SIR – Well said, Brian Holmans! (‘Nutrition essential’, Letters, October 21). Take heed of the danger of children developing rickets through not drinking milk.

This is clearly something families should be spending child benefit on in the absence of free school milk which that woman famously stopped (“Thatcher the milk snatcher”).

However, I don’t think rickets develops overnight, so a few days, weeks or even months with little money should not affect the longer-term feeding of a family.

No Brian, I wouldn’t recommend making soup from blighted potatoes when one can buy pasta, frozen peas, frozen carrots and flour (for chapattis), all for £1 per kilo.

The lady from the Salvation Army in Sally Clifford’s article in the same edition of the T&A is quite right in saying that people do not know how to cope (I blame it all on people foolishly thinking they should all be living the high life like some they see on TV.) Sally points to JobCentres directing those whose benefits have been stopped or changed to foodbanks. How many are ‘asylum seekers’/economic migrants, from new EC countries and elsewhere?

John Hall, Pennithorne Avenue, Baildon