Matthew
Welcome to Feed a food systems podcast, presented by TABLE I'm Matthew Kessler,
One in seven households in the UK faces food insecurity today. For families living in poverty, affording a government-recommended healthy diet would require spending 70% of their disposable income on food.
What's driving this crisis — and what can be done about it?
My colleagues at TABLE have been exploring these questions in an Agile-funded project called Reckoning with Regeneration. They've been investigating not just what regenerative farming means to different people, but whether it can truly meet the challenge of food insecurity in the UK.
This is the first of a two-part episode, featuring the voices of those who have experienced hunger — and are campaigning for change.
Ruth
Okay. Do you want to introduce yourself a bit? Tell me who you are.
Dominic
My name is Dominic Watters. I'm a single dad from a forgotten about council estate in Kent.
Glory
My name is Glory Omoaka, and I am an African immigrant living in Glasgow.
Ryan
I'm Ryan McShane. I'm 23 years old. I originally grew up in Glasgow on the south banks. And the area became the Gorbels, and it was known for vandalism and gang culture.
Glory
Growing up, you know, food was never just food. It was traditional, it was celebration, and it was connection.
Ruth
I think food ultimately is like a human right, you know. It's a rights issue that impacts people globally.
Richard
Welcome to episode 1 of our two part podcast 'Hunger on our doorstep' in which we're going to explore some of the reasons for hunger, malnutrition and diet related ill health in the UK today. The voices you've just heard are from campaigners for change - they're also people with firsthand experience of not being able to access or afford the food they need.
You'll hear a lot more from them over the two episodes. But let's start at the beginning. I'm Richard Kipling.
Ruth
And I'm Ruth Mattock. We're both researchers with TABLE exploring the evidence, values and visions that shape the future of food and farming.
Richard
We've had a lot of our attention on farms and farmers, and how they're struggling with things like the low prices they get for the food they produce. But when you start looking at how to solve that problem, you come up against the question of the affordability of good food, and access to it.
Ruth
We wanted to explore what we really mean by that word 'access', what does not having that access look like? What does food insecurity look like in the UK at the moment, and whose voices are getting heard on these questions?
Richard
In this first episode, we're looking at the issues, what they are and why they exist
Richard
This first episode will look at what food poverty means for people, and the scale of the issue. Focusing on these complex, long-term problems creates quite a bleak picture - but in the second episode, we'll be focusing on the positives and exploring solutions, including inspiring action that's already being taken.
Ruth
Let's get started
Richard
Part 1 - Living with hunger
Dominic
Me and my amazing daughter live in the most deprived blocks of the Council Estate. We experience food insecurity as a daily reality. This is the environment we live in. So if you're from my estate blocks, you are food insecure from your starting point. You know, certain, maybe certain members of my community and neighbors aren't as mobile as I am, and the environment you live in can really dictate your diet.
And as our shop sells nothing fresh and the lowest quality of food processed, and even the lowest quality of kind of information in a way. So like, the newspapers you'd get there are, like the racing post. So the kind of the deprivation is, is, is just part of how we live and it becomes normalized. And then also we don't speak up about it because of the kind of shame, stigma and snobbery around it. So we'd only speak to people like in our blocks or in our estate.
Ruth
It's hard to believe this is happening in the UK in the 21st century These are problems which we might hope or expect were things of the past Dominic gives a really vivid picture of his experience and the problems he and his community face
Richard
I think we need to get an idea of how many people have to live with this kind of thing these challenges – Ana
My name is Ana María Narváez.
Ruth
Ana Maria is a policy and advocacy professional with over ten years experience working on food systems and human rights.
Richard
She was previously the Senior Policy and Advocacy officer at the Food Foundation, and coordinated their 2025 Broken Plate report - it looks at the food people can get, how its sold to them, where its sold - their food environment
Ana
The Broken Plate, it is the food foundation flagship report, and since 2019 it provides a snapshot of the current food environment and how this picture impacts our health and environment, particularly on people in low incomes. And it also dedicates a space to offer solutions to improve the food system for everyone benefit and the planet.
