Gothenburg City Mission warns: Food poverty is growing

The destruction of the European economy

Published 28 March 2023
- By Editorial Staff
Many parents now find it difficult to put food on the table for their children.

Gothenburg city mission Stadsmissionen and other groups have launched a petition against food poverty in Gothenburg to demand that politicians do something about the growing hunger crisis.

An empty fridge stands in Brunnsparken in Gothenburg to draw attention to the growing hunger in more and more homes in the city. The fridge is part of the City Mission’s appeal, “No hunger in Gothenburg”, where a petition is currently underway to get politicians to react to food poverty.

“More and more fridges are standing empty. Many people go hungry and do not have their right to food fulfilled in Gothenburg”, the City Mission’s website reads.

With the rising cost of living, it is becoming increasingly difficult for households to survive and put enough food on the table, and many are now turning to the City Mission for help. In the refrigerator there are small notes with quotes from people who have asked for help with food. One note reads, for example: “I eat the leftovers from the children’s plates or say that I have already eaten”.

The parents who come to us tell us that they prioritize their children and try to hide how bad things are for them. That’s how it is. We hear this repeatedly. It’s very shameful to accept food, but those who come to us have no choice”, says Linus Hermansson, deacon at the Church of Sweden in Bergsjön to Göteborgs-Posten.

Already a year ago, the church alerted the leading politicians in Gothenburg about the growing food poverty, but Hermansson says that since then the situation has gotten worse and that more demographic groups are now included among the vulnerable.

You can see the whole scale in a different way today. People who have never been in this situation before, he says.

Also in the mosque and other gathering places there is an increased pressure for help when there is not enough money, but the politicians in the city do not seem to have the same picture of what food poverty looks like. On Gothenburg’s website, the UN’s global goal “no hunger” states that “hunger and malnutrition are not a major challenge for Gothenburg, and that it is rather what we eat that is the problem”.

In the petition, Stadsmissionen, together with other groups, wants a mapping of food poverty in Gothenburg in order to create a strategy to combat it and also meet the UN’s global goals, where everyone should have access to enough food by 2030. The mapping should also include civil society together with those living in food poverty.