheaper to get a ready-made. For example it’s only £2.00 in Sainsburys for a family-sized shepherd’s pie, you couldn’t make it yourself for that. The meat alone would cost you £4.00.‘

It’s true that many farmers are highly dependent upon supermarkets to sell their products. In my research in Wales over several years, I have often heard farmers complain about their relations with supermarkets: they often have short-term contracts, their products can be rejected on apparently arbitrary grounds of ‘quality’, and in the past, they could even be required to provide ‘two for the price of one’ (for so-called ‘bogof’ offers). Supermarkets negotiate tough price agreements, with the price for some products actually being below that of production.  In recent years, milk has been the most notorious case and the low price offered to farmers has been a major factor in forcing many dairy farmers out of business.

• Food banks give out the wrong kinds of food: vegetables are cheap and they could buy more of them.

Most food banks give out mainly long-life food such as tins, bottles and packets. The reasons are simple – they do not have facilities for storing perishable food and most of them operate for only a few hours a week in borrowed premises. Over the past couple of years there has been a growth in supermarkets passing on their ‘surplus’ food (i.e. food which is still edible but past its ‘best before’ or ‘sell by’ dates) to charities such as food banks. Particularly successful has been the use of the Food Cloud app, which has been utilised by Tesco in its partnership with Fareshare, but also now taken up by other supermarkets (see Caplan 2017 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.12350/abstract). However, the surplus food given by supermarkets to charity varies considerably in amount, quality and quantity, for example many food banks find that they get more bread than they can use, but not always enough fresh produce.

• People often don’t know how to cook and the food banks should be looking into this

In 2015, there was something of a furore in the media when Baroness Jenner, a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry on Food Poverty, argued that lack of cooking skills is a major factor in food poverty (see https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/08/tory-peer-apologises-poor-hungry-do-not-know-cook). It is true that for a long period of time, cooking skills were dropped from the school  curriculum to be replaced by ‘food technology’, but many of the food bank users I interviewed maintained that they did know how to cook – they just could not afford the necessary ingredients.

Contrary to popular perception, the buying and cooking of healthy food is not always a simple matter:

• There are ‘food deserts’ in some areas where the only shops are small and expensive; this includes both rural areas and some urban estates
• People may lack facilities or equipment for cooking or money for the energy meter
• People are subjected to heavy advertising and supermarket promotions for processed food, particularly children
• The government is unwilling to have any but voluntary codes for food standard quality since it views people as responsible for their own health

However, I found that many users were also often well aware of healthy eating messages, some saying that they tried to ‘balance’ buying cheap processed food by also purchasing better quality fresh food for their children, if they could.

Some food banks are indeed tackling issues of how to manage to produce good healthy food on a small budget, such as the initiatives offered by the Trussell Trust’s ‘More than Food’ (https://www.trusselltrust.org/what-we-do/more-than-food/), which includes classes in how to cook economically.

In short, criticisms of users of food banks is very often a case of victim-blaming. While there’s no lack of volunteers willing to help those suffering from food poverty, often through no fault of their own, what is lacking is an awareness of the citizen’s right to food and the means to secure this. Food poverty is above all a matter for the state.

Food poverty UK blog. Posting 1: 15th July 2017

Why a blog on food poverty in the UK?

Because it exists here and because it symbolises powerfully the state of our nation, revealing the effects of growing inequality and austerity.

As a social anthropologist working for much of my career in Tanzania and India, I learned a lot about food poverty: why it occurs, how people deal with it, and how it is perceived by others, both locally and further afield. As a foodie anthropologist who had specialised in this topic, I had thought of food poverty as being primarily a problem of the global South.

However, in 2012, I first heard mention of food banks in the UK and started to investigate. A simple entry of ‘food aid’ into search engines turned up many references, but none was about the UK. Adding ‘UK’ just gave information about the UK’s various aid programmes to the global south. This seemed to confirm that food poverty was viewed as a problem ‘over there’, not over here. This situation, by the way is very different now, with increasing numbers of leads on all search engines. This is partly because other academics – sociologists, epidemiologists, geographers, public health experts and more – have been working on this topic for the past few years ad partly because food banks (the most visible part of food poverty) has become such a highly politicised issue.

Doing research
I started my own research in 2014, choosing to focus on organisations in two areas of the UK: the London Borough of Barnet which is a very urban area and the County of Pembrokeshire in West Wales which is mainly rural.
Over the last three years, I’ve visited food banks, community cafes, lunch clubs, etc. most of which are volunteer-run. The research has involved interviews with clients, volunteers and trustees, as well as distributing questionnaires. In addition, I have observed at many organisations and served as an occasional volunteer at several of them.

Moreover, there’s a lot of material to be garnered from other academic work, from newspapers (both national and local) and other secondary sources, so a large amount of this kind of data has also been collected.

How to share all this information and data?
a) the academic route

Of course academics write articles in refereed journals, and I’ve done some of that:
2016. An article entitled ‘Big Society or Broken Society: Food Banks in the UK’ in Anthropology Today (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.12223/abstract

2017. An article in the same journal entitled ‘Win-win? Food Poverty, Food Aid and Food Surplus’: (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.12350/full)
Both of these pieces were based upon public lectures which I had given respectively at Goldsmiths College (the Gold lecture 2015) and the University of Oxford (the Mary Douglas Memorial lecture 2017)

b) Sharing more widely
This time I also wanted to share more widely. I wrote pieces in 2015 and 2016 for a Welsh local newspaper, the Pembrokeshire Herald, and gave talks to many kinds of groups in both research areas:
• In West Wales to a U3A group, and twice to a pensioners’ club in a Welsh town
• In north London to a food bank, a soup kitchen, and also to a group of social work students at my own college in south London

This blog
So I have now decided to start a food poverty blog in the hope of raising greater awareness of this issue in the UK, including among policy-makers.
• It will share some of the data I’ve collected for others to see while observing ethical issues such as confidentiality and anonymity
• It will include relevant material by others, including guest blogs by invitation
• It will serve as a resource for others working in this field, whether as academics, researchers, students, or as volunteers, administrators, activists or policy-makers
• In addition to textual material, there will be photos and other visual material
• Comments are welcome but any which are inappropriate or abusive will deleted. No anonymous comments will be accepted – you have to give your real name and a contact or affiliation.

If you want to contact me outside of the blogsphere, you can email me at p.caplan@gold.ac.uk