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?

Y

MrsDevere, where did I say there was no money to feed them? They were all fed and my grandad worked very hard to ensure that. He wasn't sitting around with his hand out asking for money if that's what you're trying to suggest.

So why have all those children knowing they would be born into poverty. Because the pill didnt exist and if you had sex you had babies, there was no family planning for the vast majority of women.

I do have the books yes, and I disagree that they are not transferable. OK so cutting down daddys old shirts etc is no use. But showing, step by step, how to mend or recycle old clothes is very useful. As I said, the idea of having one meat free meal a week was quite radical at the time, but good advice. It gives advice about how to make the most of having the oven on my cooking 2 or three things at a time, how to cook one meal on one gas ring. Those are thing that are very useful, I have used many of the tips myself.

My Grandparents used to keep chickens which they traded in for other stuff during rationing and afterwards. My Grandad used to go to the shop with his eggs and swap them for bacon and so forth. But can you imagine that now? it's all tied up in so much regulation

I noticed on the program the one family were given chickens and I did wonder how it would lighten the financial burden to have other beaks to feed! I keep chickens and tbh atm they are costing me a fortune as we have a mite infestation which is very difficult to get on top of!

I think it was the norm to have 5, 10, or 15 children. It was not unusual for a wife to die in childbirth, sometimes two. Families often lost several children due to illness.

We may consider 2 or 3 children to be the norm but it has been mentioned that we all expect a television, a mobile phone and an internet connection, let's not mention huge TVs, Sky and was it Hollister tracksuits?

One thing is for sure, money gives you choices in life.

I couldn't really imagine my late Grandad wearing a Hollister tracksuit

I don't expect a tv, but I think the education system expects an Internet connection at home.

Also, my working class grandmother coped well on little. However, she was a very intelligent woman who had little opportunity to improve her position in life because of class and sex. I think that, given that equal opportunities legislation/the pill didn't come in till 1970's and 60's and many women had little secondary education, I am sure that there were many frustrated geniuses using their brain power to prolong the useful life of a chicken carcass.

Also, she had to bring up her children in London during the war.

I do think that in 2013, with no war and politicians atleast paying lip service to the idea of social mobility, its not unreasonable to want to earn the wages to buy a fish rather than poach it.

Unless of course you want to make poached salmon of something.

My Gran passed the 11+ to go to grammar school but couldn't go because her family (miners) had to save the moneyfor uniform incase her brothers passed who were younger. None of them did. She still talks about it now :(

I have 3 DC, of which 2 disabled. DS is profoundly affected and needs 24/7 care, so he will eat whatever his carers dish up, I expect. DD will not get this funding, so I am preparing her for a life on a very low income. I am making big efforts to teach her to cook cheap food from scratch, and when she moves out I think we will get an allotment together as a project, so I can teach her to grow stuff. The SEN school where DS goes does a lot of this with the kids there, as they know that they will be on lower incomes unless they get very lucky. But I am lucky because my parents lived like this, growing quite a bit of our food in the back garden, bringing home pheasants that my dad "carelessly" ran over, etc...so I am just passing on what I know. I have seen in Greece too, where paid work is vanishing for a whole generation of young people, that they are returning to self-sufficiency and barter. But I am with OwlLady on keeping chickens, major PITA. I would have to go veggie if I were trying seriously to be more selfsufficient.

hugs to OWLLady from a fellow mother! it is tough and you live somewhere very remote.

is it just me, or were the recipes from those top chefs on the website really rubbish? full of irritating extra ingredients that nobody has, fiddly recipes designed to put you off cooking forever, with strong tastes that no kids would eat anyway. I mean, mackerel, FFS? even I dont much like mackerel, and I eat anything except tripe.

Didactylos-great post.
A couple of things to add:
As far as "expectations" and having more stuff, lets not forget that ALL consumer goods are much MUCH cheaper now.
Clothes are loads cheaper (and much more shoddy), electrical appliances, TV's-lots of these can be got second hand for next to nothing, so yes, everyone has them.
NOT everyone has the latest gadgets etc though.
We have a 15 yr old telly, smart phone free on my plan (which is 10 a month, and given that everyone only has mobile now, it is much cheaper for me to use my free minutes to call someone than from a landline)
We don't have a car, have had 2 seaside trips in 6 years, ds has one pair of shoes at a time, I havnt had my hair cut in a salon in 5 years, no i -Pad, 8 year old laptop (worth about £20) no Sky TV.
So stuff, yes people have more of it than in the olden days.
Although they can't get a mortgage on 2 wages like in t'old days.

