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https://reasonstobecheerful.world/foodcycle-pop-up-cafes-hunger-food-waste-loneliness/>
"Brandon, Jackie and Julie meet for dinner every Thursday, sitting at their
regular table, and often going out afterwards to a pub quiz nearby. They talk
about possible quiz topics and whether they can beat their previous
performance, as they dine on a freshly prepared three course meal. Servers in
black aprons swiftly bring them warm bowls of freshly made butternut squash
soup, hearty vegetable cottage pie, and apple crumble covered in steaming
custard, a perfect antidote to a cold evening.
As they leave, there’s no check to pay for this generous meal. The pop-up cafe
at a church hall in Chelmsford, England is one of 80 held across the country
throughout the week. They’re an initiative of FoodCycle, the UK’s largest
community dining organization, which turns produce that supermarkets would
otherwise throw out into a free meal for anyone who wants to attend. In 2022,
FoodCycle’s pop-up cafes served nearly 500,000 meals to 62 communities across
the UK, saving 209 tonnes of food from going to waste.
It might be a small dent in the 9.5 million tonnes of food waste the UK as a
whole throws out each year, but FoodCycle’s impact is much bigger than this.
Forty-three percent of people who attend FoodCycle meals, like Jackie and
Julie, live on their own, with 68 percent of them feeling lonely, according to
a survey of 910 FoodCycle guests in 2022. Loneliness is considered to be a
significant mental and public health issue in the country, affecting over half
the population, with the Mental Health Foundation linking it to depression and
declining physical health.
Food poverty is FoodCycle’s third reason for being. Around 4.7 million people
in the UK, or seven percent of the population, are considered to be in food
poverty — defined by the government as not being able to secure “an adequate
quality or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways.”
Sixty-eight percent of FoodCycle guests worry about affording food, and 92
percent are concerned about the increasing price of food, to the extent that 75
percent regularly skip meals.
“These issues are intertwined and interlinked. We know there’s a correlation
between people who are facing food poverty, and feeling isolated and
disconnected from their communities,” says Sophie Tebbetts, FoodCycle’s head of
programs and incoming CEO from January 2024."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
