What’s your attitude/view of English Food?

[Ladywinesalot]

Thread about a thread, now taken down.

Many cultures around the World cook their family meals at home from scratch. (Whatever it be)

There is now an opinion that most food in the western world is unhealthy and junk food based, and that this junk food is primarily fed to children and one of the reasons for the increase in children’s obesity.

Even though my dc’s school say or are meant to provide healthy food they will still serve a hotdog (with veggie option) or a slice of pepperoni pizza.

But I don’t think this is typical of English food, this is junk food but for some reason given to children in school and is claimed as a ‘well balanced diet’.

I think proper English food is roast dinners, stews, casserole.

When and how did English food turn into junk food and be accepted for our children as a balanced diet?

There’s a difference between English food and junk food. Please don’t conflate the two, OP.

A lot of traditional English food is based on the idea that one person went out to work, the other worked at home, typically a women. Their work didn't just involve caring for children/elderly & housework, but tending any animals kept, like pigs, chicken, geese etc.
Even so, they were in a position to prepare an evening meal throughout the day. Nowadays many people don't have the time to do this, especially during the week, so meal preparation is limited by time, hence the use of pre-prepared food, and ready-meals.

@RampantIvy

English food has always been beige and bland

Only said by someone who hasn’t eaten good English food or cooked from scratch using good quality local ingredients.

Roast dinners with freshly cooked vegetables
Casseroles and stews
Mince and dumplings
Bangers and mash with onion gravy
Toad in the hole
Yorkshire puddings
Fish and chips
A juicy steak with onion rings, chips and salad
Pies of all types
Smoked haddock fishcakes
Fish pie
Potted shrimps
Cornish pasties
Traditional afternoon tea
A well cooked English breakfast

Puddings and desserts – even the French acknowledge that we are better at puddings than they are
Cakes of all kinds

The meals are simple and relatively plain compared to a tasty stir fry or a delicious curry, but I think the simpler the meal the better the quality of the ingredients needs to be. There have been several TV programmes where TV chefs have travelled around Britain (not just England) meeting local producers and cooking local delicacies – James Martin, The Hairy Bikers, Nadiya Hussein, Mary Berry are just a few I can think of.

I am looking forward to the first of this season's English asparagus tomorrow.

That list is not exhaustive and you see that pie and Yorkshire pudding themselves are not very healthy. In Italy where I live, there is still pizza and loads of pasta, but it is in controlled portion sizes. Most women skip the pasta course. Actually most men skip the pasta course quite regularly too. We all need to eat a lot more salad and vegetables. That is the main difference. Children here eat salad and vegetables every single day as it is a course on the menu. No dessert. Snacks are a big thing here for kids. You are a negligent parent if there is no merenda at 4pm. It's almost like a email time. But it's a tiny sandwich or a juice, not chocolate. There is also a lot more stigma about being fat and people will take the piss out of you. Not nice, but true.

I wanted to say that list is exhaustive!

[quote Ladywinesalot]@RampantIvy
That’s a great list and some of my fave dinners!
Very typical of meat 2 veg and potato dishes.
With hearty and healthy meals like that how has obesity increased so much?
And why are meals like hotdogs def to school children?

Is it snacking then? Takeaway culture?

I don’t buy into the working lots of hours means can’t eat healthy, the slow cooker is perfect of stews and casseroles.[/quote]
School meal budgets are incredibly tight.

The aim is to get calories into kids. You want it to be stuff you can cook cheaply, quickly, in bulk, with minimal skill. It has to survive sitting about in trays while the kids queue up and are served and kids from the most deprived backgrounds are the ones we most need to recognise and eat it.

They simply can’t afford to pay the cook to come in hours earlier to prepare and cook a traditional slow cook casserole, traditionally you’d have that cooking low and slow as you got on with household chores and it would feed the family for several days.

Some of the traditional ‘cheaper’ cuts have either fallen into such obscurity that children aren’t familiar with them, or have become trendy and expensive or require the sort of cooking schools can’t afford.

Fish, again lots of the fish that were common when I was a little girl aren’t supermarket staples and most don’t sit about waiting well once cooked.

So you end up with the occasional roast, breaded oven food, pasta bakes, pizza, hot dogs, etc. Peas and carrots with everything not a wide selection of veg. Puddings to fill them up cheaply.

School food isn’t about showcasing British produce and recipes. It’s about cheaply feeding kids who otherwise might not get a meal at all.

