Food insecurity beginning to rise again, research shows

The Food Standards Agency’s Covid-19 Consumer Tracker – which covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland from December 2020 to March 2021 – shows concerns about food security have risen from August’s figures.

Emily Miles, chief executive at the Food Standards Agency, said: “Across a whole year of collecting this data we have seen that young people and households with children are amongst those most affected by food insecurity, which unfortunately has gradually increased since the lower levels we saw last summer.

“This evidence is being used to inform the work of FSA and the wider government in tackling these issues, for example in the National Food Strategy. We will continue to play our part in protecting health and consumers’ wider interests in relation to food.”

The data also shows that 22% of participants reported having a concern about the food they eat. The biggest concerns selected by participants were: the healthiness of food (53%), animal welfare (52%), the ethical treatment of producers and farmers (50%), food freshness (50%), and hormones, steroids or antibiotics in food (50%).

In addition, the research shows that 28% of respondents reported being concerned about the quality of food produced in the UK in March 2021, while 50% reported being ‘concerned’ about the quality of food imported from outside the UK.