Do people really not know what to eat?

Interestingly though my daughter, who is off to uni and been bought up on home cooked food can’t wait to get to there and live on a diet of ready meals 😂

I don’t know, people get themselves into bad eating habits for all sorts of reasons, I am sure it’s more complex than them not being arsed. When I met DH (albeit a very long time ago) I couldn’t cook at all, well I could but it wasn’t a priority for me so I never bothered.

these days with DC (older) we always cook from scratch and both work full time, because it most definitely is a priority for us that we try to eat as healthily as we can. We are a vegetarian family, always have been and I am now vegan which also would raise eyebrows with some MNers. I feed and prepare the food I think is right for my family which I am sure is what we all do.

Look at us all here with access to the internet.

Why assume, if someone has the interest, they are unable to search how to cook a particular something ?

I didn’t really give much thought to this until one week when a local was asking in a local fb group who was the best eye brow threading business around.

within a couple of days later and on an adjoining community thread, she was asking for donations of food/money.

people might not know ‘how’ to do something, but generally they know how to use the internet to find what they seek.

its about priorities. For those who say they don’t know how to cook…

As a result of this thread, I have just watched the programmes. I don't think there is much more to add nutritionally but the presenters are incredibly irritating and patronising, and the couples are so much nicer.

My first childhood home was a caravan. My parents didn't drive. The nearest public transport was the train station two miles away. We weren't just poor, we were rural poor. We didn't have the privilege of letting anything go to waste.

I agree and don't we all get into bad habits at some point in life?

But the thrift granny would have bought essentials like cooking equipment ahead of all else. Now people would not prioritise a baking tin ahead of a more desirable item.

It's mostly culture and education.

The poorest people in the Asian & African countries are not eating nuggets and chips

@CremeEggsForBreakfast I agree regarding cooking out onions and slices, but I think they did taste tests on browning meat and found it didn’t actually impact flavour.

I have an insta pot which has paid for itself many times over. I turn on the sautee function and heat a little oil in it while I chop the onions for whatever I’m making. I often use a mini chopper so that is very quick. I then soften / brown those off with the spices for the dish and then the tomato puree while I’m prepping the other vegetables. Then I shove everything else in that’s going in the dish and leave it to pressure cook for an hour.

But, it’s a skill you have to learn. DH will happily chop the vegetables and then wait for the kettle to boil and then heat up oil in a pan. Doing every consecutively instead of concurrently makes the cooking process take a huge amount longer. Jamie’s ten minute meals or whatever they were, often weren’t ten minutes but did teach the need to use time wisely. Get the kettle on, get the oil heating, get things going as quickly as possible.

If you spend "3-5 mins on prep" you get 3-5mins worth of taste, though. For it to be a really great chilli it would take much more time because you'd sweat the onions in the spices and brown the mince etc.

This isn't directly related to UPFs, I know, but if I'm going to spend just a few minutes on dinner I'd rather it was a proper convenience food like a fully loaded pizza than a slightly sad chilli that used actual ingredients I could have put in something tastier.

I didn't say British South Asians weren't obese.

My point is UPFs are only part of the story.

Your first paragraph is about the value that some parts of society put on education, thats why experiences are valued.

And yet British South Asians have a higher prevalence of overweight and obesity than the wider population as a whole.

One thing I have noticed in my work role is that better off famillies can 'reward' their kids with trips out, holidays, experiences. Less wealthy families tend to reward with food treats as they can't afford experiences etc.

I also have met adults who have no idea of how to cook ...and have grown up in households where their parents have prioritised relationships , drink , drugs and alcohol over them.The cycle then repeats

This is fairly common in my experience

I've watched the first two episodes. The people in it were likeable people who've just got into bad habits and are wanting to change that.

Yes it's horrible but you really cant judge what makes another person tick.

A lot of this is cultural. Obesity is a problem across the nation, but some communities put value on home cooked food. The people buying chicken jalfrezi in the ready meal aisle are not Indian!

