Food insecurity Even before the onset of Covid-19 it was clear that food insecurity was a huge national problem, reports Jamie Ellis, with the Trussell Trust, the UK’s largest food bank, distributing 1.6m food parcels in 2019. Food insecurity is a national blight and no city, including Bristol, has escaped its effects. In research carried out before the pandemic, the JSNA Health and Wellbeing Profile found that around one in 15 Bristol households suffered from food insecurity. In the most acutely affected parts of the city, those with lower median household incomes, the figure is as high as one in five. Across Bristol this equates to 24,000 neighbours, friends and colleagues who may not be able to buy the food they need to eat healthily. The pandemic has amplified existing inequalities, worsening the problems already faced by many. Covid-19 has exposed a precariousness in our ability to feed our households. The virus showed that many families were one pay-check away from food insecurity, forcing parents into ‘feed myself or feed my children’ thought patterns. It has shaken each of the four pillars of food equality: access, availability, stability and usage. During the course of the summer of 2021, I spoke with many who had direct experience of food insecurity. From these discussions, the one quote that really sticks in my mind is “food insecurity; total insecurity”, without access to food you will never feel safe.
Most people I spoke with gave, unprompted, definitions of food insecurity which encompassed far more than just food itself. Citing factors from income to safe food preparation areas to diet variety, they understood this issue as holistic and multifaceted. Covid-19 only deepened the disparity between food insecurity’s breadth and the current approach as social cooking circles were curtailed, community solutions hampered and food preparation was made more difficult as houses became more permanently crowded. It was also felt that one of the traditional answers to food insecurity – increasing the number and workload of food banks – was unsustainable. While the work of emergency food providers has been invaluable, it was now time to approach food disparities with a more allencompassing ethos. People also said that it should not be Marcus Rashford’s responsibility to feed the nation’s children. This all came back to, most concluded, a lack of understanding of food insecurity from the top down. More needed to be done, they said, to define and understand food insecurity and many felt that this was the responsibility of government at all levels.
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