‘My children ask why I’m not eating. I just can’t tell them the real reason’

David Cohen talks to a mother who has trained herself to eat once a day so she can feed her family

A SINGLE mother college graduate who used to work a s a n accountanthas reduced her daily food intake to “leftovers at dinner” to feed her three children as the cost of living crisis escalates, the Evening Standard can reveal.

Amina, who worked three days a week as the financial manager of a charity before being made redundant during the pandemic, said she has “trained” herself to eat once a day to enable her to have enough to feed her children, aged six, four and one.

The 42-year-old said: “The kids have Rice Krispies for breakfast but I have trained myself to hold back because I need the cereal and milk to last. I don’t have lunch. For dinner, I usually cook rice or pasta with beans. I let my children eat first and I have what’s left over.”

She added: “Sometimes they ask, ‘mummy, why are you not eating?’ I tell them I already ate. If there is nothing left, I drink my tea and go to sleep hungry. At first, my body was craving things. It was incredibly hard.”