UK food surplus and security in low income communities

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"In the UK, 860,000 tons of food annually is wasted that is still edible. Less than 5% of this is being sent to charities."

This video explores challenges to achieving food security for low-income communities in wealthy countries, where people struggle to access food that is healthy, affordable and meets their social needs. The video looks at two community organisations in the UK that are using surplus food to improve the lives of the local residents.

The food provided has many advantages:

• • It increases people's ability to access filling and nutritious food, contributing to improved health.
• • It exposes people to new foods. This increases the diversity of their diets and provides an opportunity to move to food sources that have a lower climate and environmental impact.
• • It brings people together, reducing loneliness and isolation.
• • It helps people to have the confidence to get involved in their communities and make them places where they want to raise their children and grow old.

These messages are told by those people who access the support and are rebuilding the communities where they live.

To find out more about these issues around food surplus and security, see:

Capitalism has coopted the language of food – costing the world millions of meals

More than Just Food: Food Insecurity and Resilient Place Making through Community Self-Organising

Acknowledgements

Developed by: Dr Megan Blake, University of Sheffield

This film and the corresponding research was funded by two ESRC Impact Acceleration Grants.

Attributions

The Sun is Scheduled to Come Out Tomorrow music by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under CC-BY-4.0