People who were poor in the 20's and 30's knew that their life was unrelenting drudgery.
My Nan and Granpa were around then (they had my dad very late in life) and I remember them talking about the bad old days, especially my Granpa who was raised in the slums.
My grandpa was a tireless union man, and he would have been disgusted that in 2013 anyone would think that my generation should suck it up and walk 4 miles with a sack of rice to save money.
He said that people talk about the good old days, but they weren't good, and that it was much better now (this was late 80's and they relished their nice warm council house, their washing machine, their NHS specs and the fact they could treat their grandkids.) and he was right.

they really were crap. I can understand tinned sardines or tinned mackerel in tomato sauce and making it into a pasta bake, but not fresh unless you lived on the coast and had affordable fish. I was really disappointed tbqh
and thanks for the hug, have one back :)

I'm hostile? I actually find the tone of your posts quite offensive tbh MrsD which is perhaps why I come across as 'hostile' in my replies to you. I would have thought it was fairly obvious from this thread that you can have enough food to feed your family but it may not always be the most interesting/nutritious so by going fishing he was providing something that they wouldn't have had otherwise.

In my family tinned ham and sunblest bread was a treat
tinned soup too
tinned anything

I think my grandparents/parents always knew someone who could though
knew someone who fished in the blythe
knew someone who shot game
knew someone with a caravan (can you imagine the working classes trying to afford a static caravan now?)
knew someone who fixed washing machines/lawnmowers/cars
knew someone who did x/y/z

we lived close enough to walk to work/school
lived by parents who could help out with childcare/in emergencies
could afford even on very ordinary wages to rent or buy a small 70s semi
could afford to run a car
could afford to have a dog
could afford a bag of chips and a sausage on a Friday
Knew how to home brew

I really don't think you can say that now. Both me and dh are from working class families, all our parents are not degree educated, we have miners/cleaners/telephone engineers/cooks. Me and dh went out and got degrees, both of us are the only people in our family to have them (dh an Msc too) He works in what should be a good profession and gets excellent wages really. I can't work as I am now a carer full time. We have honestly never been poorer and we can't get credit either. I would like to say we have worked hard and have a lot to show for it, but we don't. My parents on the other hand worked in normal jobs and own their owns house, run their own cars. I think our generation will have a very different story to tell at their age and god knows about our children. I am not meaning to be so negative, but it's very difficult and things are only going to get worse imo, and having a go at people because they choose to to buy non perishable food because they are short of time and money really is unnecessary on the grand scales of things

I missed out the bit where people don't live close to their own family anymore, are expected to travel to work etc. Things are very different

Littlemiss, sorry, I wasn't getting at you. it's just all this talk of expectations. I actually have expect very little and I don't really "want" much either. I have a faith that tells us to be content with food, clothing and shelter and not to worry about having stuff. (Sorry, I know how sick making that sounds.)

I know that a lot of people are sucked into the whole consumer thing and want all the latest clothes/gadgets/whatever. We really aren't like that and a lot of people that I know aren't like that, either. All I really want is to be able to do things like replace the washing machine when it breaks instead of having to wash for 7 people by hand for 6 months while we try to get the money together, or to be able to buy some food that I fancy rather than always being dictated by price - for instance, I am the only person in here who likes aubergines, so I never have them because I can't justify spending £1 or whatever on something that only I will eat. I would like to be able to pay the rent and CT and still have money left for food and new shoes for the children.

Surely when DH works 2 jobs and I am some of the kids are disabled, that's not too much to ask in the 6th richest country in the world.

owllady - lol at your grandad (or my grandad for that matter!) in a Hollister tracksuit, no. 1 choice of teenage girls who enjoy reality tv shows on E4. Can't see them wanting to get into that look tbh!

mrsHE - I'm an old school rabid lefty type, so I might not have faith to motivate me but i'm def with you in that I'm pretty much content to just have food, clothing, shelter and time with my family. Sick-making high five!

I guess what most people were getting fed up with is the idea that families who are working and bending over backwards to try and make their household income stretch still, due to rising living costs, transport needs for work, childcare costs and grocery prices etc. were only being left with the same as (or in some cases less than) families on benefits. I think the moral of the story is that the economy is f**ked and we have been left with a fairly materialistic culture with no money or industry or jobs of any description to back any of it up.

FWIW (and please bear in mind as I said above... rabid lefty lol), my feeling is that instead of us all being furious with each other for probably wrong assumptions that x shouldn't have so many kids or y should stop smoking / buying clothes when they have kids to feed or z shouldn't feel entitled to benefits to feed their family when people who are working are struggling to do the same... we should probably turn some of that animosity towards the system and the politicians who have gotten us into this mess and seem to be fairly lukewarm and unsuccessful in their attempts to fix it.

IfNotNow - I'm not sure who you think is talking about 'the good old days'. I was pointing out that people has it much worse back then but got on with it all the same.

They got on with it? They died younger on the whole, many were malnourished and they started forming unions, protesting and voting for basics like safety standards, an end to child labour, and minimum wage.

But who can take anyone even remotely agrees with 'we need another war,' seriously?

I have never said 'we need another war' so I hope that post wasn't directed at me expat. Yes, they did get on with it. We are considerably better off in this country than they ever were - the NHS wasn't even around until the late 40s! We take many things for granted now that they would never have dreamed of and if they had had them back then they would have considered themselves incredibly well off. Expectations.

Nd we don't live in the past any more than we live in some other country. This is about poverty among the working poor in the UK in 2013.

Hmm. Wonder whether the grandparents of Cameron or Osborne were 'getting on with it'.