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?

Agreed Wallison.

FreshLeticia even cheap vegetable soup say carrot (30p)with a bit of onion (15p) and potatoes to thicken (50p) it will cost nearly a £1 to buy. Then you really need stock cubes which will be another pound or at least some salt. Considering my tall skinny 9 year old happily eats adult sized meals soup without bread won't fill him up at all. So that's more money
Or you can buy the pies.

An internet connection isn't a luxury. You could easily save as much money as it costs a month by shopping online/searching for discounts or free stuff (most of our furniture is Freecycle/preloved which has saved us, literally thousands).

Plus search for jobs and set up a business as we did when DP lost a job. Ww would not currently be self-sufficient, tax paying individuals without it. Which would be in no-one's interest.

If people are going to be forced to eat a carb heavy diet or processed food for a long time due to poverty they will gain weight and im not talking pounds here. Im talking stones. I weighed 21 stone in 2001 when i finally signed off into a job. While losing the weight i developed VERY painful gall bladder disease. Its appaling that people are going through this and it will eventually break the NHS because they WILL be dealing with the fall out.

'Yeah I have an Aldi and Lidl on my bus route in both directions so didn't realise it was an abnormality to have this! And I live in a little village with only a local shop so not exactly central!'

PMSL! Yes, it is.

The BBC should not be receiving subsidies. It is past time the TV license is absolished. They keep producing biased shit like this that we have to pay for if we want to watch telly at all. What a crock of shit.

We Pay Your Salaries, more like. John Inverdale, anyone? Says it all, really.

Ah, the old internet connection chestnut again. The number of times I have seen it over the last few years (not for a few months now though as this sort of ignorance is dying out) usually accompanied by, "oh, well I didn't know it could do all that. We generally use ours to just piss about and to book holidays"

On Twitter the # is #WePayYourLicenceFee

Agree Expat They seem to forget that people on low incomes struggle to pay the licence fee too.

A few pages back, someone mentioned their local vicar put together family boxes for when money is tight. Not being at all religious myself, does anyone know if this is a common thing for churches to do? I'm not rolling in it myself, but I am very lucky to have enough to eat, and I'd like to do something. How is it right that in 2013 people have to go hungry just to feed their kids?

Yeah unless you have a local library with free Internet next food and a job centre down the street it's a faff.

When DP was unemployed his job centre was 3.5 miles away - 15 mins by car or over an hour each way on two buses. Meanwhile companies want contact details do you need a mobile or an answering service you could access regularly. I have recruited for professional jobs and I expect a response to interview request within 24hrs, especially for contract. This is not abnormal.

Also I'd say don't totally knock the pies. If the kids are getting exercise, pie & beans is maybe a bit fatty , but salty but not dreadful. (Consider some 'posh' pasta or risotto dishes would have no less fat & far less protein)

What happened in the second half of the programme that makes people think it was about a lack of cooking skills and not money?

I watched the first part and then went out - the chefs, who I'm assuming can cook or they're fairly pointless chefs couldn't make meals on that budget, even the ones who really tried went over. One of them actually said there was no way he could make a lasagne cheaper than the value ready meal one.

That's lack of money, surely?

And the two families were working and the other was a pensioner.

But hey, slag 'em off. Dumb asses! Can't believe they don't go to Aldi or hit the street market and bargain down the price. Very easy a) if you have a fucking Aldi or can get to the supermarket when they mark stuff down and you're not on shift the way a lot of low-income people are b) lot easier to bargain when you're a sleb chef with a camera crew in tow. Assuming again, you HAVE a fucking street market and you are off work and/or able to get to it.

All the chefs went fucking overbudget, too. What happens in real life?!

So sick of the BBC trotting out all this shit. Misogynist, fascist shite that we have to pay for if we want to watch telly at all. We don't get a choice.

I so agree with all of this, particularly Audrina and MrsDeVere (except for the part where you said potatoes have no nutritional value. Potatoes are very good for you- they have every vitamin except A and D wikilink so you can in theory survive on a diet of potatoes and milk. Not that you'd want to. Don't understand why potatoes are the most reviled vegetable on Mumsnet.

All these sleb programmes seem to miss the point that in almost every case, you need money in order to save money. You need money to pay for the internet, slow cookers, bulk food purchases, getting to "cheap" markets (frankly all the farmers' markets I have come across are the poncy twice-the-price ones).

Even when they refer to "cheap peasant food" they conveniently forget that the "peasants" had a bit of land to grow herbs and vegetables, lived close to family and could share ingredients, possibly had their own chickens, lived in countries where some of the ingredients such as olive oil were cheap staples, and often died young anyway.

Ok so have read the panning I got in the first 20 or so posts and am responding to those.

Firstly, for the last 7 months I have fed myself and my 5 youngest children (plus my eldest who is here about twice a week for dinner) on £70 a week, this was firstly because of my husbands redundancy, then because we split up and I am now a lone parent who is struggling to get a job. We eat well. I cook everything from scratch, they have lots of fruit and veg. This is because my mum taught me how to budget, shop and cook and because my school taught me too.

