'I've seen devastating impact hunger can have on a child’s ability to learn'
When people hear the phrase food insecurity, the natural response is to think about food. More food banks. More food parcels. More meals. While these interventions are essential and provide vital support to families every day, they can sometimes distract us from a much bigger truth.
Food isn’t the problem. Food reveals the problem. As a former primary school headteacher, I saw first-hand the devastating impact that hunger can have on a child’s ability to learn, participate and thrive. It was those experiences that led me to co-found Rethink Food in 2018, with a simple belief that food could be more than a response to crisis, it could become a catalyst for improving health, education and opportunity.
Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working alongside hundreds of schools and communities across the country. What I’ve learned is that hunger is rarely an isolated issue. It is often the first visible sign of deeper inequalities that have been building long before a family reaches crisis point.
Behind every empty cupboard is a much bigger story. Rising housing costs, insecure employment, poor mental health, debt, the increasing cost of living and limited access to affordable, healthy food all combine to create circumstances that leave families with impossible choices. By the time a child arrives at school hungry, the real problem has usually existed for months, if not years.
Schools see this every day. Increasingly, they are becoming the trusted places where these wider challenges first come to light. Teachers recognise when children struggle to concentrate, pastoral teams notice changes in behaviour, and school leaders understand that what happens outside the classroom profoundly affects what happens inside it. They are not simply educating children; they are supporting families, strengthening communities and often providing the earliest opportunity for intervention.
This is why I believe we need to rethink how we respond to food insecurity. Providing food will always be important, but if that is where our response ends, we are treating the symptom rather than addressing the cause. Lasting change comes from tackling the wider barriers preventing families from thriving. That means investing in healthier communities, stronger local partnerships, affordable housing, good employment, accessible mental health support and opportunities that enable families to build resilience rather than dependency.
Food has a unique role because it brings people together. A school pantry, community café or shared meal often becomes the starting point for conversations that lead to wider support. Food opens doors, builds trust and strengthens relationships. In many ways, it is one of the most effective early intervention tools we have, not because it solves poverty, but because it helps us see poverty more clearly and respond with compassion rather than judgement. The challenge for all of us - government, businesses, charities and communities alike, is to stop seeing food support as the destination. It should be the beginning of a wider conversation about health, education, opportunity and social mobility. If we only fill empty stomachs, we miss the chance to address the circumstances that caused that hunger in the first place. If we are serious about reducing inequality, we need to stop asking how we can feed more people and start asking why so many families need feeding in the first place.
Nathan Atkinson, Co-Founder, Rethink Food