Stop telling people in poverty to shop at ALDI
There’s an awful phenomenon these days of some media pundits and politicians who tell people who live in extreme poverty to ‘just go to ALDI and buy cheap pasta and tomato sauce’.
There are no doubt a few families that spend their benefits on McDonald’s takeaways, but not many. Despite the ads, McDonald’s is not doing that well these days, and prices have massively increased. So most people on benefits could not afford to do that anyway, even if they wanted to.
Food campaigner Jack Monroe says that once an old man told her he used to chew a little toothpaste, to trick himself that he had eaten dinner. Many people who work full-time now go to food banks, because the money left after rent and other expenses, does not pay for rising food prices.
The rise of ‘food deserts’
The main problem is food deserts. People on very low incomes likely don’t have smartphones or laptops to order minimum spends at supermarkets, and don’t have cars or good public transport to reach the big cheap supermarkets out-of-town.
So many have to shop at the local NISA or what-have-you. And you won’t find a pound bag of porridge there – more likely expensive frozen chips and pizza, or bananas. And perhaps the odd kebab shop.
There are also few places to walk, so people end up eating fat-laden crap and then have nowhere to walk off the calories. Most ‘food deserts’ are in Glasgow, but there are also many in London, the West Midlands and north east coastal towns (a shame considering its beautiful beaches).
It’s difficult to eat your ‘five a day’ when the local shops only sell bananas. Some say they have never been taught to cook (in London, Made in Hackney offers free community vegan cooking classes, to use up leftovers and bargain ingredients).
Going to ALDI is not the answer
It’s not that simple. People on the breadline need saucepans, and many are on electricity meters that work out expensive. They can’t ‘buy in bulk’ as they are living from hand to mouth. And many don’t have fridge/freezers to store leftovers.
What Jack Monroe thinks (you can imagine!)
Chef Jack Monroe once lived on £10 a week to feed her and her child. She says that people who ‘tell people to just eat pasta’ are missing the point. She says ‘You go to ASDA and try eating nothing but pasta for five days’. Apart from having to buy expensive brands when the value ones run out, it means families are living on plain carbs, with no proper nutrition.
We looked after a child who at night would sneak down to the kitchen and eat food from the freezer, stuffing frozen chips into their mouths. I saw with my own eyes that with three meals on the table and a lot of love, children have grown into beautiful adults. If you’ve got spare food in your fridge, share it. Jack Monroe
Journalist Kate Lister says that the old adage from Marie Antoinette of ‘let them eat cake’, has now turned into ‘let them eat dried pasta’.
MPs can claim an allowance for food and no-alcohol drinks up to £25 a night when staying away from their constituency or in London. Yet many poor families don’t even spend this in a week on food.
Would-be chancellor Robert Jenrick says he would restore the two-child benefit cap if Reform UK came to power (it’s never going to happen). Despite that most children had working parents. He claims around £2K a month to rent an apartment while working in London.
Please stop quoting pasta prices. You never cater for all the sauce ingredients, kitchen implements, cooking gear, energy, time. You fail to budget for competing demands of home heating, rent, water rates and council tax. Snigdha Nag
The former secretary of state for the environment suggested that poor families should look for own-brand versions (as if that had not occurred to them?)
The square root of f*ck all is ALWAYS going to be f*ck all, no matter how creatively you’re told to dice it. Jack Monroe
The politics of porridge
One journalist wrote that a £1 bag of porridge will last a family all week, for a nutritious breakfast.
Byline Times turned this into an article on the politics of porridge. Affluent people who have never lived on the breadline, should get their facts right, before telling other people how to live on a budget. As they write, a bag of porridge is not just a bag of porridge:
- Porridge needs fuel (expensive) or a microwave (many people don’t have one) to cook.
- It also needs a pan to cook them in.
- To make it tasty, it requires jam, syrup or fruit (unless rich people think that poor people should just live on a bowl of gruel, like in Oliver Twist).
- Most poor people rely on prepaid gas/electric meters, so their fuel bills are proportionally more than people who pay by direct debit.
- Many poor families live in temporary accommodation, with no cooking facilities. And many have communal kitchens (families with children fleeing from domestic abuse are less likely to use them).
- Many poor families live in food desserts, without cheap supermarkets. So it’s unlikely that the local shop will sell porridge. And if it did, it’s almost certainly going to be far more than £1 a pack.