Richard
The latest report provides crucial details about the state of food poverty in the UK.
Ana
The data clearly show that too many people in the UK lack the financial means to access decent food, and that much of the food that is easily available and marketed to us is damaging our health and the planet. We found that healthier foods are more than twice as expensive per calorie than less healthy food. Healthy diets are out of reach of many families in low income. And in this context, unhealthy food becomes not only the most budget friendly option, but for some: is the only affordable one.
And in the Broken Plate you can also see the most deprived families. Families with children need to spend 70% of their disposable income on food to be able to afford a government recommended healthy diet.
Ruth
That's quite a bleak picture - the idea that there are families with children who would need to spend such a big proportion of their income just to eat a healthy diet.
Richard
And even then, the food that's most affordable is often food that doesn't meet their nutrition and health needs.
Ruth
And even if they could afford good food -
Richard
it's probably not on sale in the places they can get to
Ruth
OK - I feel like we need more than one guide through this!
Effie
My name is Dr Effie Papajiropoulou. I am an associate professor of sustainable food networks in the sustainability research institute at the University of Leeds.
Ruth
Effie is also the Associate Director of the Global food and Environment Institute at Leeds University. What stands out for her from the Food Foundation report?
Effie
One in seven households are facing some form of food insecurity so they can't access or can't afford to access nutritious, culturally appropriate food. They're skipping meals or compromising on the quality of the food that they managed to consume in order to support themselves.
Richard
One in seven households is a big proportion - and according to Effie, the problem has been getting worse.
Effie
It obviously has become more prominent following COVID and the lockdowns and the challenges around that, the cost of living crisis and more global geopolitical events that have had an impact on global food supply and the prices associated with that. So it's a big, complex challenge, and food insecurity, unfortunately, in the UK, is not yet, is something that's really still very prominent and is quite a big – it's a disgrace, considering the high income country the UK we live in.
Glory
Growing up, you know, food was never just foodl So when I moved here, it was hard. And this is because I rarely found the fresh cassava. I don't know if you know what cassava is. Ripe plantain. Spices, you know, that filled my childhood kitchen when I was growing up, and all that warmth and memories. But thankfully, we had few African shops around. But the foods are very expensive. Very, very expensive.
Ana
Inflation rate is increasing double in the last two years for healthy foods than for unhealthy foods. When people have busy lives and have limited time and resources they will going to rely on the food which is more convenient and more readily available. And we found that, for example, in supermarket, only 3% of breakfast cereals and 5% of yogurt marketed to children are low in sugar. But also talking about places to buy food, the report found that a quarter of places to buy food in England are fast food outlets, and this percentage is even higher in more deprived areas.
Richard
There's so much going on here - this isn't just about food. We need to look a bit deeper
Ruth
Part 2 - Under the surface
Richard
We're going to highlight five big issues underlying food poverty. Perhaps the first one is obvious - poverty and inequality in general.
Dominic
Any single parent knows that when your child is a toddler or or in their earlier years, like they're so dependent on you that it is a real position of responsibility. But then, if your gas or electric run out in the middle of the night, and there's nowhere in your estate to top up your gas and electric. You can't leave your young child asleep or not, to somehow find a way to the Asdas, that's like two, three miles away, to be able to top up, which is one thing. But then it means when your child does wake up, then, you know, the food in the freezers often no good anymore. The lights don't turn on. You know, trying to explain to your daughter that you can't have a hot drink, or the kettle doesn't work, or whatever it may be, is, is, is a real it's a position of responsibility, but also kind of navigating trauma.
Ruth
And this isn't a one off experience, it's something that happens each week, each month. Dealing with that isn't easy
Dominic
It takes a level of resilience that a lot of academics and policy makers that use that term aren't aware of. So resilience is something that is disproportionately expected of the poor, and our resilience and our ability to bounce back from shocks we have to do on a daily basis and from a deprived position. So that deprived position includes fuel, food insecurity, housing, windows that don't shut. So even if you're trying to heat your home, it doesn't work. There's no pressure in the water. There's black mold all up and down the block. They don't collect the bins.
