Hull at high risk of food poverty
The city has the most number people at risk of not being able to afford to feed themselves, according to a new report.
People in Hull are at greater risk of finding themselves in food poverty than anywhere else in the country.
A new report's identified the city, along with Liverpool and Middlesborough, as having the highest number of communities where people are at high risk of struggling to afford to feed themselves.
23-year-old Andy Rugg from Hull is unemployed and rarely has money left over to eat - he says he's currently surviving on just one meal a day:
"I don't really eat, I just drink coffee and my doctor is concerned because a lot of the time I am living off ready meals which don't provide the necessary nutrition and I have lost weight but if you haven't got the money to buy proper food you have to survive on what you can get.
"All of my bills come before feeding myself because if I don't pay those bills I will be out on the streets, which I don't want.
"I go to the Warren Centre to get food parcels which isn't ideal. It has become a lot harder to get food parcels as some places only let you go around three times every three months."
JJ Tatten is from the Warren Project which provides food parcels to young people. He says it's an ever-increasing problem in the city:
"It's not just a case of them being hungry in the moment, it's also what it does to their physical development because young men for example don't finish growing until the age of around 23 so going hungry, it is damaging for their physical and mental health.
"Young people used to find it humiliating asking for food but they no longer find it so which would demonstrate it's now the norm and no longer a stigma. It's just a case of them being desperate and needing to ask for help.
"Providing these parcels is enough to keep the hunger away but it's not a long-term solution and it isn't solving the real problem that these young people are destitute and that's why we are tackling that issue and ensuring they don't find themselves where they're in a position where they are hungry."
The research also suggests one in 25 people in England cannot afford to feed themselves.
Dr Dianna Smith, from the University of Southampton, said food poverty was on the increase in the UK but there was no robust way of measuring it, unlike in the US or Canada.
The presence of food banks was not a good measure of food poverty as the places they were found did not relate to the areas of greatest deprivation, but tended to be where there was capacity for them, she said.
The researchers used information from Government departments and the census to estimate the percentage of people who could not afford to feed themselves and modelled the distribution of food poverty in neighbourhoods across England.
The team, whose study is under review for publication in the journal Health and Place, hope the model will help local authorities and organisations respond to the problem.
Pensioners living alone and families on a low income with children are particularly vulnerable to food poverty,'' Dr Smith said.
In low income families struggling to feed themselves, free school meals is a crucial lifeline and 'holiday hunger' is a real concern at present. It's crucial that we are able to identify where support is most needed.
The tools we have developed will allow for more effective local responses targeting high-risk groups in each area.
We hope that they will help inform local interventions to address food poverty, such as community supermarkets or meals for local residents.''