We demand that:

- Every child receives school meals.

- Every adult receives a food contribution to help pay for meals.

- The government implement mandatory food waste reporting for supermarkets.

The situation is absolutely dire.

- 12% of children and 7% of working age adults live in food insecure homes (House of Commons Library), meaning, at best, the quality of their diet is reduced, and, at worst, their easting patterns are disrupted i.e. skipping meals.

- In 2022, more than 800,000 people were admitted to hospital for malnutrition in the UK, tripling what it was 10 years before (The Guardian).

- The price of essentials such as baby formula has skyrocketed, leading to many parents having to cut down on their own food in order to look after their children (BBC).

- Over 2 million people used food banks in the UK in 2022 (BBC)

While all this is going on, supermarkets are throwing out obscene amounts of good food because they would rather keep us hungry so we have to keep buying than give away something they can't make money off anyway.

Many people are left with no choice but to shoplift in order to make ends meet. And the government and corporations, instead of looking at this and fixing the cause, are cracking down on these people just trying to survive by having more security tags, hiring more guards, and sending more people to prison.

The government has a duty to ensure our needs are met. They are undeniably failing miserably at this, or, more accurately, failing to try. They are palming off this responsibility to charities - there are now twice as many food banks in the UK as there are McDonalds. We should not have to rely on the charity of others to not starve; we should live in a system where we aren't being exploited and left with scraps.

The UK is the 6th richest country in the world. We, as a country, can afford all the food we want. The source of all this is not poverty; it's greed. We are all left with nothing not because we are lazy or worth less, but because the people who believe they are worth more are hoarding everything for themselves, and the people we elected to work for us are instead doing it for the highest bidder.

And, regardless of which party we vote for this time, little will change. The system is broken and we cannot rely on the elites in office to value us more than they do the elites in business. We need to take this into our own hands and demand that children aren't forced to go hungry to make a buck for the person who already has more than they need. We have so much power, but only if we take a stand together and demand that we be allowed, as an absolute minimum, to eat. This really is not asking for much.

So we will be engaging in direct action so we and our friends, mothers, fathers, children, neighbours aren't forced to go hungry. We have decided that we won't lie down and take it any longer. And we would be delighted to have you standing with us.