Those suffering from food insecurity said not having reliable access to food increased anxiety (72%), depression (67%) and stress levels (66%), and caused them to worry about the effects on their physical health (71%) and mental health (67%).
The Food Foundation has concluded that families across the UK are stuck in a cycle of poverty, food insecurity and poor mental health that it is hard to break out of, with children particularly affected.
Dame Emma Thompson, ambassador for The Food Foundation, said: “The fact that so many of our children are being forced to live in poverty and facing food insecurity is shocking. The long-term impact on their health, mental wellbeing, happiness, and life outcomes will be devastating.
“We need Government to do everything they can to prioritise feeding the future of this country. I hope that the recently announced Child Poverty Taskforce listens directly to the young people who have been affected to understand what will truly make a difference to their lives. And they find a way to make that difference.”
The Food Foundation is calling on the Government to ensure that their recently announced Child Poverty Taskforce addresses the damage being done to children's mental and physical health by food insecurity as a matter of urgency.
The charity is also calling on the Government to ensure that the cost of a healthy diet is taken into account when setting benefit levels and national living wage, to remove the two-child limit and to extend nutritional safety nets such as free school meals and healthy start.
Shona Goudie, policy and advocacy manager at The Food Foundation, added: “It is devastating to hear from families the horrific impact of food insecurity on their mental health. The stress and depression that the toll of not having secure access to an essential need like food takes on people is unimaginable.
“For adults, this can affect their ability to work making it impossible to break out of poverty, and for children, it can give them lifelong issues with food impacting on their physical and mental health. Labour expressed ambitions to ‘overhaul’ the approach to mental health in this country – this briefing clearly demonstrates that preventing food insecurity should be a key part of this new approach.”
