Food poverty

Here at Fintry Community Garden, it is our goal to be able to offer fresh, whole fruit and vegetables to all, but most importantly ones that are free. Why you might ask. Some believe fruit and vegetables are cheap enough to purchase, so if that's the case, why don't as many people as we would like do so?

One of our collaborations has been with the local church, who in response to the pandemic, started a food larder with an aim to offer food parcels to the locals of the area. We as a community garden started to donate harvested vegetables to the food larder, but on discussions with the staff, it was clear some people were avoiding, or just not choosing the items.

I had been doing an assignment (as a nursing student) on the social determinants of health (The social determinants of health are non-natural differences amongst people, that are created and maintained by socioeconomic policies and legislation, often created and determined by governments for example. There are several factors that are classed as social determinants such as social class, stress, early life, social exclusion, food, addiction, working status and housing) and the penny clicked. Not everyone has the skills, knowledge or even resources to do anything with fruits and vegetables, but particularly vegetables, as most of them need prepared and cooked. But what if a person is not sure how to cook beetroot, or doesn't know what an artichoke is. It might even be that a person or family has to choose between eating and heating, or fuel poverty (According to the Office of National Statistics, there were 25300 excess winter deaths between 2007 and 2008 due to this fuel poverty). A shocking reality that some face regarding the cost of heating their home superseding the ability to cook or heat up food.

There are vast numbers of people in the UK living without a basic appliance. Fridges, freezers, washing machines and cookers are all be classed as a basic appliance, yet people interviewed by a charity, Turn2us, explained the struggle of not having one or more basic appliance. Turn2us is a poverty charity based in the UK that carried out the study and aims to source financial grants and assistance for those in a crisis and at risk of poverty. Their head of communications states that a person's whole wellbeing is affected by their financial problems. Not having a fridge for example in a house can prevent the occupier from being able to purchase, store and provide fresh, nutritious meals for themselves and cohabitants, possibly including children. Having to attend the supermarket more frequently also due to lack of a fridge or freezer was reported to be a difficult task for those who had mental health issues such as anxiety, which could isolate them further and risk their nutritional intake.

A more recent new initiative set up in the area is the Roundhouse Community Kitchen. They are a project that aims to use food donations and surplus food to create meals for people in the local area, which therefore eliminates the issues of skills, knowledge and resources, with some of their meals being able to be eaten cold. We have recently been collaborating with them by donating some of our harvest such as beetroot and onions which the team have then used to make nutritious meals for locals. Connections such as these between us, the food larders, community kitchen and the likes are key in an era where there is poverty even within the working class cohorts of people. Access to food is a basic human right, yet many people don't have adequate access, impacting their health. It is our joint aim to tackle and eliminate this.