What are we really talking about when we use the term ‘food banks’?

This blog post is based on an article published in the Journal of Social Policy by Maddy Sarah Power and Madeleine Baxter.

Over the past 16 years food banks have come to represent much that is wrong and right about the UK: the cruelty of austerity initiated by the Coalition Government and the broader hollowing out of the welfare state, the mutuality and kindness of individuals and communities, and the UK’s increasing emulation of American inequality and charity.

The growing number of people accessing food banks, largely dismissed or ignored by successive Conservative-led governments, is rightly the subject of the Labour Government’s manifesto commitment to ‘end mass dependence on emergency food parcels’ – and there is welcome policy activity focused on this ambition.

What Counts as a ‘Food Bank’?

There are unequivocal links between cuts to social security since 2010 and food bank use, and persistently high food bank use will not be dented without significantly improving the adequacy of social security; the removal of the two-child limit is only the start. At the same time, there are pressing, and seemingly unaddressed, questions about what it really means to reduce food bank use in the UK. For instance, what does it mean to reduce the headline number of people using what are traditionally defined as ‘food banks’? The Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) has defined a food bank as a venue that regularly distributes emergency food parcels at least once a week. However, there is a labyrinth of other types of charitable food support that serve the same purpose of providing ‘sticking plasters’ on the problem of hunger.

Over the last ten years, and the last five in particular, these innumerable organisations have taken on a more impactful, if not more prominent, role in terms of alleviating food insecurity at scale. They have various, overlapping and interchangeable names – food pantries, social supermarkets, food clubs, social canteens – or perhaps the more traditional and long standing: community cafes and community centres providing cheap food. And, indeed, there is a growing pool of researchers – and I am directly part of some of this – categorising and defining these organisations, asserting that there are discrete demarcations between types of provision, and that we should be investing financially in certain ‘types’ or ‘models’ over others.

How People Navigate the Food Aid Sector

In our research with a large cohort of participants using charitable food provision in the North and South of England over two years, we found that people navigate this ‘food aid sector’ with skill and discernment; they may have a favoured provision, but they move between organisations depending on need, relationships, and (negative) experiences. But critically, they do not use the same language or make the same separations that we, in the research and policy community, tend to make. In our study, people broadly used the term ‘food bank’ to describe varying types of provision including traditional ‘food banks’, ‘food pantries’, ‘food clubs’, and ‘social canteens’ with food to take away.

This finding poses real questions for researchers and policymakers: how are people interpreting survey questions on food bank use? What does it mean to reduce food bank use if those using apparently different types of food aid consider them to be food banks? And why are we, as a research and policy community, using largely different terminology to define supposedly different types of food aid from those using these services? 

Inequalities in Experiences of Food Aid

We did find marked differences in people’s experience of food aid, but these were defined by demographic inequalities, not type of provision. People who were younger, parents, and especially people who defined themselves as an ethnic minority, had worse experiences at food aid than older people, people without children, and people who were white.

Continuing research published almost ten years ago, we found evidence of interpersonal and systemic racism in different types of food aid, which was predominantly directed towards asylum seekers and refugees, and international students.

Place had a significant impact on the extent of demographic discrimination in food aid: our study was conducted in three sites, Bradford, London and York, and lived experiences of discrimination were more muted in London than elsewhere.

Rethinking Policy Responses

We are at a real crossroads in our approach towards charitable food provision in the UK. The imminent launch of the Crisis and Resilience Fund, alongside the Labour Government’s manifesto commitment to reduce reliance on emergency food parcels, provides an opportunity to reduce food aid use. However, we will fail to actually reduce the drivers of both food bank use and other charitable food provision if we don’t properly engage with people having to access food aid providers. What’s clear from our findings is that food banks are akin to other types of charitable food provider from the perspective of people having to use them and what’s universal is the lack of income that drives that need. What really matters is not the type of model but rather people’s circumstances, differences, and preferences.

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Reference

Power, Maddy Sarah, and Madeleine Baxter. 2026. “Free and Equal? The Realities of Lived Experiences of Food Aid in the UK.” Journal of Social Policy: 1–17. doi: 10.1017/S0047279425101256.

About the Authors

Maddy Power is an Associate Professor in Public Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK.

Madeleine Baxter is a Research Associate in Public Health and Society, University of York, UK.