Really interesting artice re Jamie Oliver's new programme

Right, I missed this last night so I'm going to stick it on catch up tv now and see what all the fuss is about

The issue of benefits aside i do think it would be helpful if there was a more practical approach to making it easier for people to budget and cook economically and well for their families

jamie oliver is doing his thing - great - but it is clear even from this thread that people will perceive his recommendations to be unachievable simply because he is a rich celebrity

why not invest some of the time of the home economists and nutritionists who provide the government with information on 5 a day and so forth into compiling easily achievable recipe sheets with budgeting ideas so people can implement healthy eating - instead of just preaching a message that seems impossible to people without more detailed information

we see posts every day virtually on here from people with greater or lesser disposable income - greater or lesser ability to cook and budget - but many seem to find it confusing and complicated

there must be better ways to tackle this than expensive courses, letting jamie do it or resorting to preaching with back up

Have you ever done this with heavy bags, a toddler, paid bus fare whilst keeping hoild of toddler,& buggy? Pretty impossible and actually flipping painful. Somethings just aren't practic al and when you're an exhausted single Mum, you do what you can to make life just a bit easier on yourself. It might be different if people stopped to help but they generally don't.

Half the problem is that either they can't read the information or simply don't want to.

you see - to me this seems almost as judgemental as my issues about the welfare system and fluffycloud's assertions about compulsory education

there simply have to be people out there who would benefit more from someone doing the preplanning for them and showing them how -

and who are 'they'? there are a lot of people on here who are struggling to budget and menu plan - they are not illiterate or stupid - they may just not have the time or knowledge

it shouldnt fall to jamie oliver or hitched to help deliver that information when it is pretty critical

Further to Mrs Magic's point earlier, I think there is a real issue around people not being taught to cook at home.

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, a lot of my friends' mums had jobs, and freezers and microwaves. They rarely cooked, and so never taught their kids to, whereas my (stay at home) mum had me and my sister helping her out in the kitchen all the time - I didn't need to be taught to cook at school. Now, this isn't to say that a woman's place is in the home, but there is something wrong with this picture. We (men and women) should have the time to cook properly and teach these skills to our kids. I think someone mentioned the fact that we have the longest working hours in Europe earlier? I reckon it's a big factor. We need more flexible hours, and more opportunity to work from home.

Growing up in the '70's & '80's cooking from fresh probably was cheaper.....

Mummy ONE taught me too cook. Boys didn't do things like that at school (no joke, it wasn't an option).

ETA:- A quote from my grumpy Yank pal "How come you guys have the longest working hours in Europe and you can still get **** *** all here but beer & pizza after 6pm?"

But the people posting on hitched want help. Some people don't, or are embarrassed to need it - and won't take it. The concern is really not the OT demographic.

And yes, at the lower end of the working class, reading skills can be poor and interest in cooking low. As Marine Girl said, junk food and ready meals can be seen as a luxury and an indulgence when you have a low standard of living.

as far as i can see the ot or hitched demographic is not clear cut - and there are a number of people here who by their own admission, given relevant and practical information have embraced a different outlook on food, cooking and budgeting

and as much as what you say is true - at any point in the social scale there are people who would benefit from a more direct and simplified approach to education about food and nutrition

and if it isnt true - and that the overwhelming majority of people on very low incomes are too uneducated or disinterested to care that they are poisoning themselves and their children - yet the state keeps pumping money into funding that then what should be done?

because if discouraging those people from continuing to have children while relying on benefits is wrong, and forcing them to become educated in return for benefits is wrong and using a soft education option is a waste of time then there is a deeply distressing problem in this country that is bigger than learning how to cook with pulses

Better believe it. We've a three/four generation old culture of welfare dependance.

You'd be as well telling some of it's members that they have to develop a religion or join the army and fight as tell them to get a job. They have no concept of it whatsoever.

That it just it, janey - the problem is very big and deeply distressing, and I don't know exactly what it is...but I also don't see how it can be solved without a nanny state and some seriously heavy-handed legislation where junk food is concerned.

I think GWTW is right that in some sections of society, literacy really is that poor. She is not saying all people on benefits can't read, but there is a significant minority in Britain today of people who are functionally illiterate. This link from the BBC (albeit from 2000, but I don't imagine things have improved) indicates it to be approximately 7million adults in the UK. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/811832.stm That's 7 million adults who would find it difficult to read a recipe or information on food packets, before one even gets to cooking skills.

