An organisation of Edinburgh chefs has distributed more than a quarter of a million meals to families in the city during the pandemic, at a cost of just 50p per meal.
Empty Kitchens, Full Hearts, an organisation set up by a group of out-of-work chefs in Leith at the start of the pandemic, has been distributing more than a thousand food parcels a day for the last week.
The group provides day packs - which include a main course, soup, bread and a snack - for free for anyone who asks, and are funded entirely by donations.
The project is now delivering all around Edinburgh and have two daily hot meal services from their home at Leith Theatre.
Marketing director Sonya Mathews said: "All of our food is rescued or donated. We rescue food waste from grocery stores, any restaurants, or theatres that are just going to throw it away.
"We have a team of chefs and hospitality workers who work in the kitchen and transform all of this donated and rescued food into these healthy meals for people in need.
"Both problems are equally astonishing in their scale - the problem with food waste and the problem of destitution and poverty."
She criticised the "shameful" pictures of food hampers that have been circulated in recent days, and said seeing the low quality of food being given to children in need was "incredibly upsetting".
Prime Minister Boris Johnson condemned some of the free school meal offerings being sent to families after images of poor-quality food parcels were widely shared on social media.
Ms Mathews, who trained as a teacher, said: "Actually helping people is either giving them enough food or giving them the means to provide the food for themselves. It really is that simple."
Deliveries are made across the city of Edinburgh by volunteers.
"There are a few small food items that we buy because we rely entirely on donated ingredients," Ms Mathews said.
"One week in the summer, we got practically only mushrooms. So we do buy a few small things but our costs are largely limited to petrol and any admin costs that crop up."
She said the organisation will continue helping the Edinburgh community for as long as they are needed.
"It is critical - 1,041 people reached out to us to say 'please help me eat food today' and that is a cry for help. That's a hard thing to do, so that means it's really hard out there," she said.
"I don't think any of us thought this would go on for so long. We are a scrappy bunch of volunteers. How is it that we are doing this so well and successfully, and how are we still doing it 10 months later?"
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here