Woke up feeling Kk, but worried about my other half.  As I was walking the dogs, I decided that he needed to start eating properly again or he was going to make himself ill.  This highlighted how difficult it could be for someone doing a physical job to have to have limited funds to buy food and maybe not be able to fuel themselves properly to eat. He burns on average 3500 calories during his working day and given that we were probably eating less than 1000 calories a day, it showed how difficult it could be for someone with a physical job.

Lunch was homemade broccoli and cheese soup again, simply because I love it. We both had bread and spread with it to bulk it up. I didn’t actually feel too hungry today, but I did notice that I struggled to concentrate on my work as well as I should and found myself double checking things to make sure I hadn’t made mistakes.  Again, this is something you may not necessarily think about, but how easy is it for someone that is hungry to concentrate on what they are doing if they are at work?

When I got home, I made myself a single piece of bread and spread with a very thin bit of cheese.  We were going to the running club that we are part of and I knew that I would struggle if I didn’t have something else to eat. I should have planned better and taken an extra sandwich to work. While we were waiting to go, I made a cheese and potato pie with beans for our tea for when we got home and some pasta for the next day’s lunch. It has been challenging trying to make 2 tins of beans and 2 tins of tomatoes last for 5 days, but I think I managed it as there were still some tomatoes left for our last tea. We went running and after we finished, we all went to the pub as usual. Oddly enough I didn’t feel too awkward asking for a glass of water with a slice of lemon, I guess that’s because lots of people have water as well as a drink when we go there after running.

I have to say that the cheese and potato pie was amazing when we got home.  We stuck it in the oven while we were showering and although it didn’t have as much cheese as we would usually have, it was delicious and made me think I should do this more often because it was so easy and quick to heat up.

END

One of the foodbank myths is that everyone who uses the service is on benefits, but we often see people who are in full or part time work and the wages they receive just don’t make ends meet. Sometimes this is due to zero hours contracts and it’s extremely hard to budget and manage when your income fluctuates month by month. Sometimes it’s simply low wages and the outgoings have been reduced as much as possible but there’s still not enough. Sometimes it’s when someone has started a new job and extra expenses (travel and uniform for example) are incurred before the first pay-check is received.

As Angie’s partner found, living on a reduced income often means reduced calorie intake and this can make a physical job tough, if not impossible. We have met people at foodbank who have lost their job because they can’t afford to get there or because of ill health and missing too many shifts – a vicious cycle, resulting in a visit to the foodbank which is absolutely not what we want to see happening.

As part of the Trussell Trust, all our foodbank parcels are nutritionally balanced so if a client who receives our support has literally nothing else, the food parcel includes everything they need from a nutritional point of view for the 3 days the food covers.