The ‘poor people’s food’ I grew up with is now an expensive luxury

Subi Shah

Published December 29, 2025 1:02pm Updated December 30, 2025 11:15am

Walking home from the local Pakistani takeaway, the aromas wafting from my bag brought back memories of my late mother’s cooking, but my mind was boggled over what had just happened.

I’d just forked out over £10 for a small portion of dhal (spiced lentils), plain rice and raita (spiced yogurt).

Had I made this dish myself, the raw ingredients would have cost me a mere £1.40. Instead, because it was late and I was too tired to cook after a busy day, it’s suffice to say, I paid the price.

No one should be without food, yet as food prices continue to surge in the UK – as of August 2025, beef prices are up nearly 25%, butter prices grew by nearly 19% and chocolate rose by 15.4% – more and more families are having to forgo even the most basic staples.

In the 1970s, my mum fled a violent marriage and became a single parent to four daughters all under the age of eight.

We suddenly found ourselves living in a Women’s Aid Refuge and, with only a small communal kitchen in which to cook and little to no money at the time, our meal options became very limited.

We did, though, have access to staple foods such as rice, lentils and chapati flour – a meal we ate so often, that I began to resent the repetition of mealtimes.

My ungrateful five-year-old self would complain endlessly about having to eat this ‘poor people’s food’, saying how I wanted chicken curry and pocket money to buy an ice cream at the van – things the other children at school took for granted – instead.

Still, because mum was taught to cook from scratch, we never once went hungry and the kitchen was often filled with the wonderful smell of mum’s cooking, which she regularly shared with other women in the refuge.

When I was six, we were moved to a small council flat in Peckham, where we met Mr and Mrs Chopra, who ran the local post office.

Occasionally, they would drive to Southall for us, which back then, was the only place in London where one could buy authentic Asian ingredients, such as sacks of Tilda basmati rice and Elephant Atta (wholemeal roti flour).

I still remember dear Uncle Chopra carrying our shopping up the flights of stairs, sweat dripping down his neck, then squabbling with my mum as he refused to accept any payment from her.

Eventually, mum qualified as a teacher and money became less of an issue.

However, when I got to college, suddenly mum’s hard work to provide for us four, made sense. I realised that my mum must have saved so much to buy our Christmas turkey, which she would season with tikka (a spicy paste) and serve with salad and Bombay Aloo (potato curry).

What do you think about the rising cost of food and its impact on families?

It's a critical issue that needs immediate action.
It's concerning, but there are bigger problems.
It's not as bad as it seems; people should learn to budget better.

Like most students, I learned to budget and stuck to cooking meals using tinned tuna, lentils and economy-sized bags of dried pasta.

My housemates and I managed to get by because back in the 1990s, the cost of living was nowhere near as high as it is today – now, even the cheapest meals we ate are no longer affordable for so many.

Even though I am now comfortably established in my line of work, lately, like many people, I have noticed a huge increase in my weekly shop. Energy bills are distinctly higher, fuel costs a fortune, and the rising price of food in particular is forcing more people to use food banks than ever before.

Anti-poverty charity The Trussell Trust says that the year 2024/25, the Trussell Trust distributed 2.9 million emergency food parcels in the UK, a significant increase from five years ago.

A teacher friend tells me that pupils in her Hackney school regularly complain of stomach ache because they are hungry – it must be heart breaking for any parent to know that a school meal is often the only meal their child will eat all day.

It’s depressing and deeply worrying.

Takeaways – which used to be considered an affordable treat for many households – are now a luxury. Paying over £10 for dhal and rice is certainly a rip off, and so is £23 for a single portion of fish, chips and mushy peas, which I’d splashed out on at my local north London chippy just weeks prior.

What do you think the government can do to help people in poverty? Have your say belowComment Now

A balanced diet including all the necessary food groups to raise healthy children is vital to the future health of our country.

We need solutions from the government, such as creating ‘from scratch’ school cookery clubs for parents along with their children, so they don’t have to rely on cheap processed foods.

We cannot go on having reliable staples like rice, potatoes and pasta being unaffordable for so many families. We cannot let children go without even the ‘poor people’s meals’ I used to dread.