The great british menu - food poverty... AIBU?

[Bogeyface]

I hate myself for thinking this but, AIBU to think that Lady Whatsername who said in the 90's that the reason poor people couldnt manage on benefits was because they lacked the ability to cook good simple nutritious meals, may have had a point? The way she said it was totally U and she was very sneery, but I cant help thinking that there might be a grain of truth in it.

Of the three families I have just seen in this program I saw what 2 of them ate in a day. one was a mother and daughter who's only meal of the day was a microwave burger each costing £1 each, and the other was a family where the children had fish fingers or nuggets and oven chips, while the parents had tinned veg.

£14 per week that the first family spent is enough for a bag of baking potatoes, some basics pasta, baked beans, passatta, a pack of frozen sausages, a bag of porridge oats, some cheese, some sandwich meat such as Haslet from the deli counter (35p per 100g in my tesco) and milk. The DD would be getting free school meals if I heard correctly about her age and their income. Far healthier, more filling and more than one meal a day!

The second family, again, for the price of nuggets, fish fingers and oven chips they could make a spag bol using basics ingredients that would feed them all well.

RAther than focussing on the cost of food, which is only going to rise, surely it would be better to focus on educating people who eat badly because the food they choose is more expensive than cheaper, healthier alternatives that require a bit of cooking knowledge?

Jocook: you are also able to do it because you buy in bulk from catering suppliers.

WireCat good effort!

I wonder how long it will be before "you" are told you are going to make your DC fat and endanger their health with all the processed carbs and meats

As an alternative to the lentil bolognese we use a whole aubergine cut up and fried (with salt and oil) prior to then adding mushrooms and onions and then frying it all a bit more, then adding passata or chopped tomatoes and oregano (dried from a jar, keeps forever so worth buying).

It's really really tasty and a good way of getting the dc to eat vegetables - even if you don't particularly like aubergine its lovely in the sauce. You can add cheese on top if you like and eat with pasta or on its own as a ragu dish.

No idea exactly how much it costs but one aubergine is about 80p at the moment and with the other bits etc one batch usually serves 2 adults and 2 dc here.

Just thought I'd throw that in there. The mushrooms are great protein and rich in iron (75p each a box in Morrison's here).

BeCool
It was bloody hard.
And it's true, it's not healthy.

And tbh, probably not enough to fill us up as elder 2 eat like grown ups.

And hello Darren! Spoke to you on twitter yesterday.

I recently did slimming works by the way.

I couldn't afford to keep it up. The shopping bill crippled me. And we are not poor. Can do £80-£100 per week in the supermarket for the 5 of us ( for everything, including toiletries & cleaning items & I use Aldi) But in slimming world my bill was up by a good £50.00. If I wanted nice fruit, so did my kids. And I couldn't deny them!

Thats a good point jocook, I think start them at school but then supermarkets who take our cash can also use some of their huge profits to educate to make their food go further. I absolutely agree that having cooking skills is important especially when on a tight budget, as I've said before we can cook but what we wanted was hints and tips from a professional chef as to what can go further cheaper replacements etc but we didn't see that. I guess when you're a mitchelin star chef you don't really have to look at cheaper alternatives

Btw, in my menu in the previous page, I used value mince in my bolognaise but lentils in my cottage pie.

In reality, I never use value meat. Or value eggs.

You have no choice on an extremely tight budget.

I have been poor & believe me, it isn't easy. It isn't fun. And you can't go back to your normal life after you've done an experiment, like I just did.

And you can't have fussy children. Like me. Middle child wouldn't eat a few things off that menu. Youngest would struggle as he's autistic & doesn't do "wet" food.

I have to admit when it gets to the end of the month BeCool (hello!) sometimes the SW Plan can go out the window in favour of just having food but we seem to do ok most of the time we certainly don't spend that amount ?

Home Bargains is best for Toiletries and cleaning stuff I've found :)

Yes I certainly wouldn't go to one of those chefs for advice either. Bought the jamie Oliver cookbook once and worked out it'd be cheaper to eat out than have to buy all his hundreds of poncy cupboard "staples" that would go out of date before they ever got used again. Far better if school cooks used to working to a budget and timeframe could run classes and write cookbooks.

Hello Darren, I was really impressed with how dignified you and your family were in last nights program. I hope sincerely that things pick up for you all (and others featured) in the months to come.

