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?

For all that people are slagging the BBC one good thing has come of all this in that it has raised awareness of the problem xx

That's a lovely idea, Patsy, not perhaps as a solution to the problem of food poverty in a rich country, but as genuine community support :) It reminds me of the Jewish 'extra guest' at Friday supper - I know some families really do invite a needy person, instead of just setting an empty place. It's a good thing to do.

I've had a quick look at the BBC website and it says the menus are designed to be used in conjunction with store cupboard ingredients - all well and good to live on £14 a week if you have a fully stocked food cupboard and only need to buy a little fruit/veg and meat

I don't really know how my Mum managed to feed me and my brother as a single mum. She did a lot of cooking from scratch, and she worked at a green grocers for about 7 years so she got some free fruit/veg. I remember we used to have a whole sack of potatoes in the kitchen, lots of cheap dishes like tuna pasta, bacon, onion & tomato crumble, bacon & cabbage potato bake etc.

We were always cold in the winter, we didn't have central heating or double glazing and we could only have one bar on the calor gas heater (3 bars on Christmas Day , we used to wear wooly jumpers to bed, and I remember getting dressed in the living room against the heater as I hated being cold!

I know food banks are, well, food banks, but do you think it would be helpful to put in things like toiletries? I know when I used to do Crisis at Christmas, we made up packs of toothpaste, toothbrushes etc. And I know it's awful to have to eke out sanitary protection.

That show said toilet roll was in high demand, so ill be putting some in in my next shop.

It makes me so sad we are talking about food banks in wealthy Britain

I think also it is brave to ask the opening question - poverty can breed all sorts of deprivation and cooking lessons and inspiring others - fresh produce is desirable is just so crucial for good lives.

We had a boy, Tyler to tea and mum turned her nose up at what we served her son - "he eats chicken if it is in nuggets and carrots if they are from a tin" - she said quite snootily to me. Sadly, I found this woman vulgar - a cultural mini-shock. It is dreadfully sad though when fresh food is seen as strange and inhospitable to her son.

Zamantha, that is a very honest post.

DS' s friend came to tea and when I asked the mum what he likes to eat she said " normal stuff, like sausage rolls and chips", boy says this s what he eats most dinners. Sometimes nuggets. Never fruit or veg.

So we did that.

Sad thing is bth patents work really hard, but have no money or time to eat well. They are not a poor family, so how on earth do really poor peope cope ? !

I remember home ec at school.

I remember making quiche, milk pudding, something in aspic, bread rolls, coffee and walnut cake and omelette. The omelette was useful, and I still do the washing up in the way I was taught, but don't think any of it would help me to feed a family on a low budget.

Is it really the schools responsibility though?

My parents taught me to cook and made it fun. I wasnt really specifically taught finances in a sit-down-and-listen way. More absorbing through osmosis, and doing practical things like errands to the shop and having the responsibility of a whole £2 in change

I do remember being around 10 and my mum asking me and my brother (6) to do a weekly shop for her. We planned meals then went to the supermarket with her and she stealthily followed us around browsed the magazine aisle. We did very well actually. Though we (I!) had miscalculated slightly and thought we could also afford a bottle of coke as a treat but it had to go back when at the tills we realised we were 10p short on cash. The lady behind offered to pay it but I knew enough to say no as I was embarrassed enough at my poor maths skills.

I loved the idea of Jamie Olivers Ministry of food and wish it had taken off more! I tried something similar but generallu people just turned their noses up - only people interested were those whose skills were level with mine. And £1 each in bought us wine which prob defeated the purpose!

Current items required for our local food bank which reflects their current stock needs:
Cereal (small & medium packs)
Tinned vegetables: sweet corn; peas; carrots; green beans
Tinned tomatoes
Tinned Sponge Pudding
Tinned Rice Pudding
Fruit Juice (carton longlife)
Milk (UHT 1 litre)
Granulated Sugar (500g)
Pasta Sauces (Jars)
Jam
Biscuits (sweet)
Instant coffee granules - small jars
Tea bags (everyday) 40?s & 80?s
Snacks
Treats e.g. Small bars of chocolate; small packs of sweets

Not very exciting is it?

When I had home economics at high school, I learned how to make Banana Bread, jam buns, apple pie, cheesy potatoes, baked apple!

Nowhere was there, "how to cook an actual meal!" Fortunately dd is learning how to cook properly and has made pizza, spaghetti bolognaise, chicken fajitas, soup, macaroni cheese and things like that. Every 3rd cooking week is a healthy baking activity such as museli biscuits.

One of the nurseries I worked in had a home support teacher. She did simple budget cooking with parents and it was a popular course. Quite a few of them said they were able to feed their family cheaper than the chippy and the children were getting a nutritious meal too.

That Nick and Margaret actually proved my point a bit.

That stupid Debbie woman shouting "get the fillets!" instead of a whole chicken, is one of the very people I am referring to when I talk about education re; budgeting and cooking.

A whole chicken is far cheaper per kilo and will feed far more people, it isnt just about spending less. Assuming that boiling the carcass for stock isnt going to happen (lets face, who can be arsed at the best of times?!) that is still 2 good meals. Chicken fillets are one meal, so what are they meant to eat the next day?