Richard
Resilience is disproportionately expected of the poor - that's something to really think about. The broken plate report gives an idea of how these issues are affecting children like Dominic's daughter.
Ana
Children consume less than half of the recommended amount of fruit and veg, but twice the recommended amount of sugar and the quality of diet decreases while deprivation increases. You can see how the most deprived children disproportionately are twice as likely to be living with obesity and having tooth decay in the permanent teeth compared to those in the least deprived fifth.
Ruth
At this point, you might be thinking that making food cheaper seems like the obvious solution to these issues. But there's more to it - food isn't just passively sold to us, it's advertised and promoted.
Richard
Is this our second issue?
Ruth
Yes, marketing, the way food is being advertised is, according to Ana Maria and the Food Foundation, a real problem.
Ana
Over a third of food and soft drink advertising spent is on unhealthy foods such as confectionary snacks, desserts, soft drinks, but only 2% is dedicated to fruit and veg.
Richard
Hold on - only 2% of advertising money is going into the food we need people to eat more of?
Ruth
Yes - and there's more
Ana
We also saw that three quarters of baby and toddler snacks that have front of pack promotionally claims such as organic, one of your five a day, or this is perfect for your baby. They contain high or medium levels of sugar, so they are not healthy for children.
Richard
It feels like this puts a lot of pressure on parents trying to buy what's best for their children. But does it really have an effect on choices?
Ana
Our insight is that companies will not spend millions of pounds a year on advertising campaigns if they didn't work. People might not always be consciously aware of what is advertised, but unconsciously, preference and expectations around food are being influenced. We were talking the other day with some parents, and they said, like, "Well, my child doesn't know they don't even like that yogurt, but they love Peppa Pig, and the only thing they want is Peppa Pig."
Ryan
It's so so soul destroying sometimes, when you see just like 40 foot banner on, like a train station or a bus station, but it's like KFC, and it's Burger King and it's McDonald's, or, like, I think just now Minecraft is like, with McDonald's doing some sort of toy, and it's like 1990 still. We're in 2025 and these things are still happening. So it's just soul destroying knowing that we come so far, where you think you're two steps ahead, but I actually end up five steps behind, you know?'
Ruth
OK, that's two of the issues.
Richard
The third one is about what food you have access to in your area - Dominic mentioned it earlier - and Effie summed up a lot of the problems
Effie
That's a massive problem, and it goes back to those structural inequalities and how we have designed our cities, our towns, and where investment has gone in. So we're seeing a lot of provision of fresh food, or even healthier food overall in areas of higher income versus areas that are more deprived.. And we might have food deserts where there's nothing food related to be able to access. So you might have array of shops and none of those have anything to do with food. Or we might have food swamps, where we have shop after shop being you know, outlets of really unhealthy fast food type of outlets, and we've seen the concentration of those again in more, lower income neighborhoods.
Richard
Those are really strong images - food deserts and food swamps
Ruth
I think it's worth asking someone about how we've ended up with areas where you can't buy decent food.
Jonathan
The big problem is, it's really difficult to make money out of selling fruit and veg, right?
Ruth
I've been talking to Jonathan Pauling - he's CEO of the Alexandra Rose Charity - they're doing a huge amount of work making fruit and veg more accessible.
Jonathan
It's perishable, for one, and that makes it less desirable if you're a small shop, independent shopkeeper, or a small retailer in a low income area. Because if you put a Mars bar on your shelf, if it doesn't sell today, it doesn't matter. I it doesn't sell tomorrow, it doesn't matter. But you could sell it next week, you could sell it next month, you would still get your money back. That doesn't happen with a head of broccoli, right? You've got to ship that head of broccoli within the week, or you've lost your investment. And so if it were just great, if broccoli could just sit on a shelf without any special need of storage, that would make it easier as well. But you need a cool storage. You need a place to store it when the when the shops shut. Unless you've got a fridge where it can all sit in. It's a really complex environment.
