'New Zealand is in the grip of a hunger crisis' - thousands of Aucklanders struggling to afford basic needs

Thousands of Aucklanders who cannot afford basic needs are struggling to make "impossible choices", Auckland City Mission's Helen Robinson says as new research shows the harsh realities.

Ms Robinson told TVNZ1’s Breakfast today that an economist's assessment of someone working a 40-hour week on pay just above minimum wage, is they have about $6.43 per meal for a family of three.

"Which is simply, as you and I know, just not enough," she told Breakfast host John Campbell.

"The reality for thousands of Aucklanders is that they just don't have enough to meet their most basic needs, including enough appropriate food for themselves and their families, and they're left to make impossible choices on a daily basis.

"Winter for everybody vulnerable or who really has a lack of resources is a real extra added challenge."

People often pay the rent, electricity, to send their children to school and medical bills, but end up having to reduce cost around food - including the kind of food and amount of it, Ms Robinson said.

"Being food insecure affects your physical health, it affects your mental wellbeing, it affects your ability to learn at school, relationships you have, it affects your spirit," she said, adding that one in five children in New Zealand are moderately to severely food insecure.

"It is truly heartbreaking. New Zealand is in the grip of a hunger crisis.

"The sad and deeply disturbing thing is that we have enough," she said in response to Campbell talking about New Zealand as an agricultural superpower which grows a lot of its own produce.

"We have enough to feed our people, we have enough to feed our children, and at the moment one in five of those children simply does not have enough."

Auckland City Mission helped a range of people, of all ethnicities and situations, including the working poor, single parents and people on benefits.

Ahead of its winter appeal, there is a call for donations. This year's campaign is on raising the bread line, inviting people to contribute if they can, and raising the issue of food insecurity in New Zealand.