Household food insecurity in the UK: data and research landscape

Abstract

Household food insecurity is a widely used concept in high-income countries to describe “uncertainty about future food availability and access, insufficiency in the amount and kind of food required for a healthy lifestyle, or the need to use socially unacceptable ways to acquire food.” (Anderson, 1990). In the UK, research focused on food insecurity was relatively rare before the rapid spread of food banks and growing usage from 2010 but since then, has burgeoned (Loopstra and Lambie-Mumford, 2023). There was very little peer-reviewed literature on the topic in the UK when DEFRA commissioned a Rapid Evidence Assessment of evidence on food aid in the UK (Lambie-Mumford et al 2014), but there is now an established field of research on household food insecurity and responses to it that spans disciplines including public health and nutrition, social policy, politics, geography, food policy and systems. Government monitoring of food insecurity has also evolved over this time, with the FSA first including a food insecurity measure into the Food and You survey in 2016, and the DWP including the same in the FRS from 2019/20. The Agriculture Act 2020 requires the UK government to report on food security to Parliament at least once every three years, and the UK Food Security Report that is produced to fulfil this duty now includes reporting on data from these government surveys (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, 2021). This rapidly developing field has resulted in a varied landscape of research and evidence on food insecurity. The FSA has an interest in advancing its research on household food insecurity in the UK as part of its strategy. The FSA works to protect consumers’ wider interests in relation to food, and the FSA strategy 2022-2027 recognises that people are worried about food affordability and insecurity and therefore they will continue to consider the impact of these issues across all work. To inform the FSA’s approach to future collaborations and research priorities on food insecurity in the UK, it was deemed a priority to first gain greater clarity on the scope of the research landscape already in existence in the UK. Thus, this research was commissioned to give the FSA an overview of household food insecurity data and the landscape of the type of research questions related to food insecurity that have been explored in the UK context. More specifically, the aims of the project were: to scope the landscape of research and data on household food insecurity in the UK, covering that produced by academia, civil society, and government departments and including publicly available datasets; and to identify the key gaps in the research landscape and inform priorities for the FSA’s work on household food insecurity going forward. Importantly, the task was not to describe the findings of this large body of research, but rather to identify the landscape of research questions asked in relation to food insecurity and the approaches taken to answer these. The areas focused on were research on definition, concept and measurement of food insecurity, drivers of individual/household-level access to food, experiences of different population sub-groups, outcomes related to food insecurity including those related to food safety, and responses to food insecurity at the national/local level (including those by third sector organisations and local and national governments).

How effective were government food box schemes for those who were shielding during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom? Local and national stakeholder perspectives

“…Among these, four were selected because they had local Food Power network alliances working in them, to allow us to explore the impact of these networks in the wider study. Detailed methodological appendices and reports have been published relating to both aspects of the research (6,(21)(22)(23) .…”

Food banks: Understanding their role in the food insecure population in the UK

“…The ability of food banks to provide delivery of food parcels may enhance access for people with disabilities or who live in rural areas (67) . During the COVID-19 pandemic, case study research in local authorities across the UK found that a switch to delivery of food parcels was a common adjustment to food bank services during lockdowns (70) . Whilst this was largely viewed as a positive change to enable food parcel access for people unwilling or unable to go out during this period, stakeholders engaged in this research also highlighted that for populations without fixed addresses or unable to make contact to request a delivery, the switch from dropping in when food banks were open to delivery may have been a barrier to receiving food bank food parcels over this period (70) .…”

“…For example, when cases of COVID-19 began spreading in the UK in March 2020, resulting in warnings for clinically vulnerable groups to stay at home and not leave home for any reason, many food bank volunteers were not able to continue working in food banks, as the volunteer profile was typically older people, who were at higher risk of illness from COVID-19 (74) . Many food banks had to rapidly find new volunteers to meet increasing demand at that time (70) .…”

“…These variously included food growing projects, social supermarkets, community centres providing low-cost meals and food box schemes. Case studies of local responses to concerns about food insecurity over the COVID-19 pandemic also documented a wide range of food provisioning activities in local areas (70) .…”

“…Some projects are not targeted to help people facing an acute need for food, such as food growing projects. However, many food projects suggest they are an alternative to food banks, emphasising participatory elements such as operating a membership and providing social benefits alongside the provision of food (70,73) . However, to our knowledge, potential differences and overlaps between people receiving help from food banks and using other forms of food provision has not been charted in the UK.…”