"they ate fast food and junk food but had splashed out of a plasma TV."

[ConfusedPixie]

This comment just came up on the radio news, supposedly said by Jamie Oliver about one of the families he was working with in his new TV show.

AIBU to wonder how the fuck what you eat relates to what TV you have?

Surely this just reinforces stereotypes of the people likely to have bad diets through lack of education on the matter? What a bullshit statement.

It would cost me over 4 quid in bus fare to get to my local market.

Not everyone has a local market on their doorstep.

youthecat

so what about the other 3 items?

My children are all grown up and rustle up their own food

Jamie Oliver is an idiot, why are we listening to him?

He goes on about the poor eating crap food and then he goes and cooks it himself, except the crap food he cooks involves buying 16 different ingredients from Sainsburys that you're never going to use again. For example - he made fried waffles dipped in extra thick hot chocolate that cost £22 to make and have about 900 calories and 200g of fat in.

He's just having a dig at poor people.

Beans on toast is a good meal! one of the 5 a day and super cheap! That makes sense to me.

Herbs are fine.

I am lucky. I can cook. I can budget reasonably well (though can't get to Aldi/Lidl as it is too far). No one in my house is a fussy eater. And I don't have too many outgoings which means what little we have can stretch.

Not everyone is that fortunate. Not everyone has time. Not everyone has easy access to markets.

About to say, beans on toast is an excellent quick meal and full of protein.

I like making veggie shepherds pie with beans, veggies left over and mashed potato with cheese on top - delicious and nutricious.

I honestly am AMAZED at the vitriol for Jamie on here. I am stunned.

that was supposed to say baked beans and left over veggies. I love baked beans.

To say Jamie Oliver is an idiot makes you look like an idiot.

FasterStronger - you're speaking to the coverted but although those items are cheap, if you have none of them and your budget is already exceptionally tight, you wouldn't be able to afford more than one item per week or two. By the time you've got everything you'll have run out of the first item you bought. It's why whenever I have friends whose DC set up home for the first time etc I buy them a 'storecupboard' pack as a housewarming present (as well as something alcoholic, of course).

My essential store cupboard items are vegetable stock cubes, paprika (which I use in 90% of things as it really helps bring out the flavour in tomatoes), chilli flakes and chilli powder, coriander, basil (I prefer fresh as I use it in salads too, but dried is cheaper and needs replacing less often), salt, pepper, olive oil, flour, soy sauce and worcester sauce (I like thai fish sauce too, but it's more expensive and worcester sauce does the job). Also essential are fresh garlic and onions.

That's a fair bit more expensive. I also use cayenne pepper, mint, rosemary and sage, though I wouldn't consider them as essential as I only use them in certain foods.

I make my own wraps (don't like bread much), cook my own pastries when it's wild fruit gathering time, and generally eat very cheaply. I feed three of us on about £150 a month, which includes buying toilet rolls, washing powder, etc. However, it has taken me years to learn how to do this and I am constantly on the go (not at all uncommon for me to be making wraps after midnight while getting up at 6 the next morning), which is fine for me but wouldn't work for everyone.

I have an obese relative. Both her children were obese, one has slimmed down a bit now - 25 now. When they were young their mother would give them 6 packs of crisps to eat and chocolate whenever they wanted. They were incredibly fussy about food on a plate and would binge eat certain foods probably to make up for nutritional problems, one also suffered from regular stomach cramps. She got her mother to take out a loan to pay for the huge plasma, her son is a recluse and spends most of his day playing games on it. She also smokes. She has had endless obesity interventions at great cost to the taxpayer. But the weird thing is, whenever I meet her she is very happy, very content with her life (never earned money or paid tax), does a lot of good in the community etc. But most importantly she feels no guilt and sees nothing wrong with her life at all. I think we need to remember this too, that a lot of people really don't care if they are unhealthy, physically or mentally. They go off to the doctor and get the prescription and keep taking it until one day the inevitable happens. But they really don't care, and they are happy that way.

Beans on toast is an ok meal, but it's worth remembering that you can never get all the protein you need from just one source. The thing you need from protein is the amino acids, and if I'm remembering correctly there's 22 different ones we need. No food contains all 22 amino acids, so you still have to have different types of protein food.

you could add an egg on the side, or some grated cheese on top! lovely!

easy food can be good food!

I think it's the undertones of 'the deserving poor,' that gets peoples backs up; the assumptions that everyone should have the same values, that his sentimental example of the poor of Italy living on mussels, cherry tomatoes and spaghetti should appeal to us all.

It doesn't.

I think there is major contradiction in JO's message and it is this: For people to eat a healthy balanced diet, they have to recognise that what they are consuming is JUST FOOD. For breakfast you can easily eat a single boiled egg: healthy, cheap and filling. Unfortuantely Jamie and Co do not want us eating a boiled egg and some soldiers for brekkie, they do not want kids eating cheese and tomatoes on toast with some banana and a nice hot mug of tea for their tea.

That is not how they make money.

They want us as consumers to believe that food is this wonderful, emotional, thing, they are selling a lifestyle of togetherness and happiness bound together with the consumption of enormous dishes of pasta.

Jamie Oliver is an idiot. And also a bit fat, does that make me fat? I don't think so.

He's also fake, annoying and hypocritical.

happy - JO is responsibly for giving tens of youngsters £30ks worth of training each.
JO successfully campaigned for better school dinners.
JO has made a lot of money.

he is not the idiot here. it is you. and many other posters. but hey ho.

and no government is going to go anywhere near this topic and the anti JO vitriol has shown.

so he is as good as it gets.

The school dinners at the one I work in are absolute shite that I wouldn't feed a dog. And mainly processed crap.

He's also arrogant and smug.

Some of his high in fat, salt and sugar recipes are quite tasty though, I'll give him that.

you the cat - they were worse before he intervened.

how much have you raised the standard of school dinners nationwide?

They want us as consumers to believe that food is this wonderful, emotional, thing, they are selling a lifestyle of togetherness and happiness bound together with the consumption of enormous dishes of pasta.

That's a very good point ubik. You can't get many books or TV programmes out of telling people to boil an egg or do beans on toast.