YP Letters: Solutions are needed to reliance on food banks

REGARDING coverage of food banks, it is no solution to merely urge people to give more to these organisations when many of those donors may well be financially worse off than the recipients. I would suggest that we need to look at what proportion of family income goes on food.

If we look at the changes that have taken place in our communities in recent decades, we see the endless increase of expenditure in the multitude of fast-food shops, tattoo and piercing parlours, betting 
shops, late-night drinking 
outlets in almost every town and village in the country and an increase in obesity, marital breakdowns and domestic 
abuse.

There is tremendous peer pressure on families to ensure that their children can compete on equal terms with computer gadgets, smartphones, top-of-the-range trainers, visits to football matches, pop concerts, school trips and end-of-year proms and package holidays.

In such circumstances it must be extremely tempting to turn to food banks to free up funds for more pressing expenditure. The more permanent solution must be to ensure that, by their early teens, each pupil must demonstrate their ability to prepare and cook a nourishing, basic meal and understand the basics of managing a family budget.