The surprising truth about shopping for food

I was at the Kensington and Chelsea Poverty Watch meeting today, to see a presentation from the Public Health Nutrition Team about food poverty. My interest was the overlap between food poverty and fuel poverty – eating and heating – and to understand more about the everyday choices that low income and vulnerable householders have to make.

Some parts of the presentation didn’t surprise me. At the lowest income levels, people are spending less than £30 per week on food – which the Public Health team believe will not provide adequate amounts of nutrition. Those who spend least often eat worst.

There’s a middle group of households, still on relatively low incomes (£151 - £200 after housing costs), who are spending a higher proportion of their income on food, most likely because they are families with children. In this group, it’s common to hear the dilemma of heating or eating, and to hear about parents going without meals to ensure that their children are fed.

Focus groups with residents identified three important groupings of households likely to be in food poverty:

• People on long-term low incomes who manage on a low food budget, but who don’t gain adequate nutrition. These are people living off ready meals, discounted supermarket goods and a similar diet week to week.
• People whose circumstances have changed but who have not yet adapted their food buying habits
• People with access issues – including those who have difficulty with public transport or those who have difficulty leaving the house (possibly for health reasons, or possibly for logistical reasons such as lack of childcare support). There’s a subset in here too of people who have too much access to bad foods – that is, people who live in neighbourhoods with a high density of takeaways, for whom it is easier to eat takeaway than to find fresh food in a store.

The real gem of information for me came in some research that Public Health have done into prices. They compared the price of buying a “healthy food basket” based on achieving a nutritionally complete diet for 7 days.  They looked at different scenarios, including size of household and cultural heritage, as influencers of what is eaten and how things are bought. Here’s what’s surprising:

Large supermarkets were the most expensive option.

You would be better off buying your food at local shops and markets within 400m of your home than going to a large supermarket. And you’d be better off buying online from said supermarket rather than from their actual stores.

The cheapest combination of shopping options was as follows:

• Fruit and veg from local markets
• Groceries (tins, pulses, rice etc): buy online
• Meat / fish: from a supermarket but shop around as prices vary. Meat and fish are also expensive components of a meal, so eating vegetarian dishes more often is another way to save.

There’s £20-£30 of savings available per week for families shopping this way, and £10 per week for a person living alone. Per week. Sensible shopping practices suddenly unlock a significant amount of income which can be spent on some other basic needs: heat, power, transport.

The full report into CLCH research on food poverty should be available soon at http://www.clch.nhs.uk. Recommended reading!

Oh, and for those who asked: there is no official definition of food poverty, but spending 30% or more of disposable income after housing costs on food is a good benchmark.