Food poverty 'will cause 375,000 early deaths'

Around 375,000 people will die prematurely in Ireland due to food poverty, it was claimed today.

Labour TD Mary Upton said: “There is a problem of famine-like proportions in this country, and food poverty in Ireland is causing enormous suffering.”

Food poverty is defined as the consumption of food whose nutritional content is too low to provide basic nutritional requirements so that a person’s health, cultural and social participation is adversely affected.

Ms Upton told the Institute of Food Science and Technology of Ireland that the problem particularly affected the elderly, lone parents, low-income families and Travellers, disabled people and asylum seekers.

She said: “19% of boys and 14% of girls always or often go to bed hungry.

“At its most basic, the experience of food poverty in Ireland is a breach of individuals’ rights under international law.

“The incidence of food poverty in Ireland has been well documented by agencies like the St Vincent De Paul, Cross Care and Combat Poverty.”

Ms Upton, the Labour Party Spokesperson for Agriculture and Food, said there were measures that could be taken to reduce the problem.

“We need to extend the provision of free meals, which fulfil evidence-based nutritional goals to every primary school child and every secondary school child in Ireland, who needs them,” she said.

“We need also to link social welfare rates to a percentage, perhaps 34%, of average industrial wage, rather than the absolute figures this government currently aims for.

“We also need more detailed investigations to develop and implement policies and strategic plans for the people who form part of those groups most at risk.”

Ms Upton said welfare agencies need to carry out pilot projects on families with low incomes to enable them to provide sufficient and varied food to meet all their nutritional requirements.

“We have to question the marketing and even the availability of certain foods and canned drinks, particularly to children,” she said.

“We need to roll-out programmes which teach basic cooking skills and increase knowledge about food to everyone who would like to avail of such programmes.

“I don’t suggest this will be easy, but I don’t imagine it would be impossible to overcome the structural problems inherent in such a programme if the political will was there.”