When people talk about food poverty the image that comes to mind is of Comic Relief appeals, and starving children with bloated stomachs in poor countries far away. We picture limbs so thin they look as though a firm cuddle would snap them in two. Wide eyes, and skinny necks struggling to support the weight of huge heads. We’ve all seen it. We all know what food poverty looks like.

Except we don’t. We know one image, one facet of a problem that has silently crept into the UK over the past decade. Food poverty, or food insecurity, is a growing issue. One in four low-income families struggles to eat regularly. Children go to school hungry, because there is no food in the cupboards for them at home. Parents will lie, talking over the sound of rumbling stomachs, and say they’ve eaten, and that they couldn’t eat another mouthful. They’ll fill up on water, marked-down bread, and try to figure out how to pay rent, council tax, add electricity on to a meter that’s slowly bleeding them dry, find cash for gas, replace the shoes that have finally given up the ghost and arrived home with their child, missing a thin, worn-through sole.

There are, it seems at times, a million things that need paying, need replacing, need doing, before I even think about what I’m going to put in the cupboards. On a good week, my shopping might include a cheap chicken, to roast with some carrots and broccoli, some spinach, nicely cooked potatoes, and maybe even gravy if I have the extra 99p to buy some. On a bad week, I’ll be soaking pulses overnight and trying to convince my kids that they’ll like the beanburgers I’m making, and yes, there’s rice again, but at least it fills them up. They complain. They don’t like beanburgers, however much I try to convince them otherwise. Nor do I. However, we like being really hungry even less than we like beanburgers, so hunger is defeated, however plainly it’s done.

Over the past few years, as inflation has risen, we’ve seen a return to an era where any food above the absolute basics needed for survival is seen as a luxury by many. Doing the grocery shop has changed; food is aspirational once more, and healthy, good quality food is for the elite.

Those who cannot afford even the basics have to turn to food banks – and they’re turning to them in huge numbers. When the last fiver in your purse has been fed on to the electricity key, you don’t mind where food comes from, so long as it comes. You don’t mind what it is. If it lacks health benefits, vegetables, or fruit, that doesn’t matter either. When you’re hungry, you want food to fill you up, and that means pasta, rice, and potatoes. When your only cooking facilities are a counter-top oven and a microwave, things are limited further. When you have never lived in a house with a functioning kitchen, and have no education or knowledge about how to create nutritious meals with vegetables – even if you could afford them, of course – how are you meant to intuitively know how to cook them?

There are many barriers to be overcome before the issue of food poverty can be dealt with. The government have been asked several times to monitor food insecurity. They seem intent on ignoring those requests. However, the Food Foundation, a thinktank examining issues around food in the UK, aren’t shying away from the topic.

That 17% of adults, at any one time, are concerned about running out of food before more can be bought is bad, but what’s worse is that we have come to see such statistics as culturally normal. That so many people face hunger, so many children rely on free school meals for their only food intake, and so many parents go without anything at all is astonishing. In June, the Food Foundation is holding a summit to address some of the problems we face trying to tackle food security and ensuring that a healthy diet is accessible to all.

The rising costs of living, combined with rental increases and stagnant wages, have combined to create the conditions for a return to a Victorian-like era of a hungry working class. Food comes low on the list of priorities in my household, the same as it does for so many others. Rent has to be paid, or my family will be hungry and homeless, rather than merely hungry. It’s worse for others. Benefit sanctions have actually seen at least one adult man starve to death. Breakfast clubs at schools are bursting at the seams as desperate parents try to ensure another meal for their child. Free school meals are essential for so many more children, just to make certain they have the bare minimum their growing bodies and brains can live on.

So don’t doubt that we have food poverty in the UK. It just wears a different face.