Every time. Every damn time. Every trip to my local Sainsbury’s (or, increasingly, Asda, because it’s cheaper, and they do leaf tea at the one in Lewisham), I get to the till, haul my tatty canvas totes onto my shoulder and there it is, the blasted food bank box. I forgot. Again.
In 2022, in a highly developed country, we shouldn’t need food banks but we do. Between April 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, food banks in the Trussell Trust’s UK-wide network distributed more than 2.1 million emergency food parcels to people in crisis — an increase of 14 per cent compared to the same period in 2019/20. Food inflation has today hit an astonishing 14.6 per cent. Record numbers of families are struggling to put enough food on the table, and as living costs rocket and we head into the winter, those numbers are only going to rise.
