UK hunger fears as record-breaking numbers receive food parcels

Published by Max Salsbury for 24dash.com in Communities and also in Featured, Health

A record-breaking 100,000 people have received emergency food parcels from UK foodbanks in the last six months.

Now Foodbank charity The Trussell Trust fears rises in food and energy prices this winter could force more Britons into a crisis where they cannot afford to eat.

The charity is anticipating feeding over 200,000 people in 2012-13 and has warned that this Christmas will be a desperate time for families on the breadline.

The trust's foodbank network has fed nearly 110,000 people across the UK since April 2012 - almost as many as the 128,697 it fed in the entirety of the 2011-12 financial year.

Around 13m people live below the poverty line in the UK.

The trust has released the statistics to coincide with World Food Day's campaign to 'fight hunger to reduce poverty'. Food and fuel costs, static incomes, high unemployment and changes to state benefits have been blamed by the trust for the rise in food package claims.

Trussell Trust Executive Chairman Chris Mould said: "The Trussell Trust has seen first-hand the devastating impact of rising food prices on people in poverty. It means that the budgets of people on the breadline are stretched even further so that even a small change in financial circumstances can push people into a crisis where they cannot afford food.

"Day in, day out, foodbanks already meet UK parents who are going without food to feed their children, or are forced to consider stealing to stop their children going to bed hungry. Further rises in food and fuel bills could see even more people in crisis turn to foodbanks."