I have read this whole thread and really, can't quite believe the "lentils are the answer" posts. I've got nothing left to add really (ohmygerd and MrsDV pretty much covered it for me) suffice to say that I'm very angry and very humbled by this issue. It's an utter, fucking disgrace. The thought of my children going without rips my heart out and how it must feel to see your children do that, day in, day out must be soul destroying.

And if I had to live on cheap mince, tomatoes and lentils forever more I think I'd probably want to kill myself.

I can't help wondering, especially if this is a hot Summer, how far away some serious civil unrest is on this issue.

Darren, when I was doing sw, I found it was the meat & fruit that bumped up my bill.

Punnets of berries are very expensive. I know, could have apples, bananas & oranges, but gets boring after a while!

I tried to feed my children a red lentil stew with carrots and potatoes once and they told me it looked like vomit and refused to eat it. (I suppose they would have eaten it if they were truly hungry tho). Imagine serving that up day after day.....

We tend to just get berries when on offer (sometimes you can get a punnet of blueberries for a pound) normally we get bananas as they're pretty cheap

"they told me it looked like vomit"

I've noticed this about lots of my budget meals! I sometimes vary the vomit style with cow-pat and dog-food style ... Whenever I have money, I crave food with edges: food that you can feel your teeth going through, which doesn't change shape when you put it on your fork :)

"if I had to live on cheap mince, tomatoes and lentils forever more I think I'd probably want to kill myself."

I did this many years ago, living in a doss house very cheaply, while looking for work/getting established in London. Back then we used to put £15 each a week in for food - in 1994!!!!!! About 10-12 adults most weeks.

And we lived on basics and the cheapest products. I remember cooking meatballs with value mince, only to have them totally disintegrate when all the fat cooked out of them. I opened the oven to a tray of melted fat and no surviving meatballs! Just some random floaty bits in fat - I'd never seen anything like it. And the bread was like air (same stuff the NHS served me up as "toast" after I had DD).

I never ate that cheap mince again - pass the lentils!

At least a good dhal/lentil curry is proper food and sustaining - not that I could get the DD's to eat it, but yes I guess they would if they were hungry. Personally on a tight budget I would do down the vegetarian diet route, rather than eat the very cheap mince & sausages. But I'd more than likely need a pressure cooker to keep the energy bills down - now where would I find a cheap one of those?

Just watching this now. What I see are brave, tough people doing their very best in a bloody awful situation. There is nothing to judge in any of these families' behaviour.

darren the veg soup you were making looked really good, what was in it? (if you remember!)

I am going to watch this tonight as have it on sky plus

We are having a tighter than tight month and I find that having non perishable food in the house lessens my anxiety about running out before pay day. Be it fish fingers, oven chips or tinned beans, it makes me feel better to know something is there

How could a 1 adult, 1 child family end up with £14 a week for food?

JSA, income support, ESA would be £71
Child tax credit £60 ish
Child benefit £20.

What is the other £130 being spent on each week?

A question about key meters. A few years ago I was discussing changing to a prepaid meter, I said I'd heard it was more expensive. The chap at EDF said they weren't allowed to charge a higher rate on the prepaid meters. What is the situation now??

Why did you assume the adult was unemployed totem? They worked full time!

Totempole Rent and bills

just read through whole thread, fuck it makes me want to kill myself, so depressing. its an absolute disgrace that in this day and age families are forced to choose between feeding the kids or topping up the meter and going hungry themselves!! shocking state of affairs!
i for one could not live on £14 a week, no one should have to either. to those families/lone parents on low income/benefits, how on earth do you manage?? y,all deserve a medal.

I didn't see the programme. So apologies, I assumed they were on benefits.

How does the working family end up so much worse off?

Lulabellarama A working family would get top ups from WTC and housing benefit.

EDF said they weren't allowed to charge a higher rate on the prepaid meters. What is the situation now??

They get around it by offering "discounts" to people who pay by DD so on a prepayment meter you can be paying up to 15% more than on DD, also many who use them are paying off arrears on unpaid bills, as I was when I had one many years ago. I would put £10 in say, and only receive about £4 credit to use, the rest went on the arrears.

We aren't eligible for WTC anymore and we don't or never had housing benefit