Article which claimed that one person in four in Northern Ireland is at risk of hunger was unsubstantiated

(The article can be read by clicking here)

The article was based on recent research from the food poverty charity Feeding Britain and Northumbria University’s Healthy Living Lab.

Northern Ireland’s independent fact-checking organisation FactCheckNI have looked into this claim. https://factcheckni.org/fact-checks/are-1-in-4-ni-adults-now-at-risk-of-hunger-and-malnutrition/

The original research report concluded that “one in four adults in the United Kingdom have struggled to access food they can afford. This is likely to have left them susceptible to hunger and potential malnutrition.”

The research was conducted UK-wide and was not broken down into regional results. Therefore, the claim in the News Letter headline about “one in four NI adults” is unsubstantiated.

The 2019 Food and You Survey for the Food Standards Agency found that one in five people in Northern Ireland (20%) lived in households with marginal, low or very low food security.

This level of food insecurity was broadly consistent with figures for England and Wales.

While there is evidence that food bank usage has increased in Northern Ireland during the pandemic, there are no specific statistics to prove whether the level of marginal food insecurity has risen from one in five to one in four people.

Food poverty in Northern Ireland and its effect on families is a real and important issue to explore. So too is the accurate use of statistics in the telling of that story.

Alan Meban, FactCheckNI

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