Writer and campaigner Jack Monroe has spoken about the humiliation she felt when the price of a jar of jam went up by 4p - and the label on the shelf edge was not updated - as she describes how exhausting it is to live on a £20 a week food budget. Jack, who has been writing and campaigning on the issue of food poverty for more than a decade, was speaking to the BBC about how hard it really is to feed yourself and your family in the current climate.
Visiting a food bank, she spoke to people who have had to go without food to ensure their children have something to eat. She said: "It's traumatising to sit down and realise that maybe if you skipped a couple of meals at least you'd be making sure your children are getting fed.
"And that's what I hear every single day from people. And doing that just once, as a person it changes you fundamentally."
Jack started her writing and campaigning on the problem of food poverty in the UK after having to use food banks 10 years ago.
Speaking to the BBC she said: "I did a tweet a few weeks ago about how I plan a £20 a week food shop, and it's a huge amount of work - even for me, I've been doing this for 10 years now.
"I did that not as a 'this is what everyone should be doing', but as a demonstration of 'this is what countless numbers of people up and down the country are doing, and this is how much work it is'. And it's exhausting."
Recalling her own experience she said: "When something like the shelf-edge label for a jar of jam is off and it goes up by 4p, and you've accounted for every single penny in your food budget, that 4p is a very, very humiliating experience, and one that as you may be able to tell hasn't left me 10 years later."
