Just under a fifth of working adults said they had to skip meals in the last year because they could not afford to eat, according to a new survey.
The polling by YouGov also suggested that around a quarter of parents (24%) said they had missed meals in that time period to feed their children instead.
Some 2,098 adults in Great Britain were polled across two days towards the end of January, including 1,251 working adults.
The findings suggested 17% of working adults said they had had to skip meals in the last 12 months because they could not afford to eat, and 13% of working adults had done so in the three months leading up to the survey.
Overall, one in seven of all adults surveyed said they had to skip meals in the last year because they could not afford to eat, and the percentage for the three months leading up to the polling was 11%.
The survey findings also suggested that 60% of those who said they had missed meals in their adult lifetime said they had done so within the previous 12 months.
