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For many South African families, putting food on the table is not always as simple as deciding what to cook for dinner.

It can mean carefully stretching groceries until payday, choosing filling foods over more nutritious options, or making a meal smaller so that there is enough for everyone. Sometimes, there is food in the house, but not enough variety to provide the balanced diet that growing children need.

This is the reality of food insecurity in South Africa, and it affects far more than what is on a family’s plate.

For children in particular, unreliable access to nutritious food can affect their health, development, and experience at school. Understanding food insecurity means looking at why it happens, how it affects families and why practical support, including school feeding programmes, matters.

What do we mean by food insecurity?

Food insecurity and hunger are closely connected, but they are not quite the same thing.

Hunger is the physical feeling we experience when we need food. Food insecurity describes a situation in which a person or household does not have reliable access to enough safe, nutritious food.

And it does not always look the way we expect.

A family experiencing food insecurity may have something to eat tonight but have no idea how they will afford groceries next week. Parents and caregivers may skip meals so that children can eat. Families may buy what will stretch the furthest rather than what offers the best nutritional value.

According to Statistics South Africa’s 2025 General Household Survey, 22% of households considered their access to food inadequate or severely inadequate.

That figure helps show just how significant the challenge remains.

Why do families struggle to access enough nutritious food?

There is no single answer.

Food insecurity is usually linked to several pressures happening at the same time. A household may be dealing with a limited income while also facing high transport, electricity and other everyday living costs.

Some of the factors that can contribute include:

• Limited or unstable household income
• The cost of food
• Difficulty accessing a varied and nutritious diet
• Other essential household expenses competing for limited money
• Transport and access to places where nutritious food can be bought

When money is tight, families have difficult choices to make.

Rent or housing costs still need to be covered. There is electricity to buy, transport to pay for, and children who need to get to school. Food is essential, but it is also one of the household expenses that needs to stretch across an entire month.

That can mean choosing what is affordable and filling, rather than what would ideally make up a balanced meal.

Children can feel the effects quickly

Good nutrition is important at every age, but it is especially important during childhood.

Children are still growing and developing. They need nutritious food to support their bodies, their immune systems and their development.

UNICEF reported in 2024 that 23% of children in South Africa were living in severe child food poverty. This refers specifically to young children who are consuming very limited diets and highlights the difficulties many families face in accessing varied, nutritious food.

But the effects of hunger can also show up in very ordinary moments. A child might arrive at school without having eaten breakfast. By mid-morning, instead of thinking about the lesson, they may be thinking about food.

That makes an already demanding school day even harder.

Imagine trying to learn on an empty stomach

Most adults know the feeling. You miss breakfast, lunchtime is still hours away, and suddenly concentrating becomes difficult. Your attention drifts, and all you can think about is eating.

Now imagine experiencing that regularly as a child. A learner is expected to listen, read, write, solve problems, participate in class and remember new information. Hunger adds another challenge to all of that.

This is one of the reasons why school feeding programmes in South Africa are so important.

Providing a meal does not fix every challenge a child or family may be facing. What it can do is address one immediate need. The child can eat. And once that need has been met, they have a better opportunity to focus on being a learner.

School feeding is about more than the meal

It is easy to think of a school feeding programme as simply providing food. In reality, the meal is connected to a much bigger picture.

Regular access to nutritious food at school can help reduce short-term hunger and support children during the school day. It can also provide some additional support to households where food budgets are already under pressure.

School feeding can help to:

1. Reduce short-term hunger during the school day.
2. Give learners access to nutritious meals.
3. Support children’s ability to participate in lessons.
4. Encourage regular school attendance.
5. Give vulnerable families additional support.

A meal cannot replace good teaching, a safe home or wider efforts to address poverty and food insecurity. But it can make today a little easier for a child who is hungry. And that matters.

PSFA’s work in the Western Cape

The Peninsula School Feeding Association (PSFA) has been helping to address hunger since 1958.

The organisation was established after the government at the time discontinued the national school feeding programme. Recognising that the need had not disappeared, the Rotary Club of Paarden Eiland, now known as the Rotary Club of Table Bay, called a public meeting. PSFA was officially established on 10 March 1958.

More than six decades later, the organisation continues to address hunger in the Western Cape.

PSFA supports young learners and students attending primary, secondary and special needs schools, as well as Early Childhood Development Centres (ECDs), Orphaned and Vulnerable Children Centres (OVCs) and Technical and Vocational Education and Training Colleges (TVETs).

Its aims are closely connected: reducing short-term hunger, helping children to learn through school feeding, and supporting school attendance.

Hunger is not always easy to see

One of the difficulties with food insecurity is that we cannot always tell who is experiencing it.

A child can arrive at school in a clean uniform, sit down at their desk and look just like everyone else, while still having had nothing to eat that morning. A parent can be working and still struggle to make the household food budget last the entire month. A cupboard can contain food without containing enough food.

Understanding food insecurity in South African communities means recognising these realities without making assumptions about the people experiencing them. There is no quick fix for food insecurity. It is a complex issue connected to income, food prices, access to nutritious food and wider social and economic conditions. But while long-term solutions are needed, children still need to eat today.

That is where organisations such as PSFA play an important role.

A school meal may look like a simple plate of food, but for the child receiving it, it can mean getting through the school day without an empty stomach, having the energy to participate, and being able to focus on what matters in that moment. Being a child. Being at school. And having the opportunity to learn.

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