A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
IMPACT SPECIAL Part 2: Affordable nutrition for thriving communities with Dr. Megan Blake
Welcome to the second part of our Slice of Bread and Butter podcast Impact specials! Once again, we’re joined by the brilliant Dr. Megan Blake, Senior Lecturer and Food Insecurity Scholar from the University of Sheffield. This time, we’re chatting about how food clubs are helping change eating habits and improve health.
We’ll be diving into the results of our recent annual survey, exploring how food clubs are shaking up cultural norms, boosting fruit and veg in everyday diets, and building stronger social connections (especially for older members of the community). Plus, we’ll be talking about how food clubs are providing much-needed support for working families facing financial struggles.
Welcome back to A Slice of Bread and Butter with Vic and Mark from the Bread and Butter Thing. We're a charity that delivers affordable food into the heart of deprived neighbourhoods to help nourish communities and act as a catalyst for change.
Speaker 2:We provide access to a nutritious, affordable range of food, which means that our members can save money on their shopping, feed their families healthily, as well as access other support to right in the heart of their communities.
Speaker 1:And this is where we share a slice of life about somebody involved in the bread and butter thing and hear about how they connect with us.
Speaker 2:Yes, and this is part two of our discussion with Megan. That's Dr Megan Blake. She's in the School of Geography and Planning in the University of Sheffield and if you're just coming to us now and listening to this before the other one, I suggest you go back to last week's and listen to that one first. Nice plug.
Speaker 1:Megan's great. She helps us take a deep dive into the results of our annual survey. We asked round about 80,000 of our members just over 70 questions about all sorts about their lives. So we discussed some of the initial findings with Megan, but there was so much that we had to put it into two episodes, and this is part two.
Speaker 2:And this time we're focusing on healthy diet and the wider benefits of food clubs. And again, plug number two for last week. Last week, we talked about the overall difference between food banks and food clubs. This week, we're looking more into the healthy side of things. So let's have a listen. So what else have you got that you've been pulling out of our stats?
Speaker 3:There's some interesting stuff about food and veg consumption. So most of the people who joined Bread and Butter did so because of their desire to stretch their budget enough to be able to have food. One of the things that's in there is that people are saying their diets have improved. There's a good proportion a quarter of people say their health hasn't. More than a quarter people are saying their diets have improved. There's a good proportion a quarter of people say their health hasn't. More than a quarter have said their health has improved. People are talking about trying new foods. There's a good percentage 5% which doesn't sound like much, but actually it's quite a lot of people said the main reason they now use bread and butter is because it enables to vary their diet, and a similar proportion said it's because they're able to eat more fruits and veg than they can get at home. It's certainly filling that gap in the local supply for them.
Speaker 3:We also see that most people aren't eating their five a day, but they're eating between two and four servings of fruit and veg a day.
Speaker 3:Most people are and most respondents 80% said they eat more than they had before, and the people who are eating more are the people who already were eating fruits and veg. So there'll be the few who just don't want, don't like vegetables, aren't food type. That's something that happens in all income categories, so there always will be those kind of people. But the fact that such a large proportion of people are eating them and eating more of them as a result, I think is a really important thing. And it's because it's making that food part of the offer and it's down to the work that you guys do that you have suppliers of fruit and veg and that the bags are full and that there's always at least one bag of fruits and veg, because it would be easy to move away from that. I mean, it would be a lot easier just to take in anything that anybody wanted to give you and just hand that out. The fact that you curate the stuff is key to its success.
Speaker 2:That is a mass way of being able to improve people's diets.
Speaker 3:What we do see sometimes not with bread and butter, but with some is that there's an awful lot of food that's high processed fat, there's not a lot of care in terms of what gets put out on the shelves and that if you want to change people's diets and improve their health, you need to ensure that it's not just a four-charge food bank but is in fact something that is managed. We can think back to markets, for example. When markets got reduced to how much rent can they earn for the council, they became spaces full of fixture, phone or cheap food. That wasn't particularly good for people and those fruit and veg stalls the stuff that goes off quickly disappeared from that space because the rents were the same and all the value of those marketplaces was in the rents.
Speaker 3:That can be extracted. If we think about food events, like a food club event, if it's curated carefully, there can be some of that other stuff, but if it's mostly the things that we want people to have that are going to improve their health, that's when the shifts happen. Otherwise, if it's just reduced to money, that's part of the reason why there's food deserts. When it's just about earning profit or just about money, then those riskier things that are healthier for us disappear from the landscape.
