Here is an uncomfortable truth to ruin your day: there are more than twice the number of foodbanks in the UK than McDonald's restaurants. Yes, really. The fast food chain has around 1,300 outlets in the country while the government estimates we have more than 1,400 Trussell Trust food banks, on top of at least 1,172 independent food banks.
Now the cost of living squeeze has compounded this already bleak picture. In July it emerged that members of NHS staff in Wales had been sent an email from bosses with advice on how to access foodbanks. Meanwhile foodbanks in Caerphilly and Swansea told WalesOnline that they are running out of food as demand soars and fewer people can afford to donate.
For a clearer idea of how bad things have got in the last year I paid a visit to the headquarters of Cardiff Foodbank – a Trussell Trust food bank – where all the donated food arrives before its allocated to eight distribution centres around the city, which is where people pick up their parcels. The HQ is located in a big warehouse in Cardiff Bay Business Park where all the donations are organised in crates.
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The food used to be stored in much smaller premises but moved at the end of last year as it expanded. It's clear why more space was needed. The foodbank's project manager, Emma Shepherd, shares with me some stark statistics: comparing May 2021 to May 2022, there was a 39% increase in the number of people the foodbank helped in a month.
"In May 2021 we fed 948 food parcels – 616 adults and 332 children. In May 2022 we fed 1,321 people – 815 adults and 506 children. Single people make up about 50% of the people we give food parcels to," said Emma. Thankfully, they haven't yet seen a fall in donations per month – in fact they have increased in the last year. However this increase is only slight (about 8%) and hasn't matched the increase in the amount of people needing to use the service.
"In May 2021 we had 10,488kg of stock that came through and in May 2022 we had 11,329kg," Emma said. She added that her team had been doing some "crisis planning" as they anticipate a "huge increase in demand" for their services as the cost of living squeeze worsens and the recession hits.
"We've been looking at the worst-case scenario like what if demand tripled? What impact would that have on our stock, on our volunteers, on our centres?" she continued. "Another scenario that we're looking at is what if people stopped donating? Because that's a distinct possibility that people just won't have the money to buy a bit of extra food and put it in a collection point in the supermarket."
So it seems food parcels will become a reality for more and more people. But what exactly is in food parcel and what is it like to rely on one in an emergency? I decided to replicate a typical food parcel and live off one. But first, during my visit, Emma and her colleagues clarified some misconceptions I had about the service.
One emergency parcel is only supposed to provide enough food for three days and there are options for one person up to more than five people. It would be a "red flag" if someone accessing the service had more than three parcels every six months as it would suggest they were not getting the support they need.
You also won't be forced to eat food you don't like or can't eat. There is a general list of tinned and long-life products that are included but there are several variations of this. Cardiff Foodbank provides parcels to cater for gluten-free, halal, diabetic, vegetarian, and vegan diets as well as ones which cater for the different appliances (or lack thereof) which people have – for example, a pack with cold foods only if someone doesn't have access to any cooking appliances whatsoever or a "kettle pack" if someone only has access to a kettle.
"I think with the cost of living crisis we're going see an increase in people not being able to afford to put their cooker on or even having energy cut off. So we're anticipating that we'll be having more requests for cold packs," said Emma.
Volunteers at the distribution centre can swap certain items if you don't like them as long as other options are available. It's also worth noting if there are extra items that wouldn't normally go into a parcel people can take their pick from them at the distribution centre. Emma shows me a box of such miscellaneous items including ketchup, oil, olives, and garlic puree.
"There will also be sometimes toiletries at the foodbank centre which people can just help themselves to," she added. Armed with this knowledge I went about replicating a parcel very similar to an example of one Emma showed me during my visit. I first included things I already had at home then supplemented this with extras from the supermarket.
What is in a standard food parcel for a single person?
Here are all the items in a standard food parcel for a single person from Cardiff Foodbank and alongside them the products I had.
- Two tins of soup - one Heinz cream of tomato soup, one Baxters vegetarian country garden soup
- Two tins of tomatoes - one Napolina peeled plum tomatoes, one Grower's Harvest chopped tomatoes
- Two tins of beans - two Heinz Beanz
- Two tins of vegetables - one tin of sliced carrots (Asda's own brand), one tin of Green Giant Sweetcorn
- Two small tins of meat (or equivalent veggie option) - I went for the veggie option, as I don't like tinned meat. I chose a tin of Asda's plant based chickpea and lentil dahl. There was only a big tin on offer so I bought this as an equivalent to two small tins
- One small tin of fish - one tin of Asda brand skipjack tuna chunks in sunflower oil
- A 500g bag of pasta or rice - 500g bag of Asda brand tagliatelle
- One tin of fruit - a tin of Del Monte peace slices in juice
- One tin of rice pudding - a tin of Ambrosia rice pudding
- A small pack of biscuits - a 250g pack of chocolate-covered malted milk biscuits (Asda own-brand)
- A small box of cereal - a 280g box of honey Cheerios
- 40 tea bags or one jar of coffee - a pack of 40 Tetley tea bags
- One litre of fruit juice - one litre of Asda brand long-life orange juice
- One litre of UHT milk - one litre of Asda brand long-life semi-skimmed milk
Extra items, when available, can also be added to this list. This includes one sauce, such as pasta sauce, and one chocolate or sweet packet – though I didn't include these in my parcel. For three days I saw what it was like to live off just these products. For transparency I used some salt and pepper to flavour certain foods but otherwise stuck to the products as they were.
