New Food Standards Agency data confirms high number of people struggling to afford food in the UK

• 8% of all adults, and 7% of working adults, are food insecure – lacking sufficient and secure access to food because of a lack of money
• A further 13% of adults are only marginally food secure food security

New survey data released today show that 8% of adults (~3.9 million) living in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland are food insecure.  That is, that in the past 12 months, they experienced having insufficient and insecure access to food because of a lack of money. These figures are from new survey data gathered from over 3,100 adults across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as part of the 2016 Food and You Survey commissioned by the Government’s Food Standards Agency.

Household food insecurity varies in its degree of severity. In addition to the 8% of food insecure adults, a further 13% of adults experienced more moderate, yet worrisome, indications of insecure food access. These included worries about food running out, experiences of this happening, and/or being unable to afford to eat balanced meals. Based on international evidence, all stages of food insecurity are associated with poor health and nutrition outcomes for adults and children.

The survey data reveals that rates of food insecurity were as high as 23% among adults in the lowest income quartiles and 47% among unemployed adults. But employment was not sufficient protection from food insecurity, as 7% of those in work were food insecure. Sixteen per cent of adults in work reported worrying their food would run out before they had money to buy more. Higher rates of food insecurity observed among those under age 35 (11-16%) might reflect higher rates of poverty among these age groups.

Responding to the report, Simon Shaw, Food Poverty Campaign Coordinator at Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, said: 

‘Whilst we welcome that the FSA has taken steps to measure household food insecurity, these new figures are a shocking sign of the number of people who struggle to eat a decent diet. Sadly from those we meet week in week out, this is an increasingly large group of people and includes those in low paid work. Whilst this data is useful, we now need central government to start to regularly measure the scale of this problem as other countries do. Only then can we provide the best responses and monitor the impact for those people most at risk.’

The questions used by the FSA to classify food insecurity are from a validated measurement tool used to monitor household food insecurity in the United States and Canada. These data are consistent with a recent report released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, which, based on a telephone survey of 1,000 adults in the UK, found that about 10% of adults experienced food insecurity in 2014. The data cannot directly be compared because survey methods and the classification of food insecurity differed between surveys. This said, the Food and You survey data confirm that the level of food insecurity is consistently high in the population.

Compared with the same measures used in a national survey of the Canadian adult population in 2014, rates of food insecurity are higher in the UK. The proportion of adults reporting being worry that food will run out was 8.9% in Canada, but nearly twice that in this survey, at 17% of adults.

Find out more aboust Sustain's campaigning on household food insecurity measurement here.