I watched the JO programme tonight on catch-up TV because I was interested after seeing this thread. I think there are complex reasons why some people don't cook for their families, some of which have been mentioned by other posters. But I am a bit surprised at the naivety of some on this thread. If your family didn't cook at home and you didn't learn the importance of good nutrition there, (or at school) and your friends don't cook meals- where are you going to learn the importance of cooking from scratch or how to do it? This doesn't mean the people in question are stupid or thick or bad people- just that they simply don't know of an alternative way to eat other than takeaways or Iceland ready meals. It's completely outside their frame of reference. And money of course plays a part too. Like others have said, if one has £25 to spend on food a week, it's difficult to get a storecupboard of ingredients together to enable one to cook something like lasagne. Imagine how daunting it would be to cook a meal from scratch if one hadn't done it before, wasn't used to handling raw meat or fish and wasn't familiar with the workings of a hob or oven. And you knew if you messed it up there'd be no dinner because you'd spent up.

Isn't it funny how some people see junk food like a McDonald's as a satusfying treat, whereas others see it as utter tripe.

That's the point though, you wouldn't be on income support if you'd paid a fat lot of NI, you'd be on contribution based JSA which runs out after 6 months, it is people like single mums who are on benefits indefinitely that get income support and food vouchers, so you might as well teach them to get the best of it. Just as "they" give drivers who speed etc the option to go on a course instead of the points.

You can't opt out, you have to help teach the others and encourage them with your meal plan and contents of fridge.

As for the father delivering veg, I have heard worse idea's ... beats taking them to the zoo and mac donalds.

<Aside> Actually, it's off this thread but I have to pick you up on the point you make about contribution based JSA. My 62 year old father who has worked as a chartered accountant and paid NI for the last 40 years was made redundant a couple of months ago (was working for a business in the construction industry) and is NOT entitled to any benefit including JSA because he happens to be drawing a very small private pension (i.e. one he has paid into himself during his working life) to the value of about £50 odd a week. This means he is ineligible for JSA and other benefits. Unfortunately the state-run national insurance scheme is not an insurance scheme at all. If it were he'd be entitled to some pay-out now based on his not inconsiderable contributions over his working life. <Aside>.

My parents do see McDonald's as a treat, not a satisfying one, but a treat nonetheless, usually on a Friday to save 'cooking' anything.

Been reading this thread with interest (as I do with most of the dinner, receipe threads on here, i'm always hoping it's something I can finally make myself).

Growing up my Dad did most of the cooking at home, when I say cooking he would make chilli, mince & tatties, pasta dishes (shop bought sauce), fry-ups and well that's it. We ate a lot of tinned food and convenience food. He worked full-time and had to care for my Mum as well as the kids.

At the ripe old age of 32 I can honestly say I do not have a clue how to cook from scratch, apart from the above dishes that my Dad made. I do a lot of chicken based meals in the slow cooker (with chicken tonight or curry sauces) and the occasional stir fry but apart from that we buy shop bought ready meals that we just bung in the oven ?

The main thing with me is a lack of confidence with handling and cooking raw meat so I stick to the same old tried and tested things. I'm so envious of my friend who, with 2 young children and a full-time job manages to cook most meals from scratch. We're hoping to have a family soon and I really need to get my act in gear. Delia's 'How to cook' is on my shopping list for this week.

As an aside to the 'how much money do you have', the following scenarios are all ones I have come across at work. (and I do understant that the plural of anecdote is not date [guess what book I got for my birthday]) . I think that they do relate to the discussion.

• Baby has vaccinations booked in. Oldest child has to be at school by 8.50, surgery only does vaccinations from 9.30 to 11.00. It's two bus trips away - I'll have to shell out for a taxi from the school
• Had to get an emergency DWP loan for a new cooker - it's coming off my benefits at five pound a week
• I couldn't get a DWP loan for my new cooker, I had to go to White House Electrics and get one from there - it was only £200, the cheapest they had. Am paying back £10 a week for the next three years.
• I can't afford to put the cooker on, the pre pay meter is eating my money and I don't know why. I've tried to call, but the calls are so expensive I run out of credit on my phone before I get through to anyone
• My lad has the school disco this week - and my youngest has an artist coming to her infant school. The disco is £2.50, the school want £2.00 for the artist. Which child do I let have the treat?
• Two of my three kids need new shoes this week - they've both grown since the start of the summer holidays
• Oldest starts his new school - he has to have a blazer and new shirts and they have to come from the named supplier. I've borrowed from the money man at the pub, but he wants 20 a week for six months....

