Food poverty and health problems in the UK IntroductionFood poverty is mainly defined as the inability for acquiring or consuming a sufficient oradequate quantity of food in socially acceptable ways, or even the uncertainty that one will beable to do so. Most of the individuals who fall into food poverty tends to struggle as theirincome is unreliable or quite low. The reliance of UK on the food
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Food poverty and health problems in the UK
Introduction
Food poverty is mainly defined as the inability for acquiring or consuming a sufficient or
adequate quantity of food in socially acceptable ways, or even the uncertainty that one will be
able to do so. Most of the individuals who fall into food poverty tends to struggle as their
income is unreliable or quite low. The reliance of UK on the food banks is rising at an
alarming rate from last one decade but the number of individuals in need of emergency food
parcels hit new heights last year because of COVID-19 as uncountable people lost their jobs
or observed their incomes cutting down significantly. The two significant health problems
that are caused by the food poverty in UK are obesity and related metabolic results consisting
of type 2 diabetes and wide range of liver problems.
Throwing light on the above-mentioned discussion it can be stated that 5 million individuals
in the UK lived in food poverty between 2019-2020, as per to the Family Resources Survey.
In the year 2020, it was basically 8% of the entire population, but it is suggested by the Food
Foundation that the insecurity levels increased to 9% concerning the population in January
2021.
As per to the government data from 2020, it is informed that 92% of households in UK are
food secure. Furthermore, 8% pointed out themselves as food insecure, 4% of them reported
very low food security. On the contrary, as observed the extent of this problem is to a great
extent as the poverty rate in UK is highest in Europe. However, despite of being the 6th richest
country in the entire universe, a lot of people are struggling for accessing the food they need.
There is some progress that is made for ending hunger during the pandemic, but due to this
pandemic the food poverty has emerged at an alarming rate.
Food poverty is recently rising in UK and needs immediate attention. The cost of living crisis
is putting a lot of pressure on the ability of people for affording a healthy diet and it is set to
widen the inequalities of health.
References
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Heerman, W.J., Wallston, K.A., Osborn, C.Y., Bian, A., Schlundt, D.G., Barto, S.D. and
Rothman, R.L., 2016. Food insecurity is associated with diabetes self‐care behaviours and
glycaemic control. Diabetic Medicine, 33(6), pp.844-850.
Strings, S., Ranchod, Y.K., Laraia, B. and Nuru-Jeter, A., 2016. Race and sex differences in
the association between food insecurity and type 2 diabetes. Ethnicity & disease, 26(3),
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Tait, C.A., L’Abbé, M.R., Smith, P.M. and Rosella, L.C., 2018. The association between food
insecurity and incident type 2 diabetes in Canada: a population-based cohort study. PloS one,
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