The myth of cheap food

[andrewducker]

New research from the British charity Save the Children, shows that if a Bangladeshi family wanted to eat a simple nutritious diet, they would have to spend three times their salary on food. That's like the average British family - which according to official figures has an annual income of £29,000 - running up a £1,700 bill at the supermarket each week.

The results explode the myth that low incomes are enough to survive on in the developing world because things are cheaper, and transform the standard "dollar a day" poverty formula into mathematics that hits home.

"Put simply, food costs are always more than people are earning, people are simply far too poor to feed their families," Ms de Toma said.

more here.

Comments

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

I wonder what they propose doing should giving money to families to buy food then means that the male children get fed at the expense of the female.

Reading the article made me think of Pentti Linkola for some reason.

[andrewducker]

Well clearly the female children should all be on diets anyway.

[spaj.livejournal.com]

3 times the cost, 6 times the family. I'm not an accountant, but I think I can work out the problem with a direct comparison.

Oh wait, I am an accountant.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

It gets worse, because most of the women don't want to have such large families, but are denied the resources to avoid pregnancy.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Looking briefly at the Save the Children website, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of concrete statements as to what their overall policy is, by way of more joined up thinking of the less children equals less children in poverty variety. Instead there's just lots of something needs to be done type campaigns; I agree something needs to be done, just not the same something.

It's not surprising if the majority of the world's population in poverty are children if we're talking about the classic triangle shaped "third world" type population pyramid and even in the UK, with a different demographic pattern, we've still one millions plus children in relative poverty.