Some people are stuck in situations they can't see a way out of.

We were very unusual where we grew up (not so far from where the programme was made), in that we did have cooked from scratch meals and cooking was just something we did as part of normal everyday life. My grandad grew all his own vegetables and fruit, and my mum inherited these ideals from him.

I remember friends coming over, looking at our spices and herbs and asking what they were.

I also remember my mum going without food so we (my sister and I) could eat properly.

Where we lived it was (and still is) a minimum of a 20-30 minute drive or bus ride to the nearest supermarket, and although there are several 'corner shops' the food they sell is predominantly junk. Before moving in with J I lived in next to the biggest shopping centre in the area and, although things have improved a lot since I moved out, at the time I lived there fresh food shops were closing, but there were over 15 takeaways within walking distance.

Shopping when I was a kid meant a 20-30 minute bus journey, then a nightmare painful journey back with the bags - with sore hands and wrists from where the handles have dug into you.

Last year I went back to the house where I was born, and decided to take a couple of photos for my PAD thing. I decided it would be better to knock on the door and explain what I was doing, and was absolutely amazed when the woman who answered recognised me as she was my babysitter when we lived there (we moved out in 1980 when I was 5)

We chatted for ages, and she told me a story about when my mum and dad moved in. They (her, her sister and her cousins) used to come over and be amazed my the exotic foods mymum would cook, and had their first ever taste of spaghetti and pizza because of it (it was deepest darkest provincial Barnsley). It seems so odd now to thinkpeople woldn't have tried these.

If anyone can spot my point could they let me know where I left it please ? ?

I just remembered an intersting story from when my mum was working as a community worker in the 90's

she was working with the Somali community, not so long after the first refugees were settling.

A family of 7 - mum and 6 children were offered 2 flats/masionnettes (sp?), which although you could see one from the other were actually a 5 minute walk apart as you had to go up and down stairs, round some winding jennels and back up some stairs again (which was apparently ok as one of the children was over 16)

they applied for a crisis loan for a cooker, and were refused on the grounds that there was a chippy nearby

?

Not unheard of, especially towards the end of the financial year when all the Section 20 budget was well and truly overspent. I always pitied the poor LAC kids whose birthdays were January onwards - no money for presents from their lovely 'corporate parents'.

<Aside> Actually, it's off this thread but I have to pick you up on the point you make about contribution based JSA. My 62 year old father who has worked as a chartered accountant and paid NI for the last 40 years was made redundant a couple of months ago (was working for a business in the construction industry) and is NOT entitled to any benefit including JSA because he happens to be drawing a very small private pension (i.e. one he has paid into himself during his working life) to the value of about £50 odd a week. This means he is ineligible for JSA and other benefits. Unfortunately the state-run national insurance scheme is not an insurance scheme at all. If it were he'd be entitled to some pay-out now based on his not inconsiderable contributions over his working life. <Aside>.

What sort of accountant only has a £50 a week pension ? with respect he no doubt has lots of other assets too which provide him with a roof over his head and a pay out from the redundancy and I suspect that has more to do with why he can't (and rightly so) any claim benefits.

well thats far from ideal of course, but to be fair to the council, houses for a family of seven are far from plentiful. and legally the 16 year old could live without their parent...

going back to jamie, it was such a shame that tash got stressed out, she seemed so keen and confident at first. its all well and good jamie saying 'oh just teach your mates to cook' but like julie said, where do you get the money? especially if it may go wrong and you'd have to bin it. he is a bit in cloud cuckoo land in that respect

The sort of accountant who is still working at 62 because he's had 2 previous spells of redundancy having worked in manufacturing industry all his life? Statutory redunancy payments aren't large you know. Gosh, you've got a nasty tone. The pension he is drawing is not his full pension but a small private one. He is still working (or hoping to be) to pay into his pension. It's really none of your business but he doesn't have "lots of other assets" which provide a roof over his head. I'm stopping here because this is off the thread, but I wanted to pick you up on your earlier point about contribution based JSA. There are many people who have contributed significantly via NI contributions but aren't entitled to help. The NI scheme is not an insurance scheme in the generally accepted sense of the term "insurance.

