What exactly should a victim of food poverty really look like?

THE merits of a food bank client can be judged by their waistline, according to Tory hopeful Craig Ross.

“Almost everybody in that world is grossly overweight,” he said.

What exactly should a victim of food poverty look like?

Perhaps protruding ribs, skin sagging on stick-thin limbs and flies buzzing around a frail, skeletal body.

If only the feckless poor didn’t squander their cash on big tellies and chips, they wouldn’t have to queue at food banks for some pasta and veg.

Ross doesn’t let nuance or facts get in the way of his noxious, dog-whistle rants, where the poor and immigrants are demonised for practically stealing the food from our mouths.

It is true that poverty and obesity are linked but not because financial distress gives you a great appetite.

A healthy, balanced diet is expensive compared to filling up on cheap, calorific food, which means malnutrition comes in all shapes and sizes.

Recent research from Heriot-Watt University found 94 per cent of people using food banks in the Trussell Trust network are destitute and unable to pay for the basics in life.

Years of austerity, Covid, unemployment, capped working age benefits, fuel poverty, benefit sanctions and delays have created a bumper year for food banks.

The country’s biggest food aid network, the Trussell Trust, gave out more than 110,000 parcels in Scotland between the start of April and the end of September 2020, with more than 37,000 of these going to children. Those pesky kids will insist on being fed.

And that is just one food bank network among hundreds.

Many of those users are the working poor, trapped on zero-hour contracts or stagnant, exploitative wages and while bills and debts keep mounting, stark choices are made between rent or heat or food.

Food banks are now giving out cold boxes to those who can’t afford to heat a meal at home.

At the start of this decade of Tory austerity, the Trussell

Trust ran just 57 food banks. Now it’s closer to 500.

Food banks haven’t flourished through fecklessness of the poor but an epidemic of greed in a UK where the top one per cent hold 21 per cent of the nation’s wealth.

This greed-is-good attitude is a result of the policies of the very party Ross is standing for.

But Ross makes no mention of the fat cat culture of corporate avarice, tax evasion, excess and exploitation.

Straight from the populist playbook, he condemns the immigrants who have “won the lottery” by landing in the UK.

This from Ross, who maintains the UK is “the least racist country in the world”.

He ignores the fact Scotland relies on migration to grow our population and fuel our economy.

The Scottish Government’s analysis found each migrant working in Scotland generates an additional £10,000 in government revenue and adds £34,000 to GDP each year.

Ross likes to boast he is super-fit and posted a video of him doing 18 pull-ups, while challenging any SNP politician to do the same.

Personally, I think Ross looks a bit on the skinny side, so maybe he should pop down to the food bank and pick up a wee parcel before the poor grab it.