WRITER and poverty campaigner Jack Monroe has torn into a Tory supporter on Twitter after he appeared to mock a single mum who said she was struggling to pay for food.
Monroe responded sarcastically after "political enthusiast" Kevin Edger shared a link to a BBC interview with a part-time nurse who said the cost-of-living crisis was pushing her to breaking point and suggested she could feed her family with a bag of pasta that "costs 50p".
He added: "If you shop and cook properly, you can eat healthy meals really cheaply. I would love to see how she spends her salary…"
But Monroe, who is known for her popular budget recipe books like Cooking on a Bootstrap, ripped apart his analogy by pointing out plain pasta was not a nutritious or wholesome meal before challenging him to see if he could function on less than 500 calories a day.
She hit him with: "Hi Kevin, THE literal expert on budget cooking here who has spent the last decade on the front line of food poverty in this country. 500g bag of budget pasta, 29p. That’s 5 meals of 100g plain pasta, no butter, no salt, no sauce, no nutrition, and a whole 155 calories a meal!
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"That’s only 456 calories a day, but hey, it’s not like nursing is physically demanding, on your feet all day, shift work, is it? Operating at a deficit of 1,544 calories a day is perfectly sustainable in your head, right? I sure hope so, because I’ve got a challenge for you pal!"
Her comeback attracted well over 6000 likes in just half an hour.
Monroe has become admired for her explainers on how the cost-of-living crisis affects actual people, removing the misleading descriptions of inflation that dominate the media.
The activist is currently working on launching an inflation index to track the price of basic food staples.
Monroe has been critical of the way official inflation data is taken, claiming that poorer individuals were seeing a higher rise in the cost of living than had been reported.
She had cause to celebrate earlier this year when the Office for National Statistics confirmed it would dramatically widen the number of products it tracks the pricing of to give a better picture of inflation.
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