If the U.K. Economy Is Improving, Why Are Over a Million People Forced to Use Food Banks?
Figures regarding the United Kingdom's recovering finances fail to account for drastic growth in the number of British citizens resorting to emergency food banks just to get by.
A London food bank run by the Trussell Trust charity. (Newfrontiers / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Figures regarding the United Kingdom’s recovering finances fail to account for drastic growth in the number of British citizens resorting to emergency food banks just to get by.
The Guardian reports:
The latest figures from the Trussell Trust, which coordinates a network of food banks in the UK, show a 19% year-on-year increase in food bank users, demonstrating that hunger, debt and poverty are continuing to affect large numbers of low-income families and individuals.
Nearly 1.1 million people received at least three days of emergency food from the trust’s 445 food banks in 2014-15 – up from 913,000 the previous year.
Back in 2009-10, before the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition took power, the then little-known charity fed 41,000 people from its 56 food banks…Experts warned that the figures were the “tip of the iceberg” of food poverty in the UK, while doctors said the inability of families to buy enough food had become a public health issue.
—Posted by Natasha Hakimi Zapata
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