This article discusses the recent increase in food poverty in the UK, the reasons for this and some of the ways in which it is being addressed by the voluntary or third sector, with a particular focus on food banks. Through use of a number of anthropological concepts such as reciprocity and gifting, shame and stigma, some of the complexities and contradictions which arise in this situation are revealed. Through the prism of food poverty and food aid, the piece poses a series of questions about rights and entitlement, as well as the political economy of inequality and austerity and the policies implicated in them and seeks to demonstrate that anthropology has a contribution to make in this area.

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There is currently considerable public disquiet about food waste and there have been high‐profile media campaigns directed at supermarkets to persuade them to: (a) publish their waste figures; (b) sell what is now deemed unacceptable to customers and hence surplus, e.g. wonky vegetables; (c) dispose of their surplus in a socially useful way, e.g. to feed people; (d) avoid ‘wasting’ useable food for climate change reasons. At the same time, there are growing levels of food poverty in the UK and increasing public awareness of both its existence and of the food bank movement which has sprung up in the last decade to try to ameliorate this situation. With the recent use of modern technology (the Food Cloud app) and the setting up of partnerships between the likes of Tesco and FareShare, it now appears simple and feasible to bring these two issues together in a win‐win situation. This paper seeks to deconstruct such popular views of both food poverty and food surplus and to reveal that such a purported solution to food poverty may potentially contribute to its normalization.

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