Richard
You can see why a small shop might not want to sell fruit and veg when it's so complicated.
Ruth
And before you get to selling it, you have to buy it from somewhere
Jonathan
Your market traders in London, they go to the wholesale market at 2am in the morning, and they spend four hours going around there, trying to find the best quality produce at the most affordable prices. Then they turn up on a street market at 6am and they retail from 8am until 4pm that day. It's really hard job. It's much easier when a wholesale distributor pulls up at your off license, or if you just go to a cash and carry, which is open all day long, and you and you can load up a van full of Coca Cola, crisps, chocolates.
Richard
And that means that even if shops do sell fresh food in these areas, these costs may well get handed on to customers.
Jonathan
The price when you do find healthy food, it tends to be higher than it is in areas which aren't food deserts, which have a good healthy - you know, vibrant food economy, because those people are taking a risk by by retailing it, and so they have to recoup their money. So fruit and veg is more expensive in those areas. It's physically difficult to access. These are areas which might have been built with, with post Second World War, with sort of means of transport, like the idea that everyone might have a car, or when bus services were really regular. So, you know, these places didn't build in the infrastructure necessary to make access to healthy food a priority. One of the classic definitions of of a food desert was, if you can't access healthy food within 500 meters distance of your home, because you gotta remember, lots of people have mobility issues.
Ruth
This is similar to what we heard from Dominic about the difficulties of getting to the shops with a young child
Jonathan
500 meters is not a long way to walk when you've just when you've got an empty shopping bag, but when you've got a full shopping bag, it's a long way to walk, and especially if you've got a long shopping bag and kids.
Richard
What about this idea you hear on social media sometimes, that people like Dominic should just get on and grow their own food if they can't buy it?
Ruth
Yes, that's something he spoke about very strongly
Dominic
I often get told by people on social media, "Oh, this guy just needs to, like, grow his own vegetables and his own food, and he could feed his daughter that way." But like, the council estate block, we don't have a garden. We're on the top floor, we got a balcony, and I've tried to and successfully grown like tomatoes and herbs and yellow zucchini, and tried to kind of directly combat the lack of access to nutrition we have. But that isn't enough to, provide a nutritious diet for your daughter.
Richard
It places a huge burden on people to expect them to grow their own food, given the space, energy and time that takes
Ruth
OK, we've covered a lot of big issues, and we've still got two problems to go. So far we've heard about poverty and inequality, food marketing, and this idea of food swamps and food deserts. What's the fourth?
Richard
The fourth is about people's connection with the food that's available to them
Glory
Talking about culturally appropriate food at school. Because from my experience, from what I've seen, from what I've heard, people say, children are skipping meals because the what is being provided does not align with what they are used to.
Richard
So providing food that people, especially children, aren't familiar with, is a big issue could actually prevent them getting the nutrients they need.
Ruth
Yes - and it's not always as straightforward as just whether someone is used to a particular type of food - Ryan talked to me about the complicated ways food insecurity affected him, and how experiencing hunger and malnourishment at home gave him and his friends quite a fraught and difficult relationship with the food they were provided with at school.
Ryan
'But you know, when you knew that the food was there, and you were so food insecure, sometimes you couldn't eat it, you know, and you weren't thinking about where it came from, you know, you didn't have that any at the time, you know, we were yet nine years old.
The young people recognized that what was being placed in front of them was good food, but that sometimes there was food in front of them. They didn't know and I didn't know what it was, but because, you know, at the time, you didn't want to waste food. We recognized that the teachers didn't want us to waste, but at the same time mean that we also knew that we had to have that food. But at the same time, because we felt so insecure about it. We would have some of it. We would leave it.
So I think it was, I think because a lot of us were so hungry, and especially myself, I was malnourished, but there was a sense that food was nice, you know, and you had to savor it, you know. And that was in the morning, and sometimes even at lunchtime as well. It was the same, like you wanted to go and play football, you wanted to go and see your pals in the playground. You had to have some of it, to know that it might have to last you a whole day before you eat again.
