"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.

We were going to try a JO recipie once
It was the 30 mins lamb one
The lamb was over £20
Luckily the butcher understood when I said no
Anyway back to my mahhsoove tv

my god faster - you are the most beyond the pale poster i've come across on mn in years and that is saying something.

you have no idea why i would have gained weight or lost it and who the hell are you to make assumptions about my diet and what i eat.

Faster, you accused me of not being able to debate intelligently yesterday and I let it go.

You are being really unpleasant to swallowed for no good reason other than she disagrees with you.

Having children does make a huge difference to how you view food/the cost of it/nutrition and also how much time you have available and how easy it is to shop cheaply.

and thanks to whoever defended me on that one.

perhaps we'll re-ask madam what she weighs when she's given birth to children rather than just being expert on what she'd feed her imaginary ones.

I am five foot one and a half and weight just under 8 stone. What difference that makes as even skinny people can have tons of fat barded around their internal organs.....I try to keep an extra 3-4 lbs on as otherwise I look a little gaunt.

there are loads of posters on this thread with children who think you can feed them cheaply and healthily.

so of course i will adapt - but it don't not mean i am 100% wrong however much you would like that to be the case.

perhaps we'll re-ask madam what she weighs when she's given birth to children rather than just being expert on what she'd feed her imaginary ones.

where did i mention my imaginary children?

What confuses me is how come processed food is so much cheaper than raw ingredients? I know it's using the worst quality bits of stuff (e.g. fatty, gristly beef instead of lean steak mince for lasagne), or pumping it full of water (e.g. processed ham), so I can see the initial raw ingredients that go into the processed food are obviously going to be cheaper than if you'd bought a better quality ingredient yourself. However, there are lots of ingredients and they have to be processed via a factory, which uses workers, and so on. HOW do they produce a lasagne for 75p?

Are they all loss leaders or something, just designed to get us through the doors? Or are they waiting until we're all incapable of living off anything else and then they'll put the prices up?

previously i stated feeding 2 adults.

Agree that JO's recipes are expensive to make. I always feel he should stop 4 steps before he does stop IYSWIM.

His fish pie was stupid expensive to make for example.

i've had lies, personal attacks and swearing abuse from you faster. i'm not inclined to carry on chatting tbh. you were armchair parenting hence i mentioned imaginary children.

Anyway.....
I think JO is ok, and he means well, and even if he makes some bad statements, or gets reported as having done, hes done a lot of good and he doesnt deserve such a bashing. Id never seen or read anything of his before this thread and now I have done, so perhaps a case of no publicity is bad publicity. And that hed better take care never to mention tvs again.
just my view though.

Yes, you can feed a family cheaply and healthily - if you have the resources.

There are so many other factors in this that might make getting to a shop difficult or cooking decent food impossible.

It is JO's sweeping generalisations about this that has got people's backs up. Not all people with small incomes are unable to manage. Some people don't know how or can't because of disabilities/lack of a kitchen/crises that leads to no money for food. It just isn't that simple.

You can feed your children thriftily and healthily. But as you will learn, you will have little control over what they eat outside of the home especially as they enter into teenage years and assert their independence. A decent grounding w/ education and teaching of culinary knowledge and skills is important but won't stop them from eating fast food and drinking too much if they decide to. We have 5 adult children so are as 'expert' as anybody can claim to be (not that I think anybody can ever be an expert at being a parent as every day is new) and all are fit, healthy and neither over or under weight. One though has now started eating meat after 23 years of being a true vegetarian (My stepchildren were brought up that way), one eats on the run and probably total crap due to nursing shifts etc yet is very slim, two are super health freaks and one is balanced in that she will eat pretty healthily whilst enjoying home made cakes (she is a patissiere in training). All grew up in food interested homes w/ home made food, no processed stuff apart from crisps and chocolate twice/week and plenty of fruit and vegetables most home grown. Horses for courses, you lay the foundations, the rest is out of your hands.

SAF you are glad i don't have children. see ya.

In Lidl last night I noticed that fresh chicken breasts or mini fillets were substantially more expensive than the same quantity of breaded chicken pieces (both in the same freezer). So you have the option of:

1. Spending more and buying fresh, raw chicken which you have think of how to cook yourself

or

1. Spending less, buying breaded chicken pieces which you can bung in the oven without much thought.

Just one example, but it proves that sometimes the healthy choice is both harder AND more expensive.

As an aside (just skimming through the thread), how will you eat your marrow FasterStronger?

Dahlen, just saw your post there about processed food being cheaper than fresh, which my post concurs with.

It's true. And frozen crap is often cheaper too.

So maybe JO should be having a rant at the manufacturers and purveyors of all this shite instead of whining on about parents on low incomes?

i literally never said that. guess that one goes under the 'lies' heading.

agree it's complex youthecat. not driving and not being near any decent shops will in itself be enough to make healthy eating a real challenge even before you get to disability, time poverty, not being able to bulk buy etc.

i'm sure people can see that really.

and realistically if you had a tenner and had to feed a family for a week what are you going to do? you won't even get a chicken and a few meals worth of veg for that however you can buy boxes of fishfingers, chips and whatever other freezer crap is on offer for a pound that week.

i am lucky not to be in that position but empathy allows us to see it from others viewpoints surely? jamie is selling scandalousness not healthy eating. it's like misery porn and all hand wringing daily fail stuff - the market is not the people it claims to be concerned about but the people who love having a laugh or a sneer at the feckless poor.

well in my childless house, its really easy.

so many different ways but they wouldn't be of any help on this thread so not worth typing as eating is really different if you have children.

to mary mama

sorry i am told eating is different but i would obviously know fuck all about that.

yes feeding growing children as a parent is different to feeding yourself. is that really a surprise?

it's a thread about feeding families and JO sneering at what parents who are poor feed their children. swanning in saying it's easy just go veggie and live on lentils is as someone who has never had to shop for and feed growing children day in and day out for years is obviously not that well thought out.

laughing and sneering at the feckless poor? Whose doing that?