Speaker 1:So I've done some analysis on our bags from last year and 80% of the food that we push out is chill and fruit and veg. But when you look into that further, nearly half so high 40% is fruit and veg.
Speaker 3:See, I think that's really important. Making it not risky for people, something people can try and experiment with is super important. If you just gave them fruit and veg, I don't think that would be enough of a draw, but it's changing cultures and it's getting people used to, while they still experience those things that they value from before, making it normal. We know that makes a difference in terms of what people do.
Speaker 2:I see it the same way you do, Megan. I despair at the fact that so many different rates proposals or rent proposals from private or local government landlords mean that you end up with a profit driven culture for everything rather than looking at a community investment space, and hopefully they'll think about some of that in the rates reviews that are allegedly upcoming.
Speaker 3:Council's supposed to be the commons right. It's supposed to be for all of us. It's not supposed to be the cash cow that supports other things. You know, know, if we saw the market or these kind of public spaces where these events happen as part of our social infrastructure as important as hospitals, I think we'd be in a better position, rather than seeing them as ways of making money.
Speaker 2:We know that the communities that we go into can be food deserts, and even when they're not food deserts, the food that's's available there, frankly, is too expensive. But it's making sure that you're taking food in that isn't just chocolate and cakes and crisps.
Speaker 3:And beer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've all been to those kind of shops.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. We like the idea that people are eating more fruit and veg and getting access to more fruit and veg, etc. Has anybody done any studies on this, about how you can actually move the dial, or is that to come?
Speaker 3:That's to come. So I know of a couple of studies that are happening. One of them is looking at fruit and veg consumption, and part of their intervention study includes Fresh Street. But there's some other things that they're doing. So voucher schemes, public health folk like control trials.
Speaker 3:They like to know you know how much more exactly? And if you had a control group that wasn't giving this intervention and an experimental group that received it, what's the difference? Quite often it's like. So what's a significant, you know? Is it 1% more? Is that good enough? What's good enough? And they never really quite specify that. Is it 7%? What's a good benchmark? And I don't think we really know what would be enough of a change to make a longer change. Certainly, the evidence that you have is that people are eating more and that they are incorporating more fruits and veg, and moving toward more each day is an important thing, I think, and we did this survey a year ago and asked a similar question, and I think, if I remember correctly, the numbers are higher in terms of what people's regular fruit and veg consumption is, it is.
Speaker 3:So that to me also suggests some longer term shift, that it's become more.
Speaker 2:Last year when we did it Megan correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you did a study on it as well to say that there was something wider within the community as well, because if there were more people within the cohort of bread and butter membership eating fruit and veg, it also became more the norm within that community and therefore encouraged people within that community that weren't necessarily bread and butter members to eat more fruit and veg as well, because it just becomes a social norm, right?
Speaker 3:yeah, so we certainly saw that with the fresh street project.
Speaker 3:Anecdotally, we gave vouchers to households and there was no shop that offered fruits and veg and one of the market traders drove a van in once a week and he took the vouchers in exchange for fruits and veg and from that project we saw that people were buying in addition to the vouchers they received. They were buying additional fruits and veg from the guy in the van, but other people in that neighborhood who weren't part of the project were coming and buying fruits and veg from the van. So it was making it worth his effort to go in and sell the fruits and veg because he knew that each week there'd be people who would come and visit him. Sadly, when we had to close that project down, the fruits and veg guy stopped going into the neighborhood because there wasn't enough consistent demand to make the market and it hadn't been long enough for eating fruits and veg to become normalized within that space. So it's creating a habit and creating what's normal. It's just the work that has to be done. It's not something that happens overnight.
Speaker 1:So, given that the majority of our members find out about bread and butter and start to use us because of word of mouth, because their friend, family, neighbor have told them about it, that kind of speaks to the point about making healthy eating more acceptable within the community.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. People do food talk and they compare themselves to other people and they want the best for their families. And when you start reframing fruits and they want the best for their families, and when you start reframing fruits and veg as the best for your family, it somehow becomes important. It becomes a closer value, a way of expressing care and so forth.
Speaker 1:I've read through all of the quotes that came along with the survey and I've pulled out some that represented different things about bread and butter, but there's one that really stood out to me, which was about a family in Warrington in Birchwood who were saying that they were eating more healthily, and actually having food that they could cook with meant that they were cooking at home, and not only were they eating more healthily, but that that had made the family come together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that doesn't surprise me, and certainly people did say that they are cooking more at home. Something like 70% said they're doing that more than they had done before. What we don't know from that 70% is that if people were already doing that a lot, it just is making it easier for them to do that or the fact that they weren't doing it and now they are doing it. Moments for people to interact and engage with each other have a whole lot of value, not just mentally but chemically within our bodies. They make changes that actually promote healing and all sorts of. I mean that sounds a bit weird, but there is real science that proves or demonstrates that point about what your brain does when you eat with others, when you break bread together.