I've been thinking about how we ate as I was growing up. We were pretty poor really, my mum worked 16 hours a week, topping the rest up with Family Credit. I was the first in my whole school not to have a dad (he moved/was forced out when I was 4) so only having the one wage in a time when single parents weren't really supported in ways they are now certainly didn't help. We were very lucky to live in a good sized house, which my mum got to keep in return for not getting another thing off my dad.

We couldn't afford meat so my mum made a deal with out spinster neighbour who in return for her evening meals, she bought our meat for about four nights a week from the butcher, it meant my mum only had to find the money for a little extra veg/potatoes to go with it. My grandmother would buy our fish for a Friday (don't you love being catholic? ?) along with her and drop it off for us. We always ate well and mostly healthily which I appreciate wasn't the case for most people on the same income but when I tell some people now, I get 'pah, you can't have been poor' which I must admit grates a lot! I think the only processed food I ever really ate was potato waffles once a week after swimming, fish fingers now and again and sausages. My nana used to give me pizza triangles, oven chips and spaghetti hoops for my tea on a tuesday and I thought I was in heaven, ? my mum just couldn't buy that stuff.

As for shopping, we had a Fine Fare ? supermarket about 1/4-1/2 a mile away from our house but up a quite a steep hill. We used to go on a Friday night and push the trolley up the hill to get home, then I would stand with the trolley (you had to put money in it ?) while my mum carried all the shopping up the stairs.

only just seen this reply, but yes I have done this many a time.

A girl I knew at college didn't know how to cook, even though her mum made dishes from scratch every night. The mum did EVERYTHING for the family, and so meals, clean clothes, etc all just magically appeared! I'm sure she thought she was doing the best for them, but when this girl left home she was stuffed. I made cottage pie one night and she said "OMG you know how to cook mashed potato!" She simply didn't know where to start with buying fresh ingredients - she couldn't get her head around what quantities to buy.

Similarly, my sister was a VERY fussy eater as a child, so took no interest in cooking. When she left home it was a revelation to her that if you took the potatoes out of the pan before mashing them, you could eat them like that ("oh, is that what boiled potatoes are?"). Bless, she's much better now.

I once went on hols with a bloke who I had to show how to make chips... I was just out of my teens, he was in his thirties. RAFR all his working life. Genuinely had to show him every step, it was like you'd revealed some great secret.

I wouldn't know how to make chips if it involved a chip pan or deep-fat fryer. My mum didn't own one due to almost constantly being on a diet during my childhood. My effort at chips is potato wedges, cooked in the oven.

I was born in 1969 and my mother was a sahm. she cooked from scratch and i suppose her dinners were healthy but they were horrible. grizzley stews, watery mince with an oxo cube through it, and canned peas the single vegetable at every dinner.

she was also of the generation that overcooked everything. yes, most women could cook in the old days and it was cheap and filling but it was disgusting.

as an aside, this whole family eating round the table thing always makes me laugh. there were 3 rules at our table - sit up, eat up and shut up.

I was brought up on benefits, I don't know if it's cos my dad was of a different generation (23 years betwen my parents) but all our money was counted out and some for bills, some for food and some for clothing. I never had anything pre-prepared or frozen until I was about 14 (when all the benefits got reassessed and we finally got more money, we had been living on pittance for 9 years) everything was cooked from scratch and we ate alot of soups. we had to go 2 miles with our shopping trolley basket thing for a supermarket walking, and another mile after that for the butchers and greengrocers.

I think that although the food wasn't of the best quality growing up it has made me appreciate good food now and budgeting.

My H said this morning that it's because our society is now so disposable, hence why people in that show were eating take aways etc. Perhaps this is why things are the way they are, I mean the war affected us for at least 40 years after it finished but then people got used to having whatever they wanted.

I think there are still alot of people out there like me who do budget, cook from scratch and spend a Sunday picking everything possible off a chicken carcass for 2 extra meals ?. I think the problem now is that people are shown all these cookery programmes with expensive steaks/fish/meat/items and there is a heavy concern on organic/"happy" food. There is no emphasis on trying to cook items no matter where they come from, on how to budget, portion sizes etc.

ETA 40 years not 4!

This is an excellent thread IMO.. Like the hitched of old. I think sometimes there can be a tendancy on here to be very tunnel vision regarding these matters as these forums (forum generally?) seem to be dominated by lower and upper middle classes.

My experience of life really means I can't begin to imagine the things KJX mentioned happening but thank you for telling me about them- as drippy as it sounds I've counted myself lucky today, and am hopefully a little less ignorant.