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This Tory has the answer to the cost of living crisis – let them eat pasta!

The cost of living crisis is impacting the poorest families in the UK. As The Canary’s Steve Topple reported:

  • 2.5 million families are struggling to pay rent and heat their homes.
  • 15% of households live in food insecurity.
  • 4% of households have used a foodbank

Just this week, food banks made it clear they were at breaking point:

It’s becoming increasingly inevitable that, as the cost of living is in the news, Tory commenters jump on social media to tell poor people how to manage their money. One such person claims that if you shop and cook “properly” you too can live within your means:

What cost of living?

Campaigner Jack Monroe had to come and clear up the obvious for Kevin:

Then, Jack cooked their own pasta dish and broke down the realistic cost:

The cost of pasta is not the only thing to look at:

Monroe’s thread shows that the individual pricing of meals is almost entirely useless. Without factoring in rent, heating, energy, equipment, and the time that it takes to cook nutritious meals, this pricing means very little.

Misery nation

Other commenters similarly tried to slip dodgy pricing (and dodgier food) into the conversation:

The assumption that poor people should eat anything available to them is classist and miserly. Poor people deserve to eat nutritious, beautiful, and well-cooked food as much as anybody else in the country.

There is a mental toll that comes with worrying about where your next meal will come from and how you can afford to cook it. One commenter pointed out that, given that Kevin Edgar was discussing a nurse who struggles to feed her children, nurses should have salaries which go further:

As Professor Devi Sridhar points out, access to good food (amongst other things) is a health issue:

To pretend otherwise is to insist that poor people should be miserable, an approach which provides oxygen for the dumpster fire that is the Tories war on the poor.

Featured image via Unsplash/Bozhin Karaivanov – resized to 770×403, via the Unsplash License

By Maryam Jameela

This post was originally published on The Canary.