And the "why do they need 2 hot meals a day" thing was just stupid. School meals are meant to be healthy, well I dont think that a wodge of mash or a few chips, a sausage or "beef grill" (burger by any other name) and a spoonful of mixed veg, followed by a sugary cake is that healthy. I have always given my lot a decent meal when they get home, sandwiches just wont cut it after crap like that. It might be hot but it isnt a dinner in my book. Tinned soup is hot and that isnt a dinner either!

I do wonder if Debbie was pissed off because it was clear that the reason the benefit claimants managed better than she did on her earnings was because they had a bit of common sense and she clearly didnt!

One of the reasons I wanted to become a chef is because cooking is a dying skill and I wanted to be able to pass that on to my children even if I didn't work as a chef for my whole career.

It's amazing how much I learned from my training about wastage and the most economical food - that debbie woman wound me up something chronic because the other woman (kelly?) was 100% right to buy a a whole chicken - that could do 4 or 5 meals if you used it right, even if you padded your chicken fillets out with veg or something you would probably only get 2 meals at the most! What a lot of people dont realise either is that fillets are not breasts, they are the small bit that sits underneath the breast on top of the carcass. When the butchers remove the breast they pull the fillets off and sell them seperate! If you buy a whole chicken you get : 2 breasts, 2 fillets, 2 drumsticks, 2 thighs, 2 wings plus the carcass for soup/stock and whatever other bits of meat you can pull off the carcass (sometimes good in sandwiches) - that's great value compared to a pack of 4 breasts where you get....4 breasts minus the fillets. For the same price (or similar).

I hope Sainsbury made a large donation to a food bank in return for all the free. Advertising and custom they had on the programme.

When I was helping my son move out of his hall of residence at the end of his first year at Uni I was horrified by the amount of good quality cookware and the piles of food left by the other students.

I'm talking Palestinian olive oil and designer items standard. We took as much as we could fit into sons new flat. Apparently it's the same every year.

I'm going to contact the local food bank about this, I bet it's the same in every big uni town.

Thanks for making me think about this.

I buy occasional extras for the food bank collection bin in Sainsburys eg two tins of tomatoes, one for me, one for the food bank. And every time I do, I feel angry that in an affluent part of London (average house prices for the postcode are £1m) food banks are necessary. It's ridiculous.

I also get cross at Sainsburys and the other big supermarkets, whose way of letting customers save money is to reduce the per unit cost of items bought in bulk (eg loo rolls, tins of baked beans, big bags of frozen stuff, three chickens for £10) totally missing the point that unless you have a car and adequate storage you simply can't take advantage of the offer, and have to buy what you can carry and store at the higher price.

Much better to be able to shop little and often in markets, greengrocers and butchers - but who has those nowadays, and it does take time to go from stall to stall to work out which is best to get the cauliflower, which is best for the carrots.

I also got cross (spotting a theme?) at all three of the chefs on the GBM programme as not one suggested doing without meat for some meals - this is the biggest way to cut costs, and they missed a trick not showing them how to make a tin of chickpeas or similar appetising.

Basically those chefs acted like a one-off food bank, no? With their starter box of stuff. What did they have in them? Maybe someone could get one at their first visit to a food bank, in addition to day-to-day stuff, to start them off?

I cannot believe I am writing this. This is like Victorian times, except we have indoor plumbing, running water, heating (we can't afford) and no insect parasites to speak of. Yay for us

All schools should offer free breakfast of porridge and fruit to all students imo.
And also taught at school how to cook nutritious food on £14 a week.
This would be useful for most uni students and potentially vital for many folk later on in life.
People just don't have the skills and many parents don't teach their children. I ate ready meals after leaving school until I was 38. I didn't come from a poor background but was ill prepared for life nonetheless.

I really enjoy the posts by the ladies bountiful who just cannot see what the problem with loading the 4x4 with lots of bulk rice and storing it, with a 4 stone bag of potatoes in the cool larder and then filing the chest freezer with vegetables is. Easy when you know how. Also, when you've unlimited access to a breadmaker, blender, oven, microwave, hob and no competing demands for hot water/heating, it's almost harder to get cook to spend more than £14 per week.

Yes, it is useful for people to learn about nutrition, budgeting and cooking.

No, it is not okay that British families have only the price of 1 bottle of cheap wine to feed a person for a week.

What merrymouse says - I did Home ec in the 1970s in a socially mixed party of greater London, and all we learnt was stuff like how to make scones. The useful stuff, like how to use up leftovers and cook family meals from scratch I learnt from my Mum or taught myself. I don't think poor cooking skills can be laid at he door of schools - a decent, well produced non-patronising TV programme that has popular appeal focussed on low cost, easy, budgeted meals with minimal ingredients would be a useful step rather that all the poncy food porn that's about at the moment.

Not suggesting it's the whole solution though, obviously

Thing is though my step father stood in a Sainsbury's queue once benind a woman and a toddler. At the time - about 16-17 years ago it really upset him to see them - our ds was then about the same age. His words "they looked so pale and poor and unloved and the basket was tragic, a few bits of basics no-one woukd have looked forward to". So what he did was to press 20 quid into the mum's hand and tell her to get themselves something nice and a treat for the baby. She was delighted and said she'd spend it all on the baby; it was wonderful to look after her for once. When mum and stepdad had packed up she was at the booze and fag kiosk buying a bottle of spirits and fags. I can't express how disappointed and upset they were. Only takes one miscreant to put the lid on caring. So sad.

Ah, the undeserving poor wasting their one shot with the type of com