Around 115,000 people in Norway now need food assistance, according to Matsentralen Norge.

They distribute surplus food from the grocery industry to voluntary organisations across the country. The organisation has described the number of people in need as having doubled in less than a year.

This is confirmed by Klassekampen, which has visited the food distribution programme run by the voluntary organisation «Hjelp mæ å hjelpe» in Trondheim. There, around 90 families each week collect a box of food from a basement in Risvollan. The organisation, which was established in 2014, currently has 111 approved recipients, and founder Marthe Øyangen says that demand has increased steadily throughout 2026.

– It has generally become expensive to live, and things are getting worse and worse for those who had little to begin with, she says.

The development is linked to rising food prices. According to Statistics Norway (SSB), food prices in this country have risen by 12.4 per cent since June 2023, considerably more than the general rate of inflation. Wages have, on average, lagged behind, while welfare benefits have lagged even further behind the new price level.

Figures from Sifo, the Consumption Research Norway institute at OsloMet, show how broadly this is affecting people. In a survey from March this year, 21.8 per cent of a representative sample said that they could not afford to see a dentist when needed, up from 9.7 per cent in 2023. The proportion unable to afford to eat in accordance with dietary guidelines has risen from 4.6 to 17.5 per cent over the same period, while the proportion unable to save anything has increased from 11.9 to 26.7 per cent.

Research director Andreea Ioana Alecu at Sifo believes that there are not necessarily more people struggling financially, but that those who were already struggling now lack more than they did before.

– Previously, they might have had one deprivation; now the same group has three or four, she says.

In Trondheim, this is illustrated by a single mother who tells Klassekampen that she has not been to the dentist for five years because of financial hardship. Without the food box from «Hjelp mæ å hjelpe», she says that the family would not be able to afford to follow the dietary guidelines.

– We would have survived without this, but we would not have lived, she says.