Food aid groups stretched thin in NSW

MOST days, Michael Wilson only eats one bowl of noodles, then tries to sleep to conserve his energy.

He's spent most of his time living on the streets since being released from prison in February.

Mr Wilson says he's a drug addict and receives a pension for his chronic depression.

"A lot of the time I try to sleep during the day because if you get up you use energy," he told AAP.

"I only spend four days a week awake and doing stuff in a fortnight because that's all I can afford."

He usually eats one meal a day and his diet consists mainly of noodles and food van meals.

And he is just one of 700,000 NSW residents who have relied on food aid to survive in the past year.

An annual report from Foodbank NSW, released on Wednesday, titled End Hunger in Australia, recorded an eight per cent hike in the number of people seeking food assistance in the state.

Nationwide, Foodbank provides more than 2600 charities with enough food for 88,000 meals a day.

But each month, 65,000 people are turned away from welfare agencies due to low food supplies.

At the report's launch in Sydney, Foodbank NSW CEO Gerry Andersen told reporters he sees a lot of families asking for help.

"Across the nation there's 473,000 people we provide food for every month," he said.

"About a third of those ... are kids that go to bed without dinner or to school without breakfast every day."

The organisation's western Sydney warehouse wasn't big enough to meet demand and has turned useable food away.

"At the moment we have eight or nine hundred pallets stored in our warehouse and 500 pallets stored outside," he told reporters.

"Last week I had to knock back 50 tonnes of pumpkins. I had nowhere to put them."

Foodbank estimates 60 per cent of food recipients nationwide are low income or single parent families.

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