As the cost of living rises, an increasing number of people have been forced to turn to food charities for help.
CatholicCare's community kitchens, providing free cooked meals for those in need, have been serving almost double the number of meals compared to previous months.
CatholicCare director Gary Christensen said the charity had experienced a 45 per cent increase in the demand for their food services in recent weeks as a result of the increase in the cost of living.
"We have never seen an increase to this level. For instance at the Taree community kitchen we were giving out an average of 30 or 40 meals a day and now we are averaging 80 or 90 meals a day," said Mr Christensen.
The charity relies on donations of food from the community, cooked and prepared by volunteers.
The increase in demand for the service has had a flow-on effect on all aspects of the charity's operations.
"It's difficult to keep up with the demand. We rely on volunteers. The more services we need to provide, the more volunteers we need," Mr Christensen said.
"We also need more donations and the price increase on food is certainly making it more difficult for us to keep up our services."
CatholicCare currently has five community kitchens operating in the Hunter Region. Because of the increase in demand, the charity is now planning to open another one in east Lake Macquarie.
OzHarvest, a supplier of CatholicCare's food, have also been facing unprecedented demand for their services.
In the past month, OzHarvest have experienced a spike in the demand from partner charities calling for more food to be donated as the demand for their services increase.
OzHarvest Newcastle manager Richard Stark said he has never seen anything like it.
"64 per cent of people experiencing food insecurity are employed, but they just can't make ends meet. They face impossible choices of whether to put food on the table or pay their bills, rent, medical expenses, petrol or childcare," he said.
"The search function for food relief on our website is up 62 per cent on pre-COVID times.
"Things are really tough out there and the cost of living is just the latest in a line of issues and this is a problem that is not going away."
The waitlist for both OzHarvest and the charities they supply food to are becoming longer every week as more people seek support for the first time.
"A volunteer from a local charity receiving our food hampers last week said he had never seen more people looking for help with food relief and those living out of their cars," Mr Stark said.