Why is a pizza non-healthy?
Is it because most people buy them ready prepared, or is it healthier if you make it yourself? You can pile a pizza with all sorts of toppings.
Yes, the base contains carbohydrates, but so does potatoes, bread, rice, etc.
Otherwise, surely a pizza with salad, could easily be part of a healthy diet.
However, I admit it may well depend on portion size, and what you have with it as vegetables, etc
A burger occassionally, is OK, surely, if part of a meal, but really depends on whether it is part of a balanced diet, or not.
When working fulltime, I sometimes cooked a casserole in the oven on very low, but now I have a slow cooker, find that much better.
The real problem with a roast dinner, is the timing, and getting everything ready at the same time.
Personally, I think there is definitely a 'snack' culture which exists today, that did not seem to exist when I was a child. (I am recently retired).
Otherwise, British cooking can be healthy, and I am not sure why you think it is not.

Pizza can be healthy or not healthy, depending on what it's made from and portion size.

Thin and crispy with lots of veg and a moderate amount of cheese topping, couple of slices served with salad, reasonably healthy.

Thicker base with double pepperoni and cheese topping and portion size large enough for a day's worth of calories in one meal, not healthy.

On the matter of British food being unachievable, that also depends. A lot of stews can be cooked in a slow cooker, so can be left to their own devices all day and cost very little in fuel.

That list is not exhaustive and you see that pie and Yorkshire pudding themselves are not very healthy

Only if they are eaten in huge portions and without any vegetables @Plumedenom. You said yourself about pasta portion sizes, so it isn't any less healthy to eat pie or Yorkshire pudding if portion sizes are small.

When I make a pie I don't even serve potatoes with it, just lots of vegetables and gravy. If I do roast beef and Yorkshire pudding I don't do potatoes as well, just loads of vegetables.

I don't view carbs as the enemy, but don't binge on them, and unlike eating out in Italy I don't serve bread with every meal.

DH, DD and I are all slim BTW.

Traditional English food is healthy. We eat seasonally. I can't remember when we last had a pizza, chicken nuggets or a beef burger. Not because we don't like them, they just don't feature in our diet
I think people who think English food is beige and boring aren't doing it right 😜 A proper roast is amazing

DH makes brilliant pizzas from scratch. They tend to last for two meals, and I always serve a massive salad with them.

Pizza, burgers, hot dogs and chips seem to be eaten pretty regularly

I wouldn’t call any of those traditional British meals. American yes, and I guess pizza is Italian (though Italian pizza doesn’t bear much resemblance to Domino’s either). But basically junk food.

To me, British food is stuff like:

Quiche/tart with salad
Sausage, mash and vegetables
Roast dinners
Anything else with meat and two veg
Jacket potatoes (with beans and cheese or cottage cheese)
Ploughman’s lunch, cheese and biscuits etc
Sandwiches (no other country in the world seems to make pre-prepared lunch sandwiches like we do).
Scrambled egg on toast
Boiled eggs
Full english
Soups, stews etc

None of which is unhealthy at all. Obviously you need to exercise portion control - you could get fat on salad if you loaded it with cheese and dressing, and ate a bucketful of it.

Pizza can be healthy, but not when accompanied by chips and garlic bread. I’ve never understood school canteens or cafes who serve lasagna with garlic bread. That’s just a lot of carbs and fat.

Like a PP said, in Italy they do eat pizza regularly, but it’s a tiny portion with a huge salad on the side. My mum would easily go through a whole iceberg lettuce each day because a lot of salad is eaten both for lunch and dinner.

At my primary school they used to serve (and still do, my mum works there) the salad and protein-based course first. Same salad every day - lettuce, tomato, cucumber and sweet corn - but it had to be eaten together with whatever egg or chickpea based dish there was next. Only after you’d finished your salad was the main, carb-based course served. This was usually pretty tiny as you’d already be half full. Dessert was fresh fruit, yoghurt on Fridays. Never pudding, only cake for birthdays in each class.

So there is just a huge culture of eating fresh, raw veg and fruit at every single meal. The 5 a day you aim to achieve with the raw portions only, so by the time you’ve added cooked veg, it’s often more than 5 a day. Many children go home for lunch (like I said, shorter local commutes and 2-3h lunch breaks at work), so they eat home cooked food for both lunch and dinner. It’s just a different food culture.

I realise that my list was very meat heavy. In fact we don't eat meat very often as DD is vegetarian. However, the vegetarian dishes we eat tend to be based on worldwide cuisines rather than traditional English food, and also tend to be more carb heavy.

Currently DD is going through a phase of making a lot of Korean food.