Speaker 2:It's coming back to that isolation piece, isn't it? I've seen from, dare I say, other academics, megan, typically when we eat together we eat healthier.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we can see this in studies of older people and their health. So older people are at a very high risk of malnourishment, particularly older people who live alone in the community, and you can understand why that might be. You know you can't be bothered to cook, particularly if you lived for many, many years cooking and eating with someone else and then you're on your own. It's cooking for somebody. There's that structure that gets created by eating with others. When you don't have that structure, it's really easy to eat a couple of crackers and biscuits in front of the TV and then you know you're a little depressed or a little bit sad. So you just sit and eat the ice cream, the whole container of it, and then you don't want to eat the tomatoes and you know, whatever casserole that you've made pasta thing, you know it's just no, I'm with you, I get it. Structure is really important for our health and we know that from older people, and that is absolutely about eating with others.
Speaker 2:Is there anything else that you think we should be pulling out of the survey that you've seen? That would be of interest that we haven't covered.
Speaker 3:So I think there will be more things to come, but I would absolutely say the things that you are doing, that bread and butter is doing for people is it's improving community cohesion, which is important for things like fear of crime. People are less afraid of their neighbors when they know their neighbors. It's doing really important things for health and nutrition. People are feeling healthier, which means, then, there's going to be less of this going to the doctor For older people. There's less of the kind of risk associated with living on your own because you've got people looking in after you. If you fall, there's somebody who can help you. You've got people you can call, so there's less isolation. And that's really important. From a wider public perspective about how people live in that whole community and the knowledges that they have about what counts as food and what doesn't, what is good eating and what isn't, what's possible and what's not, is so big and so important. This isn't just about making change for an individual family.
Speaker 1:It's about making change for a whole community clearly there's two big things here people looking to join, to stretch the budgets, but also to improve the diets yes, I think that's a really big thing for our members that they can access the food that they'd like to eat, that they know that they should eat at an affordable price near them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm going to say some poncy words now and then we'll talk about them. Dietary diversity OK, what does that mean?
Speaker 1:Eating lots of different stuff, trying new foods.
Speaker 2:Exactly Trying new things, and food clubs are such a great way to be able to do that. So many of our members are afraid of the budgetary challenges of buying a new type of fruit or vegetable, say that they don't want to take home to their family for it to then sit in the fridge and go to waste and I see it differently to that.
Speaker 1:But you're right. I think there's two ways of looking at it. If you're on a really tight budget and you've got, I always say, two teenage boys at home that are eating you out of house and home and you've got to fill them up or else they're hangry and unbearable, then you would never go to the supermarket and go oh, blueberries are in season. Let me spend £2.50 on a punnet of blueberries instead of getting them both a pizza yeah, it's a good shout, vic, both of us having young men in our households.
Speaker 2:I totally understand that as well yeah but going to the fruit and veg bit as well, 80% of our members saying that they eat more fruit and veg than before. Yeah, I mean, I would love to see how we can actually turn this into long-term health and well-being stats. There's got to be a way of putting a number on this, because the number of people that say they're feeling better, they're losing weight and so on and so forth we're going to have to find a way of being able to try and track that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we have some numbers from the last survey about people saying that their diet had improved, and I think around about 30% say that their health has improved as a result of shopping with bread and butter. So it's not a massive number, but health is huge and there's lots of factors that could impact on that, so I think it's still something that we should be proud of.
Speaker 2:I think it's almost like a hypothesis, right. We kind of know that this is something that a food club brings to a community, but somebody needs to do this. Health research study yeah.
Speaker 1:So on the fruit and veg one of our members said, helped me to feed myself and my family instead of skipping meals. I would also never buy fruit or veg as they were too expensive and I'd class them as a luxury I couldn't afford, isn't?
Speaker 2:that shocking that fruit and veg is a luxury item. Isn't this what we keep talking about? The access to affordable, nutritious food. Everybody wants it and I'm fed up of hearing too many people say that people will just eat rubbish food because it's easy and it's there. It's not true.
