A Harvest festival was held in St Paul's Cathedral for the first time in years at the weekend amid concerns of a return to "Dickensian" levels of food poverty. 

The service was held in partnership with City Harvest, a charity that provides meals to vulnerable people across London while also working to save food from landfill. 

The Harvest festival coincided with the launch of City Harvest's new report warning that 4.5 million tonnes of edible food is being wasted each year in the UK because of standards imposed on the food industry about size, shape and physical blemishes or because of oversupply.

The charity estimates that the UK food industry is paying at least £225 million a year just to throw this edible food away.

It says this food could otherwise be used to feed hungry households and is calling for changes to prevent it from going to waste. 

City Harvest CEO, Sarah Calcutt, said: "The idea of harvest festival as we broadly know it today originally took hold in the middle of the 19th century. One of its principal aims was to get food into workhouses and to the poor, the elderly and others in dire need.

"The situation today feels shockingly similar. We've even seen a massive rise in diseases such as rickets and scurvy, which people tend to think of as Victorian illnesses.

"The fact that St Paul's was willing to stage its first harvest festival in decades underlines how extraordinarily serious the issue of food poverty has become in this country. And yet producers and retailers are still throwing away staggering amounts of food."

City Harvest wants the government to introduce tax subsidies and other measures like simplifying liability protection laws to make food redistribution more attractive.

Calcutt added, "Simply incinerating surplus food or using it as landfill is at the bottom of the hierarchy of food recovery. It represents a terrible and often almost inexcusable waste."

The Dean of St Paul's, the Very Rev Andrew Tremlett, said: "There are an increasing number of people in London and across the UK struggling with the cost of living, and in particular the rising cost of food."

He continued, "Food poverty and insecurity is a serious problem in London, and my prayers continue to be with those who are being forced to skip meals and go without.

"St Paul's, alongside churches and parishes across London, aims to offer love and dignity to all, providing food banks and support for local communities.

"Harvest festivals can provide us all with an opportunity to give thanks to God and allows us to do God's work, reminding us of those less fortunate than us and doing what we can to help them."