Almost 4m children in the UK live in households that would struggle to afford to buy enough fruit, vegetables, fish and other healthy foods to meet official nutrition guidelines, a new food poverty study reveals.
The Affordability of the Eatwell Guide by independent think tank The Food Foundation finds that around 3.7m children in the UK are part of families who earn less than £15,860 a year and would have to spend 42 per cent of their after-housing income on food to meet the costs of the UK government's nutrition guidelines, making a healthy diet most likely unaffordable.
The authors of the report have called on UK ministers to increase welfare benefit payments and ensure healthy foods are made more widely available and affordable to low-income households, for instance through maternity food vouchers and universal free school meals.
