Have you noticed the line ups for the food banks in your city? (Or have you had to join one?) They are getting longer in a way we’ve never seen before. According to the stats, the number of people using food banks has doubled since last year and one in 10 people now rely on food banks in Toronto. Nationwide, the numbers using food banks have jumped by 32 percent from last year and 78 per cent since 2019. And there is no one type of person who relies on food banks: for example, many in line have full-time jobs. In other words, we are in the middle of a major food insecurity crisis. And as we ..read more

Food banks can operate on a large scale that requires expensive equipment and skilled management. Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images Most food banks, homeless shelters and other social services nonprofits constantly face hard decisions about how to use their limited funds. Should they spend as much as possible on meeting the immediate needs of people who need help? How much of their budget is appropriate to spend on new equipment, skilled managers and everything else required for an organization to thrive and endure? To help nonprofits tackle this quanda ..read more

Baby-Spider/Shutterstock The emptying of supermarket shelves during the COVID pandemic demonstrated the chaos that disruption to the UK’s food supply can provoke. Could this type of disruption have a different cause in the future? And what might the impact on society be? These are the questions we sought to answer in our new study, which involved surveying 58 leading UK food experts spanning academia, policy, charitable organisations and business. Our findings indicate that food shortages stemming from extreme weather events could potentially lead to civil unrest in the UK within 50 years. Sho ..read more

Food insecurity can impact both a mother’s ability or decision to breastfeed, and also the ability to purchase baby formula. (Shutterstock) The Canadian government issued a one-time grocery rebate in July, targeted at low-income Canadians. While the rebate provided some relief to people struggling with soaring inflation, it is far from enough to address the depth of poverty and intensity of food insecurity faced by the lowest income Canadians. During the most vulnerable time of life, mothers and infants living on welfare are experiencing food insecurity, which can have lifelong impacts. Govern ..read more

Troyan/Shutterstock The number of people using food banks in the UK has increased from 26,000 in 2008-09 to more than 100 times that in 2023. Nearly one in five British households experienced moderate to severe food insecurity in September 2022. In the financial year to April 2023, Trussell Trust, the largest (but not the only) network of food banks in the UK, distributed emergency food parcels to nearly three million people. Food banks provide free, pre-prepared parcels of food to those most in need. They have provided a great deal of support for low-income families, especially during the cos ..read more

Volunteers pitch in at the Second Harvest Food Bank in Irvine, Calif. in December 2022. Jeff Gritchen/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images Grocery prices soared by 11.8% in 2022 – the swiftest pace since the early 1980s. Rapid inflation is, naturally, leading to concerns that it’s getting harder for Americans to put food on the table. Indeed, Feeding America, a nonprofit that supports and connects roughly 60,000 food banks and pantries nationwide, has said that at least half of its members are seeing more demand for their services. And many journalists are reporting about st ..read more

Approximately one-third of 2SLGBTQ+ young people who participated in a nutrition study noted that they did not have any support systems in place to help them with their nutritional needs during the pandemic. (Shutterstock) Many people grow up without enough food to eat, even within Canada; a G7 country with one of the world’s most advanced economies. The Government of Canada defines food insecurity as the “inability to acquire or consume” a diet that is adequate in quality and quantity, or “the uncertainty that one will be able to do so.” Living with food insecurity negatively impacts both men ..read more

Fears over the cost of living have reached new highs in the UK after power regulator Ofgem confirmed that the energy price cap will nearly double from October to cost the average household £3,549 a year. There has been much discussion about what the government needs to do to help people and businesses this winter, but the crisis is still being presented as a short-term problem that will ease in due course. This is a misdiagnosis. We are actually living through a slow-motion crisis which has been decades in the making and is set to continue. Understanding what is really happening is a vital fir ..read more

On top of rampant inflation, strikes, business gloom and rising interest rates, bad news about our shopping habits was all but inevitable. The volume of goods being sold in the UK is now falling, according to the latest monthly data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), with food purchases the number one culprit. Consumer sentiment is at record lows for the second month running, according to the closely watched GfK consumer sentiment survey. People are now more downbeat than in the depths of COVID or even during the global financial crisis. With the UK economy already apparently in th ..read more

Eating well makes it easier to concentrate on learning. Karen Ducey/Stringer via Getty Images For the two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. public schools have been able to provide free meals for all students, including to-go meals in the summer. But on June 30, 2022, the federal waivers that expanded the school lunch program will expire. In May 2022, SciLine interviewed Marlene Schwartz, a professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut and the director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health, about how these changes will affect children and ..read more