Speaker 1:It's because all the other stuff is too bloody expensive yeah, the healthy calorie is far more expensive than the unhealthy calorie and the food foundation are also doing work on this and saying exactly the same thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:This has to be part of the government's food strategy for 2025, right yeah, affordable, nutritious food has to be high on the agenda for low-income communities.
Speaker 1:You'd think it would be a basic human right, really, wouldn't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I think the argument has always gone well, let's just get calories in them first. And actually, because of the 20 years that we've had of that, or even possibly longer, we are suffering the consequences of that, with all of the health issues that the NHS are having to deal with now Totally.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're going to lighten the tone again and go back to one of our members that was slightly soapboxy. Next one a member said it's given them extra fruit and veg that they can't afford, especially in the third and fourth week of a month when they get the benefit at the end of each month.
Speaker 2:Perfect Budget stretching go, go go.
Speaker 1:And then I love this one. This is one that really got me when I was reading through all of the messages from members in the survey. It's given me a chance to pay my bills and feed my family. I don't have an empty fridge anymore. I have cooked more foods and meals because I get a wider range of food that I couldn't normally afford. I can feed my family a good meal. It has brought me and my family closer together because we eat together. Wow, yeah.
Speaker 2:Just pause a moment and reflect on that, because they do say eating together is the healthiest way of eating, not only because of that reduced isolation of everybody eating tv, dinners in their own rooms and all the rest of it, but also because the studies show that if you all eat together, you eat healthier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, win-win, and I love the fact that we can actually do that for people yeah, because the impact on mental health and the impact on how you feel about yourself and how you connected you feel to your family is just huge yeah.
Speaker 2:So bringing affordable fruit and veg into low-income communities doesn't just change the eating habits of our members the people that actually access our food but it starts to change cultural norms within the wider community and the wider community starts to eat more fruit and vegetables yeah how much more evidence does government need to actually understand that access to affordable, healthy fruit and veg is massive in reducing budgets for the nhs and improving people's lives?
Speaker 1:yeah, ticks a lot of boxes all round. Pretty wow, when you think about the impact that people tell us about. And this isn't us just being proud of the team and all the amazing work they do. This is what our members are telling us yeah, exactly, we're seeing improved cooking.
Speaker 2:Two-thirds of our members or more are cooking better at home. They're eating healthier. You know Megan was saying how it's got mental and physical health benefits.
Speaker 1:It's huge it is, and being food insecure is really stressful. So yeah, in that alone it makes a big difference. The other thing on accessing healthy, affordable food where people live is that 50% of our respondents so half of our members that responded to the survey said that they could not access affordable, healthy food easily where they lived, without the bread and butter thing.
Speaker 2:Do you think we're ramming the point home yet? Do you think people have got it yet? Access to affordable, nutritious food is a must. Yeah, sorry, I feel. Three times I've stepped down off my soapbox and managed to get back up on it okay, should we uh move on to budget stretching yes I'm going to provide a bit of context here.
Speaker 1:So our members are really diverse. We have a whole range of people that shop with us. There is not a stereotypical bread and butter member, other than they are making a really great choice for their families and generally have a lot going on in their life anyway. So they're time poor, they're really busy, they're doing everything that the society wants of them, and I think that the three member insights that I'm going to give you now really really demonstrate that hugely.
Speaker 2:I can't wait now.
Speaker 1:Number one one of our members said using bread and butter allowed me to return to education and start a teacher training course. They struggle financially with funding, but bread and butter allows them to save money on food.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, these really are compelling arguments, aren't they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, somebody wants to go be a teacher, giving back to society, doing an amazing job, but they can't afford to feed themselves properly whilst doing the training Ready for the next.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Really helps bridge that gap, and being able to use the healthy start card is massive.
Speaker 2:I'm able to provide for my daughters better and they don't realize what is going on which is perfect, because we always like to think that we're part of somebody's everyday shopping and not this distressed thing. I'd much rather all our members treat us like an everyday store so that they build a relationship up with us and then we can do all the other wonderful stuff around wraparound services etc. But essentially that's how we see our members. We see them as customers and we treat them in any way, shape or form like every other retailer would.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I think the thing for me on that one is that they're wanting to protect their daughters from the stress and the lack of finance that they've got.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's almost like they don't want that to be a burden for the kids, so shopping with us helps them mitigate that. And then the last one goes back to the point that I made before. I think is really good. So most people think that I should be able to afford things because I am a nurse, but that is far from the truth. Bread and butter has gone some way into stopping the stress and worrying about where the family's next meal is coming from, more so as the cost of living is so high and I'm constantly living on my credit cards to get by.