Secondly, Spag bol for 2 can be made very cheaply, you dont actually need Mace! £2.50 for a large pack of mince from Aldi, 40p tin of tomatoes, 30p carton of passatta, 2 x 40p pack of spaghetti and 60p each for a jar of garlic and of oregano. It would make enough for atleast 3 meals for a mother and daughter. Ok so Heston would turn his nose up, but it tastes good and has 1 of the 5 a day in it. 2 if you add a tin of beans and make it stretch to 5 days.

Thirdly, herbs cost at least £2 a jar? Are you shopping at Fortnums?! Even in Tesco a jar of mixed herbs is about a pound!

My point was not about poverty, I agree that the hitting of the poor (of which I am one) with all the so called "austerity measures" is wrong because yet again, those who are least able to afford it are the ones who are propping up the tax avoiding rich. My point was that it would make a huge difference to help people stretch what little they have and make it go further. Surely no one can say that it is better that a woman on a £14 a week food budget spends it on 14 microwave burgers than help her learn how to feed herself and her daughter a more nutritional diet? I know about the choice between eating and paying the gas bill, I know about feeding the kids and then going to bed early to sleep through the hunger. Dont assume that I am rolling in money just because I think that bringing back Home Ec over Food Tech is a good idea.

I think families have to take more responsibility instead of expecting the government to be the first port of call.

You really think a slice or two of haslet or frozen sausages are any more nutritious than a microwaved burger?

No. But I think that a bowl of porridge, a haslet sandwich for lunch and then a supper of pasta, passatta with chopped up sausages in it, with a bit of grated cheese on top is a better daily diet than one microwaved burger.

Good post, lisianthus. Very true about peasant food. And potatoes. My ancestors were Irish and the problem of potatoes was solved by jazzing them up with erm, grass, during the famine(s)

Grim. I can't stand potatoes myself and would have been the last of my line if down to me. Christ knows where they got vitamin D from in sunny Ireland either!

I think I can now retire from MN having been positively mentioned in connection with MrsDeVere, whom I respect and adore in equal measure. Nobody ever agrees with me on threads except to laugh at me, so thanks for that

TabithaStephens, what does your post mean?

If you think that £14 a week for two people is doable you
1 - are an idiot - it should be obvious that this will be unhealthy and unpleasant and a cause of great unhappiness
2- should google "live below the line" for people taking the challenge to live n £5 for food for 5 days (for one person)

As I said, my shopping budget per week for 6 people (me, 16 , 11, 8, 7 yr old DCs, 2 yr old DC in nappies and disabled 23 yr old DC who has dinner at home twice a week) is £70 including toiletries, cleaning stuff etc. I use washable nappies. I realised after I posted above that I said I feed us on £70 a week, I dont, I feed us on £55 -60 ish. Even when times were good, our shopping budget was £120 and I never spent it all.

It's not the same, though, Bogey, is it. Shopping for that many, you have more to spend and can benefit from larger packs. If I buy 5kg of spuds, chances are the last quarter or third of the pack will be rotten by the time I get to them. Can never buy large or multi-packs of meat due to cost. I know you have additional costs & considerations as well - and that just makes it even more unreasonable that you deduce a budget for 1 or 2 from your own experience.

Before STBX and I got married I was a single parent to my son, so yes I do know that it can be done!

But that isnt the point. The point I was trying to make is that education is the key. We cant change the powers that be scapegoating the poor, making us pay for their 11% payrises, but we can make sure that what little they allow us feeds us and our children, via education.

How do you do your shopping, Bogey? Online or by car, perhaps? What would you recommend my ex-neighbours from the village should do for the best? I'm not knocking your assertion that home ec needs to be better taught - I agree, - neither am I saying the village mums do right by feeding their kids burgers & crisps. But I think you're committing the crime of shitty programmes like that, confusing cookery with poverty and failing hopelessly to consider the constraints of other people's circumstances.

We cant change the powers that be scapegoating the poor

We can fucking try.

What a craven attitude. I'm surprised at you!

I AM the poor! And I know that no matter who I vote for, I can't stop bills going through or laws being passed, I just have to live with the consequences! You can be idealisitic if you like, but I prefer to be realistic and think it would be far better to help people deal with things as they are now than promise them jam tomorrow.

I do my shopping now by car, because I am lucky. But when I was a single mum to DS, I used to walk 3 miles to town, do the shopping and then walk back. I live (almost) in the Peak District, the clue is in the name! It is up hill everywhere. But I know that I was lucky that I had very good examples in my grandparents, not everyone has that. Thats where education comes in.

When I had mild SPD in my last PG (compared to being wheelchair bound in my others), we didnt have a car so we bought 90% of our food at the local co-op. It was expensive but I still knew that £4 on a chicken that would feed the family (or 2 people for 3 days) was better than micro burgers. How did I know this? Education.