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Slum Diets

By: Charlotte Lydia Riley

The pandemic has led to sudden changes in how we eat, from stockpiling to ordering from (or working for) Deliveroo – but it also showed the survival of a Victorian contempt for the ‘undeserving poor’.

Oliver Twist asks for more. Credit: J. Mahoney / Bettmann Archive / Getty Images

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Over the last year, as Britons have been coping with the effects of a global pandemic and the mismanagement by our government of its local effects, food culture has loomed large in the public discourse. The start of lockdown in March 2020 was heralded by widespread pasta shortages as people fearfully stocked up in supermarkets; […]

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Over the last year, as Britons have been coping with the effects of a global pandemic and the mismanagement by our government of its local effects, food culture has loomed large in the public discourse. The start of lockdown in March 2020 was heralded by widespread pasta shortages as people fearfully stocked up in supermarkets; […]

Large

Over the last year, as Britons have been coping with the effects of a global pandemic and the mismanagement by our government of its local effects, food culture has loomed large in the public discourse. The start of lockdown in March 2020 was heralded by widespread pasta shortages as people fearfully stocked up in supermarkets; […]

Over the last year, as Britons have been coping with the effects of a global pandemic and the mismanagement by our government of its local effects, food culture has loomed large in the public discourse. The start of lockdown in March 2020 was heralded by widespread pasta shortages as people fearfully stocked up in supermarkets; […]

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