A food bank has revealed a huge rise in demand for its help across Tayside.
The FareShare depot in Dundee supported 59 charities throughout the region last year, with the number of people receiving at least one food item rising to more than 2,800 per day double the figure from the year before.
It supplied enough food in 2013 to make 261,000 meals.
The organisation, which operates throughout the UK and has another three Scottish depots, redistributes food from local and national suppliers, helping to address both food poverty and food waste.
Chief executive Lindsay Boswell said: “The trends are alarming. We’re supporting more people and more charities than ever and while we hear that the economy is recovering, we know it will always be hardest for the most vulnerable in society to regularly access food.
“The frontline organisations we work with offer not only a meal, but vital support services.
“Food is often what draws a beneficiary into a charity but it’s the extra services, like counselling, employment advice and housing assistance that really count.
“These address the causes of poverty and that’s where the help really starts.”
FareShare now supports almost 1,300 charities and community projects and is providing them with enough food for a million meals a month.
Homeless people are most likely to need help, accounting for almost a third of the total number of beneficiaries.
However, the number of children and families receiving help through breakfast clubs, youth centres and community cafs has doubled in the past year and now accounts for a quarter of all people accessing FareShare food.
The majority of the food is surplus, meaning it would have otherwise ended up in landfill or been fed to animals.
FareShare Dundee received 143 tonnes of food in the last year, 85% of which was surplus due to incorrect labelling or packaging damage.
Mr Boswell said: “The charities we support are providing a lifeline to thousands of people every day.”
FareShare reckons it saved its member charities more than £16 million last year on their food bills.