There's surely a balance to be had. I buy mostly fresh/whole stuff, no ready meals at all, but do use fairly "normal" UPFs like supermarket bread, mayo, stock cubes, ketchup, sausages, the odd flavoured yoghurt... Are the health benefits of eliminating those things really significant, against the backdrop of a 90% home cooked diet? Maybe it would give me an extra year of life... eh, not too sure I'm bothered about that 😂

But if you've not been taught to do that, you don't think to do that.

My shopping is 90% fresh ingredients and I do chop stuff the majority of the time. It's cheaper and healthier. But we also always have a bag of oven chips in because some days I collect DD from nursery on the way home from work and we're both exhausted and it's much easier to throw some sausages and frozen chips into the air fryer and a tin of beans on the hob for a quick, warm meal done in 20 minutes.

I think when you don’t see others doing it, it’s going to involve expending effort and you just don’t have any motivation for it, you don’t get it.

If we are thinking about the section of society who are living on benefits, hand to mouth, poor housing, difficult family and social situations they aren’t thinking long term. You are getting through one meal, one day, one week at a time. There isn’t necessarily the planning for the future as that’s not pressing, so thinking about your health being impacted isn’t going to be an issue until it is. And even then the dots won’t necessarily be joined for making changes or improving health as you’re now dealing with the health implications that then make it harder to cope.

We know well a family that are all massively overweight. Including the child, she’s terribly overweight. The parents both smoke. The adults have some learning differences and also massive health challenges. The health challenges for all of them would be massively improved by losing weight (back pain, leg ulcers, joint issues) and stopping smoking. But their capacity is limited, they don’t have the capacity to deal with it and don’t really want to. Their lives often feel massively challenging, in pain, in exhausting minimum wage jobs, house is falling apart, extended family all poorly. So, they turn to their comfort foods and nicotine. It makes sense to them. These are genuinely lovely people, they are community minded and engaged and really love their child. I imagine social care will try at some point. We nudge through community shared activities, but it’s limited.

Cigarettes are £15 a packet. I don’t understand how they afford it.

I suppose that’s true. To me overwhelmed can also just mean ‘outfaced’ maybe. They’re outfaced by the prospect of the effort for what they see as little reward.

Plus they’re all addicted to fat and sugar and UPFs anyway. You’d think id said I regularly fly to the moon when they found out I bake my own bread and make my own oat cookies.

I think we're in total agreement here but I guess the point is, it's not that they're "overwhelmed", as that implies that they're trying but struggling. They just can't be arsed and justify it to themselves with the narrative that cooking is difficult and not worth the effort (cf. the modern tendency to refer to cooking as "cooking from scratch", which implies a much more onerous job and therefore one which people couldn't possibly have time for).

@HarvestMouseandGoldenCups inappropriate housing of homeless and homeless families in “temporary accommodation” for months and years is an absolute scandal. The government should be putting all their efforts to ensure no families are in them longer than a week and individuals as short a time as possible.

@FurForksSakegiving away kitchen equipment like air fryers won’t really help for a lot of people. Many people are living in hotels / bnbs where they’re not allowed to use anything but a kettle. They get kicked out if caught. Things like pans and baking trays etc might though for newly housed folk.

Funnily the Eastern European food bank users are some of our most foodie and competent cooks. LOTS of homepickling and preserving of anything fresh they can get their hands on.

Look… I know. I know that it’s as easy as looking it up but they won’t. Because, as I discovered, they don’t even know what cooking terminology means… if I ask them to dice the onion they’ll stare blankly. Dice, slice, sauté, reduce, knead, chop, julienne. They don’t know what those mean. So they give up because it’s taking ‘too much time and effort’ to have to google what dice means while trying to chop an onion to do the next 10 recipe steps.

Yes, with a few weeks work they’d be competent… but they don’t see the point of that much effort. Their parents didn’t bother even with those skill so why would they?

Recently in Miami I was shocked that a single banana was 94cents