Richard
I think there's something vital to understand in this - because it strikes me that Ryan isn't really clear why, as a malnourished child, he wouldn't always eat that food.
Ruth
Yes,and there so many conflicting pressures and interests - our relationship with food can be really complicated
Richard
And this issue has another aspect too - about how we relate to our food - what we know about it and where it comes from - listen to Glory.
Glory
I once interviewed a child, I said, Do you know where your food come from? And he went supermarkets. Many children really don't know where the food comes from. They just believe it's a supermarket. So yeah, there is connection with food. It's not only about nourishment. It's also about memories, connections and celebration.'
Ruth
So for Glory there's a connection there - people aren't necessarily getting food they're used to, and part of that is that they haven't got any connection with it - with where it comes from or how it's made.
Richard
And there's that insight about how our relationships with food can play out in surprising ways too. Ryan's experience of hunger leading to a broader kind of disengagement from food really struck me.
Richard
OK, ready for the last issue?
Ruth
Yes, let's listen
Richard
This one is a bit different - it's about whose voices are being heard on these issues
Dominic
I began to, kind of speak up about the inequalities we experience in my estate, which is a food desert in the garden of England with the only shot on the estate selling like processed, low quality food. And I began to speak up, and it seemed to resonate with different, different people, I guess, across the country and internationally. And then, yes, I kind of had to take many steps to validate my voice, as often in professional spaces, particularly like social work and other academic spaces, actually, there seemed to be a kind of a disbelief of my reality, or a hesitation to acknowledge which is something that I think is grounded in a snobbery and and a way of viewing the poor that is unhealthy at its root. I've kind of tried to use my voice and even my presence to kind of combat that, that fixed way of viewing us undeserving.'
Richard
Dominic also talks about a real disconnect from decision-makers
Dominic
I think it's sad that the people controlling these conversations about changing the food system are often people that haven't experiences the the hardship side of the food system and the hardships of going without, and the hardships of food poverty and the hardships of living in a food desert, and it's the fact that they have the influence over these discussions around, say, free school meals, when their children aren't on free school meals And they weren't on free school meals. So I think there's something deeply concerning, or at least problematic around people in that position controlling conversations that affect us here on the ground.
Richard
So why might it be that people facing the problems that Ryan, Glory and Dominic have talked about don't feel listened to?
Ruth
Well, Effie was pretty straightforward about that
Effie
the cynic in me says that, you know, they're not the most powerful people you know, the ones that are affected by food insecurity. They are often marginalized groups. They're vulnerable groups, but more often they are, you know, more and more now what we call, you know, our neighbors, they're not just those marginalized, more vulnerable groups, and those voices are lost. And in that debate, I don't think we can ignore why this is happening.
Ruth
She links these issues very strongly to the amount of power that just a few big players have over the food that ends up on our plates.
Effie
My perspective has to do with power. Power is a big thing that drives decisions in the food system, as with any system. So there are very powerful actors in that food system. If we take the global food system, you know, you can look at the handful of multinational organizations that trade commodities. For example, they hold huge power and decide what we eat, what we don't need, how much food costs. You know, all those different actors have an impact all the way down to the individual food citizen or food consumers, we're being branded as, which I don't agree with, and then I think that's I'm hinting on how we can move things and change things. Yeah, so often the ones that bear the brunt of those decisions are not the ones that have the power or as much power, and they're not being given that power to change things'
Richard
That view has lots of implications.
Ruth
Yes. If you've got lots of power, why do you need to listen - and why do you need to listen carefully, not just as a box ticking exercise.
Richard
For Dominic, it's not just about listening - it's also about who influences and makes decisions
Dominic
And that's even goes to the kind of pigeon holing of a voice like mine is like, yeah, you can tell us your hard luck story, but then, like, go away and let the big boys and big girls, like, make the decisions that matter. There's, like, they put a ceiling on the amount of impact you can have unless it's accredited to established organization, which, once again, and sorry to say this on on this podcast. But I hope, I hope people welcome me sharing this is ethically an issue.
