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?

Ooops! 4 people!

Dahlen, which is what I was saying about peoples expectations. If people couldnt afford a TV, they didnt have one - they listened to the radio instead. They werent looking across the road at the Joneses thinking oh, they have a TV therefore we should have one too. People seem to be more ashamed or something now - perhaps because more people were living in poverty then so there wasnt much to compare yourself to.

Mrs Dever, Im not talking about a golden age of contented poor people - Im talking about people who held their heads up and got on with it even when times were tough and didnt complain about things like having to walk a few miles to get food etc. My grandparents had to walk miles to get to school every day. IMO people just got on with things a lot more back then. Maybe because they knew what it was like to have things really tough having come through wars and losing siblings to diseases etc.

bubbleyummy

I agree. We were poor and I remember many occasions throughout my childhood where my main meal was a school dinner. I loved them and could never understand those kids that thought they were horrible. Were it not for milk in schools I'd have had no calcium in my diet at all.

Looking back, life was far harsher than what I see on TV, read in the papers and mostly see on here. This isn't a pissing contest but we just got on with it with what little we had and never moaned about anything. TBH I think we were just grateful that there was a system in place that could afford to feed us, even if it was the barest of minimum.

Maybe it's the type of journalism we have today but I don't honestly know what to think when I see someone being interviewed on TV moaning like hell and then seeing the relative wealth compared to my day. I have to say I scratch my head a lot and find it difficult not to just turn off.

Totem well, horrible might be over doing it, but it wasnt a "ooh that was lovely lets have it again"

Many people serve it as a side dish to a meat curry, but it is served as a main dish in the area of India the chef was in. The cauliflower was described as the "meat" of many dishes for vegetarians over there, which as a 90% vegetarian diet eater really appealed to me. But tbh, it did need a meat dish with it imo, and I would never ever normally say that!

revealall - second what you just said, I have a first class degree and a phd but I work part time in community development and because I'm about to have DC2 I'm thinking of taking a couple of years out. Me and DH will struggle for money but we've never had a whole lot anyway, mainly due to our chosen careers... Lots of things, be it work or full time parenting, just don't pay well and we have eaten our fair share of lentils and potatoes over last few years.

Would I rather shop in farmers markets and make lovely organic smoothies? Definitely. Have I worked hard at school, uni, in my job and parenting? Absolutely. But doing the latter doesn't mean you can always have the former and even tho (like bumblymummy) my grandparents raised 7 kids on one v low wage and had things a lot tougher than I do it doesn't make eating cheap any more fun or palatable for me now and I am certain that were there other options open to them my grandparents probably would have rather had things easier...

bubbley - but how do you change those expectations? People didn't expect those things in the past because few people had them. Today, the entire country seems to. You can't be blamed for wanting your children to have access to a computer in an age where it is expected that children submit their homework online. That's not a sense of entitlement. That's a sense of normalcy.

I don't think the answer is to tell those who have least to suck it up even more.

Apples you post has saddened me very much, and for reasons that (if you genuinely are 14) you may not understand.

The thing is that people on benefits dont have mortgages, or if they do (as I did after I bought my house then got made redundant) they dont get the mortgage paid. Housing costs cripple many families in your situation.

I am very very cross at a father buying a ready meal and take away lunches for himself when for the same price, their could be a packed lunch for him, his wife and his DD :(

there

Look, however you dress it up in terms of expectation, politics, they've got more than I have, lack of budgeting skills, inability to produce an edible cooked meal...

REAL people are going WITHOUT FOOD.

The people who don't believe it can happen should truly live the life of one who goes 48 hours without food, not because they are on a fasting diet to lose weight, but because they have NO MONEY TO BUY ANY FOOD AT ALL. It happens. A lot.

Stop blaming and start dealing with it.

FFS.

Thanks Techno. Im sure many people have similar memories - I know my mum does! She moved away from home when she was 18 but she sent money home every week to my Granny to help with the rest of the kids. - so did her older siblings. Someone earlier mentioned about the cost of having their older children at home living with them while they are at uni. Are they not making any contribution to the house> I worked all the way through university - sometimes several jobs at a time and that paid for my rent, utilities and food. If I had been living at home it would have cost me much less and I would definitely have been making some sort of contribution - it would have been awful not to!

Bogeyface, it did sound nice and it's a shame it didn't turn out better.

I agree bogeyface. There is possibly some financial abuse going on there. So as I understand it the men get protein and 2 meals a day. The women don't !

And 50+ hours a week? How much is that mortgage? There is more to that than meets the eye......

Dahlen, but if you cant afford it you are still no more entitled to it than our grandparents would have been to a TV just because their neighbours had one. The only problem is that now people seem to feel more entitled to things because more people do have them. Why should our grandparents have had to suck it up and get on with it but people today shouldnt>

LittleMiss - Of course people would want things easier. Do you think my grandad would throw the fish back in the river because he fancied just having potatoes one night> Of course not! If you have the chance to have something better, you would take it. BUT if they didnt have that option, they just got on with it. He didnt complain about walking miles to go fishing every weekend - even if it was cold and miserable - he just got on with it because it meant he might be able to bring home something tasty for his family. He wasnt thinking about whether or not the river was on the bus route and how heavy his rod and fishing bag might be.

The problem is Bumble that we have been sold the materialists dream over the last 40 years to the point where the idea of anyone not having a TV is considered very weird. Yes we bought into the dream, but thats because it was sold so convincingly. Things would never ever go back to the bad old days of the depression, the war etc, it was all going to get better day on day.

Of course now we know that that was never going to be sustainable purely because there is only so much money in the world and once the lucky few have grabbed all they can of it, that doesnt leave anything for the rest of us.

bubbleyummy

Similar story here. I ended up doing an OU degree part time and worked full time so that I could pay the bills etc. It was all about choices and I knew I had to keep earning all the way through. Even through college I worked evenings and weekends and it sounds like you were no different.

As much as reading Apples7's story makes me sad I'm stunned that a choice has been made between feeding a family and owning a dog/TV with Sky. I appreciate we are all different but to me, a dog, TV licence and Sky would give me an additional £10+/week. If I only had £20/week then this would be an additional 50% of my budget. All of a sudden £30 on food doesn't sound quite as bad. Sure it's not great but £10 can go a long way.

Sorry for the typo bumbleyummy

MrsDevere, my grandad was the one telling me some of these stories. Im not romanticising about it at all. I just think people may have been made of sterner stuff back then. Perhaps because, as I said earlier, they had come through some really awful stuff and just felt bloody lucky to have what they did even if it was very little!

Techno I was thinking the same.

Lets assume he buys one pasty a day and one ready meal and lets also assume that ready meal is the £1 one from Tesco. That is £14 a week. Put that with the mothers £20 and you have £34 a week.

That isnt a lot but it is enough to make sure that each family member has at least one good meal a day a porridge breakfast and a sandwich lunch.

That a father would happily see his own daughter survive on half a packet of super noodles and a bag of crisps a day is disgusting. It is neglect and SS would be very interested in him.

And how on earth is the mother supposed to work, cleaning houses is very physical, on no proper food? Ok so driving is high concentration but physically I think she needs the food more than he does!

Very true bogey

Bogeyface

I agree totally. I think the father is BU to spend such a huge amount of the budget on take away food.

I would even take any leftovers to work and eat it cold. In fact I used to do exactly this when my kids were young and we had barely any money.

Feed the kids, parents eat the scraps. Each to their own I guess but I feel this guy has it the wrong way round.