One industry figure said this week that tackling food poverty is a bit like eating an elephant - where the hell do you start?
Still, who wouldn’t be moved by the kids who are all but starving in Breadline Kids (C4, 9 June, 8.35pm)?
Coinciding with calls from Oxfam and 75 medical experts for the UK to do more to tackle the ticking food poverty timebomb here in the UK, it upped the emotional ante further by throwing in a whole host of other issues facing the nation.
As if starving kids weren’t enough the plights of various single mums and dads, full-time carers, the unemployed, hospitalised and drink and drugs addicts were intertwined in the children’s painful narrative.
But it was the children who made it hard to turn away from the screen. Most of them eloquent, well-educated but all of them hungry, they described how they survived thanks to food banks, breakfast clubs and other acts of charity.
It was a bit like an Outnumbered for the hungry, with one youngster describing how family life has “snowballed into a big colossal wreck of horrible things.”
The most harrowing tale concerned 14-year-old Naomi, who has leukaemia and lives with her father, who has been forced to give up work to look after her and has run out of money to buy food.
Viewers will no doubt be saddened and in many cases inspired by the human spirit of these kids. The only failing of this documentary was leaving us none the wiser as to how we luckier souls can actually help.
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