Of course my experience cannot be compared to someone who actually needs the food parcel and I had my normal diet to look forward to when my three days were up. But it provides a small insight into the reality of what many – too many – people are forced to go through in tough times like these.
Day one
I keep things simple on the first day and it's not too different meals I would normally eat. I begin with a bowl of Cheerios and milk, with a glass of orange juice. I know some people are put off by the taste of long-life milk but I don't mind it at all.
Feeling a bit peckish mid-morning, I have a cup of tea with two of the biscuits. Lunch fills me up nicely: a big bowl of pasta with half the tin of tuna and about a third of the tin of sweetcorn. I would normally season this with a bit of lemon, or maybe add some mayo, but it turns out a little sprinkle of pepper does the job nicely.
I feel hungry again in mid-afternoon and have two more biscuits with a glass of orange juice. Dinner – a bowl of tomato soup – feels inadequate. Volume-wise, it's quite filling, but it's not enough in calorie terms – a whole can is just 202 calories. I'm craving bread to go with it. Thankfully my large lunch and the biscuits I've snacked on mean this light dinner is just about enough.
Day two
I decide to experiment a bit more on the second day. I can't do much else for breakfast, so it's the same as yesterday, and another mid-morning snack of biscuits and more orange juice. But for lunch I spruce up the vegetarian soup. It has veggies and rice in it, which feels more substantial than yesterday's tomato offering, but a look on the back tells me it's still very poor in terms of calories – just 144 for the whole tin.
Even though it looks like enough I know it's definitely not enough on its own. So I add two tagliatelle nests to the soup as it boils, and attempt to roast some of the sliced carrots in the oven to add a sort of garnish. The result is pretty good – a bit like a noodle soup with lots of different textures. The carrots could have done with some oil to crisp them up in the oven though.
The pasta and carrot additions were better than nothing but still probably didn't add that many calories to the meal. So, unsurprisingly, I'm pretty hungry again through the afternoon. I fill a corner in my stomach with a cup of tea and two more biscuits and decide to try out the rice pudding and peaches.
To make this mid-afternoon dessert a bit more exciting I caramelise the peaches in their own sugary juice in the frying pan, which ends up being really tasty. I can still fit in a big dinner though and decide to make a tomato sauce to go with some pasta, the rest of the tuna, and more of the sweetcorn.
I follow a hack I saw online to eke out more flavours from tinned tomatoes. Using both tins I drain the juice from the tomato bits into a bowl through a strainer and put the solids into a roasting tin. I chop up the rest of the carrots from early into small pieces and mix them with the tomato mush. I roast this in the oven with a bit of salt and pepper before putting the roasted concoction into a pan with the tomato juice and simmering everything together.
I mix my attempt at a sauce in with the pasta and sweetcorn and add tuna on top. It's not the best but it's okay and fills me up. I've made a huge batch so store the rest in my fridge to use up tomorrow.
Day three
For the third and final time I have cereal and milk for breakfast with a glass of orange juice. I have a cup of tea mid-morning and munch on my now obligatory handful of biscuits.
Lunch is the rest of the pasta I made for dinner last night but without the tuna it feels inadequate and admittedly rather tasteless despite my attempts to eke out flavour. I treat myself to the rest of the rice pudding and peaches to make up for it as well as more biscuits and juice.
The tinned chickpea and lentil dahl is a nice surprise for dinner. It's flavoured nicely and I'd probably buy it again in the future – as a nice topping for a baked potato perhaps. At first I think I may need some pasta on the side to bulk out the meal but I figure the large amount of protein-packed chickpeas and lentils are filling enough so I just add the last bit of sweetcorn instead.
Final thoughts
I've made it through the three days and it's definitely clear a food parcel is merely a quick fix in an emergency situation, as the foodbank staff explained. Though the volume of the food wasn't a problem – I still had some food left over, especially pasta and biscuits – the low calorie content of some of the food, particularly the soups, meant ultimately I didn't feel that full up. Of course it should be noted you could end up with a creamy chicken soup, for example, which would probably be more calorific than a vegetable one.
Emma said a parcel is designed to be as nutritionally balanced as it can be using tinned food – but it could be better. "Some foodbanks supplement this with fresh food," she said. "That's something we're looking at at the moment – a review of our food parcel. We're working with a nutritionist to see how we can make it better, more nutritious."
I think this change is definitely needed because one the biggest things I noticed is that there didn't seem to be much protein, which is more filling than carbs – explaining why I felt hungry so quickly after my meals and felt the need to snack more than I usually would on biscuits, juice, and tea.
The beans would have been a good protein source but these were actually the only product I didn't touch at all because I had no idea what to pair them with. I could have only eaten them with toast or perhaps some tinned potatoes. The thought of them on their own with my only carb source – pasta – turned my stomach. I considered adding them to the tomato pasta sauce I created but was worried it would ruin it and I'd end up binning it. I think I would have resorted to eating them warmed up on their own. Thankfully the rest of the food was enough to go without them.
It seems I'm not alone in feeling that beans aren't the best option for a food parcel. "I met with an asylum-seeking group the other day and they were saying that baked beans are so British," said Emma. "So we're aware that this is a very British diet and we're working with some other organisations in Cardiff as part of our food parcel review to see if we can offer different options for different cultures."
Finally I would also like to think most people receiving the food parcel would have – or can ask for – at least a few other supplies like oil, spices, and perhaps some bread to bulk out and enhance the products provided in the parcel. While it's doable to live on the plain ingredients alone and eke out more flavour with certain cooking techniques and mixtures it's tough to get good results and frankly rather miserable.
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