Ruth
That's really challenging to how we like to think about how choices get made in general. And this isn't an exclusively UK or national concern. Ryan had similar thoughts about international decision making based on his experience at COP 26 in Glasgow.
Ryan
The way it's made up, is that there's a kind of Blue Zone, a kind of green zone, and then anything out with that is like a kind of space where a lot of you, sort of rallies and march, protests can go on. There was such a lack of young people within the blue zone, where a lot of the big decisions get made. The Green Zone conversations, are so powerful, that if they were in the blue zone, where they probably should be, they would really change a lot of global you know, decision makers minds. They would really see a different lens. It just felt so disconnected, like, why is a lot of the food conversation, the food systems, food poverty, food insecurity, not happening within the blue zone.
Richard
What Glory said fits with that point too - she's talking about things having to change as a result of people listening.
Glory
I want the government to take their office to the people, because if you listen to the people, if you get your information from the people, you can make better policy that we, you know, impact the people that you are, you know, governing, you know, positively, yeah. So that's what I look forward to. This they should take their office to the people by by by way of listening, yeah and doing, the doing as well, not just to listen.
Ruth
Are there really three points there, all rolled into one? So, there's a point about decision makers needing to listen to a representative mix of the people who are actually facing the issues, there's a point about making sure they do more than just listen passively -
Richard
And the people who are suffering from the problem need to be involved in coming up with the solutions.
Ruth
Which is exactly what we will cover in our next episode.
Richard
The solutions! But maybe we need to wrap this one up first?
Ruth
Yep - you're right. We've heard about 5 big problems: poverty, the promotion of unhealthy food, lack of access to good food, lack of cultural connection with the food that's available, and then the exclusion of those who are facing problems from the debate and decision making. So, lets see what Food Foundation say about whether things are actually changing.
Ana
Well we have seen in some of the metrics, we have seen some improvements, not as fast and not as wide as it should be. For example, one quick example that comes to mind in the Broken Plate report of 2023 you saw that this pen on advertising on fruits and veg was 1% this year is 2% so it's like, yay. We are getting more, but it should be 50% like, what's happening? Like, what can we do to get things better?
It's in the broken plate report of 2023 you saw like the the most deprived families would need to spend 50% of their disposable income to be able to afford food. Now it's 45% and this is tricky, because, okay, 5% like it's show some progress, but it's still an unrealistic part of their disposable income. So you can see, like things are changing, but we are not getting there yet to to celebrate a real progress.
Richard
All this paints a picture of how inequality, poverty and social marginalisation can affect people's ability to access the food they need, and suggests that, at the moment, the governance of our food supply system doesn't address these issues sufficiently. It's not possible to cover every aspect of these problems in a couple of podcasts - nor the diversity of views people hold about them.
And we need to acknowledge that, compared to the situation after the second world war, we've got a vastly wider choice of food, and that for the majority, it takes up a much smaller percentage of income than it did back then. But the issues we've heard about highlight how our sense and experience of food security - that is, food access, quality and suitability - is coming into question - and how the poorest often bear the heaviest burden.
Ruth
Given these issues, what solutions are people putting into practice? And how might we pull them together into a strategy for change?
Richard
In episode two, we'll explore ways that our food system could be transformed, and look at some examples of the changes that are already happening.
Richard
A big thanks to you for listening, and to the guest contributors to this episode. There's more information about them and their work in the shownotes and episode webpage, which you can find at tabledebates.org
This two part series was funded as part of the Agile Initiative Sprint project 'Reckoning with Regen' supported by the Natural Environment Research Council. This episode was written and hosted by Richard Kipling and Ruth Mattock.
It was edited by Matthew Kessler. Produced by Richard Kipling, Ruth Mattock, and Matthew Kessler. Special thanks to the Food Foundation and the Agile Initiative team.
Music by Blue dot sessions. Stay tuned for part two dropping in your Feed soon.