Many of my fondest childhood memories involve food: the delight of a chocolate birthday cake, eating eggs for breakfast on the weekend, or walking home from school ravenous but knowing that my mum would be waiting for me with a warm, nourishing meal.
These heart warming recollections are far from universal. Many children here in the United Kingdom (UK) face serious chronic hunger. This is a hunger that is never treated appropriately with regular meals. Rather, it is only ever palliated. What must it be like to live each day not knowing where your next decent meal is going to come from?
Growing hunger
The last year put new questions into our minds as we traversed the daily hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many more parents started to ask, ‘How am I going to feed the kids this week?’ Though this terrible dilemma existed long before the pandemic, it’s now being asked in more UK homes than we could ever have imagined.
The UK’s pre-pandemic wealth gap has left our most vulnerable citizens exposed to the devastating social and economic impacts of the pandemic. Parents have faced job insecurity, loss of social support from friends and relatives, and a daily risk to health for those who have been unable to work from home. And these challenges piled in on top of their pre-pandemic difficulties in providing for their children. The end result has been higher rates of food poverty.
Invisible hunger
When our schools first closed, many of our most vulnerable children sat behind locked doors, unseen and unheard. We look back with disdain to the neglect of children by our Victorian ancestors, when Dickens gave voice to their pleas through the immortal Oliver Twist. Yet so many modern-day hungry children have gone unheard during the pandemic. Even if they have been heard though, who in a position of authority has really listened? We must speak up for these precious young lives.
Chronic hunger
The issue of childhood food poverty goes far beyond the daily misery and anxiety that comes from being chronically hungry. Children with growling bellies do not concentrate well on their lessons. They do not exercise well. They do not invite their friends round for tea. Malnutrition at a young age impedes healthy development and it leads to a multitude of both short-term and long-term health problems, including the current obesity epidemic. Our poorest families are unable to access and prepare enough healthy food.
Even now, as the pandemic in the UK starts to ease, there are no clear solutions for these families. The economic consequences of the pandemic will be long-lasting. There is ongoing debate between the government and local authorities about who should provide free school meals going forwards. Will they continue during future school holidays and, if so, in what form? Should meal packages contain one potato or two carrots? Whilst some provision is better than no provision, we can and must do better.
Ending hunger
Today in the UK there are children who will be going to bed hungry, as they do every night. We need to swallow our pride, stop blaming their parents, and accept that childhood food poverty is not limited to so-called ‘under-developed countries’. The way that we (do not) provide for the youngest members of our society is far from ‘developed’. We must not content ourselves with the promises and supposed quick fixes rushed out at the height of the pandemic. Instead we must push for committed action to bring about long-term societal change. Every child in the UK should have enough food to grow up happily into a healthy adult.
Dr Elinor Webb is a junior doctor working in the NHS and studying on the Health & Justice Track delivered by Integritas Healthcare for Christian Medical Fellowship