My grandparents are nearly 93 and 91 and they still cook their dinner/lunch from scratch. They can't do as much now at their age but they barely rely on ready meals.
Growing up my Nana used to make the most delicious stews, pies (homemade pastry), etc and also homemade puddings. She didn't even use bisto gravy granules.
I think things changed when my mums generation were working as well as having children so they started to use the convenience foods that were available.
Having said that, my nana worked but the ready meals etc just weren't available.
I try to cook from scratch as much as I can but I know it is tempting to just grab ready meals or frozen foods as it's quicker.

*English food has always been beige and bland

Only said by someone who hasn’t eaten good English food or cooked from scratch using good quality local ingredients.*

Totally agree with this. We have some of the best animal husbandry in the world and our farmers produce high quality meat. Pair that with local, seasonal fruit, veg and salads and you've got something truly delicious. I'm having British Spring lamb for lunch today. I'm going to cook it slowly so it's nice and tender with plenty of fresh veg and home made mint sauce. Can't beat it!

@RampantIvy

English food has always been beige and bland

Only said by someone who hasn’t eaten good English food or cooked from scratch using good quality local ingredients.

Roast dinners with freshly cooked vegetables
Casseroles and stews
Mince and dumplings
Bangers and mash with onion gravy
Toad in the hole
Yorkshire puddings
Fish and chips
A juicy steak with onion rings, chips and salad
Pies of all types
Smoked haddock fishcakes
Fish pie
Potted shrimps
Cornish pasties
Traditional afternoon tea
A well cooked English breakfast

Puddings and desserts – even the French acknowledge that we are better at puddings than they are
Cakes of all kinds

The meals are simple and relatively plain compared to a tasty stir fry or a delicious curry, but I think the simpler the meal the better the quality of the ingredients needs to be. There have been several TV programmes where TV chefs have travelled around Britain (not just England) meeting local producers and cooking local delicacies – James Martin, The Hairy Bikers, Nadiya Hussein, Mary Berry are just a few I can think of.

I am looking forward to the first of this season's English asparagus tomorrow.

I understand that list looks really diverse to an English person but to an outsider is does seem very samey, mostly meat and potatoes and pastry, in varying shades of brown. They can all be delicious of course! But a bit samey.

As for French people thinking English desserts are better.... I mean... I can't say I ever heard that living in France. Steamed puddings are not really enjoyed in lots of other countries, for example.

That type of food is available all over the west. I don't think people are thinking of it as particularly of their culture. I certainly don't.

Oh yes and home made gravy!

Also can we stop using English when people mean British. All of the traditional foods talked about on the thread are foods eaten across Britain not just England.

@Thatisnotwhatisaid

English food has always been beige and bland. We have a colder climate so in the past only really had access to root vegetables hence our obsession with potatoes and carrots. Lots still haven’t moved on from the veg and meat diet or they’ve replaced home cooked veg and meat with ready meals and freezer foods.

That's absolutely your opinion and you are entitled to that but it doesn't mean it's true.

@Neonprint

That type of food is available all over the west. I don't think people are thinking of it as particularly of their culture. I certainly don't.

Good point @Neonprint. I was going to add haggis, shortbread and Welsh rarebit to my list and realised that in the true sense of the word that they aren't strictly English, so I left them off.

I am a bit of a cookery programme addict and have seen many programmes where TV chefs travel around the UK - not just England. They make the most of local, fresh ingredients to make delicious dishes.

British food is lovely. We love stews, casseroles and pies. Even the meat and 2 veg type of meals can be done nicely and it’s all very healthy.
The problem I (and other ‘foreigners’ I know) is the amount of pots and pans used to cook British food.
It takes time and there’s a lot of cleaning up to do.

It’s just easier to do a stir fry/sauce/curry and cook noodles/pasta/rice. 2 pots max.

So true @SlothWithACloth. I find sausages and mash and a roast dinner create the most washing up.

People in the UK always have this romanticised idea that no one eats junk food or ready meals in Italy/France/Spain. If that's the case their supermarkets certainly have a lot of the stuff around as decoration...

I’m not sure it’s to do so much with the food you know. I was a child in the 80’s and it was peak convenience food time at home and school. Tuck shops, frozen foods, microwave meals, all sorts of unhealthy vending machines in secondary etc
I think the difference now is movement. We always played outside, mum didn’t drive so we walked everywhere when dad was at work, no computers or decent TV for most of the time.
My kids and most people I know have had the opposite childhood to this since the 90’s. I also think we have been focusing on the fat in food when we should have been focusing on the hidden sugar.