Pen Vogler explains that her new book “is about how society in the British Isles has arranged itself around … two versions of ‘stuffed’”. On the one hand, there is that post-dinner feeling of being pleasantly replete with delicious, wholesome food. But then there’s also “stuffed” in the sense of being trapped in an impossible situation with no safe way out. This is the experience of the millions of Britons currently living with chronic food insecurity, obliged to fill up on cheap meals to satisfy immediate hunger pangs while skimping on the nutrients that every body needs.
It is the lack of common ground between these two types of stuffedness, the privileged and the deprived, that troubles Vogler. She points to the fault line that opened up during Marcus Rashford’s 2020 campaign to extend free school meals into the school holidays. Kate Green, the former shadow education secretary, supported the scheme on the grounds that “it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that children do not go hungry”. Brendan Clarke-Smith, for the government, countered that he did not believe in “nationalising children”: feeding your family was a matter for individuals, not the state.
