When the pandemic last year forced Mariassunta Seccia and her husband Rodolfo out of their jobs, they struggled to pay for food, rent and bills.

“It didn’t take long for all the money to run out,” said 36-year-old Seccia, who worked as a cleaner in a Milan hotel while her husband sold fruit at a market stall. “When our children opened the fridge and couldn’t even find a bottle of water?.?.?.?it was quite shocking for them, they had never experienced hunger in their lives before.”

The Seccia family are not the only ones from a developed wealthy country to have struggled. Across Europe and North America, the number of people to have gone hungry increased for the first time since the UN started collecting data in 2014, according to recently published figures. Nearly 9 per cent of people were moderately or severely food insecure in 2020, compared with 7.7 per cent the previous year.