Speaker 2:I'm really shocked at that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it just demonstrates how far food insecurity is penetrating the demographics. Yes, if a fully qualified working nurse is using bread and butter to get by, that tells you something.
Speaker 1:And we are going some way into removing some of the stresses.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's still a lot, and the rest of life is on a credit card. It's hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and how many times have you heard it where we're talking about debt relief orders and credit cards? It is a pattern of behavior and we have said it for the past couple of years post pandemic. It's like the pandemic was the earthquake and the financial tsunami is coming and it's building and building and people are just not listening or looking at it. Building and people are just not listening or looking at it. And food inflation is still huge and is forecast to continue to rise above average inflation and food's just going to get more and more expensive totally.
Speaker 1:And you know that nurse is not alone 45 of our members are behind on payments. Of that 45, the majority 60 are behind on their utility bills. So this is electric gas, water yeah the people who say that they're in debt or owed money. The initial reason for getting into debt was that they were most likely to not have enough money to cover day-to-day costs.
Speaker 2:This isn't for the conservatory, or a lovely holiday or christmas they're in that vicious cycle of paying the minimum they can on the credit card and, just yeah, sticking their head down for the conservatory or a lovely holiday or Christmas. They're in that vicious cycle of paying the minimum they can on the credit card and just sticking their head down for the next month and just trying to get away with minimum. And it's growing every month.
Speaker 1:And it's important. I think one of the things that our members find when they come and shop with us is that they are with people that are in the same situation as them, so they don't feel like I'm the only person in debt.
Speaker 2:No, okay, so you're being a stats wizard this week. Do you have the stats around net income after household bills?
Speaker 1:So, after paying housing and energy bills each month, 13% of our members say that they have no money left.
Speaker 2:13% doesn't sound a lot, but we surveyed 10,000 respondents, so that's over a thousand people, right?
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's no money left, just a house and energy bills. There's no going to work, there's no clothing the kids feeding the kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is why they're all heading towards the credit cards, right?
Speaker 1:so you didn't think 13 was a lot. I'll raise you then. Almost a third, 30 odd percent, say that they have less than 50 quid for their household and when we talk about a household size, on average that's 2.73 people okay.
Speaker 2:so let's put that together and say that's about half of our members that are saying that they've got 50 quid a month to live on and that's for the household, right? That's not per person.
Speaker 1:And the average household is just under three people, because you can't have 0.73 of a person.
Speaker 2:That's about £1.65 a day per family, not per person. Less than half the price of a cappuccino at Costa or wherever is what they live on. And let's not forget that the majority of our members are from working families as well. This isn't just people on benefits. This is low paid working families.
Speaker 1:So, not surprisingly after what we've just discussed, almost all of our members report that bread and butter helps them save money on buying food.
Speaker 2:I felt like saying no shit, sherlock. Then.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's a positive, but shouldn't really be a thing.
Speaker 2:There's a stark reality in those residual income figures. That's really scary. Yeah, I think overall. I think what we're saying basically is that there is compelling evidence that food clubs improve diets, which ergo improve health and stretch budgets. But let's face it, as the people at Citizens Advice would tell you, the majority of our members have got negative budgets. No matter what you do and no matter what support you give them, they're just not earning enough or getting enough income into those households.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we will continue to do what we do yes, and I was chatting to some of our cddos, who are the guys that do the hard work in the community today, and some new cddos that have been with us ranging from two months to two weeks. One of them and I'm sure he won't mind me saying his name, justin, who's up in the chilton warehouse said this is the best job that he's had, because he's worked in hospitality before and he's never felt like he's made a difference and already, whilst it's hard work and he's out in all weathers, he's seeing that he's impacting people and that's lit the fire in his belly, which is brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker 2:So if you'd like to know more about the bread and butter thing and what we get up to, you can find us at team tbbt, on instagram and twitter, or on linkedin or online at thebreadandbutterthingorg or maybe even tiktok, I think I'm too old for that yeah, and if you have any thoughts or feedback on the podcast, or on the survey for that matter, and if you want to learn more about it, you can get in touch with us by email at podcast at breadandbutterthingorg.
Speaker 1:Lastly, we're always open to new members at all of our hubs. If you or someone you know would benefit from our affordable food scheme, you can find your nearest hub on the Become a Member page of the website.
Speaker 2:And please do all the things that podcasts ask you to do Like us, subscribe, leave us a review, share us with your friends, chat about us on social and tell your mum.
Speaker 1:OK, we'll see you next week. Bye.
Speaker 2:Bye.
