"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.

I think he was making a cultural reference. In that for some now, the culture is now to have a flatscreen tv as a mark of luxury, but to claim they can't afford to eat healthily. So that the lifestyle is indicative of the order of priority. And the proclamations of poverty don't negate the possession of luxury items.

Morloth, don't get me started on that cunt Bono (net worth £600 million).

If some fucker is sitting on a poor African farmers share of what should rightfully be his it ain't me.

It's him and his mates but he has the cheek to lecture me (net worth £2.50 and a packet of chewing gum) about how mean we are being to said poor farmer and how tight we are and how we should give him all our cash.

Fuckety, fuckety fuck off. To an island somewhere. And give all your money apart from the last £50 to the poor african farmers.

It's alright, don't worry, Jamie Oliver is being sent to the island with you and he knows how to cook for the cheaps so you'll both be okay. Or you might starve to death. But if you do you'll deserve it, you'll be poor so it will just be because you're too stupid and lazy obnovs.

Interesting point from Terrorvision. A lot of cooking from scratch is about confidence. And frankly, nobody develops confidence from people sneering at their poor choices.

Learning to cook does involve trial and error, and when you don't have any room for error - when it means dcs going hungry - of course people stick to what's familiar. It can take a lot of effort to get dcs to try new things (lentils won't always go down well) and you need to get something that they will eat.

Disclaimer - I love lentils. But I'm not a confident cook, I work full-time, I need to make something that dd will eat, so I don't cook from scratch as much as I should do.

It is cheaper to cook from scratch than to buy ready-made processed foods - but ONLY if you have the money upfront. I cook all my meals from scratch. When I make a chilli, it creates enough to feed my family and I can also freeze 4 individually sized portions. The price per portion works out less than a £1, but the upfront cost is more like £8. If I had a budget of say £15 to spend on food per week for two (not an uncommon figure for those on benefits, who also have to deduct toilet rolls, toothpaste etc from their weekly shopping budget), I would not be making the chilli and may well choose a deal where I can buy two ready meals for 99p each.

Being poor is an expensive business. It's the same with fuel, where the rates on pre-pay meters are sometimes double the rate payable on DD. The same with cheap shoes and clothes, which need replacing at a much higher frequency, so costing more than if you'd bought a better-quality, more expensive product in the first place. Except of course you only had £15 to spend on shoes, not £60. And so it goes on.

i think it is a generational thing. My grannies were brilliant cooks on v low incomes. They used the cheap cuts of meat that are now fashionable in trendy restaurants - belly of pork, breast of lamb. Dumplings, bread pudding etc etc. And they worked. One did dressmaking, the other took in washing.

Imv, it all went wrong when Cookery turned into Domestic Science in schools to make it more 'academic'.

If you have a young family and can't afford days out and shed loads of craft materials, I'd say a tv is bloody useful.

My ex used to have to do our weekly shop (he could drive, I couldn't and couldn't take ds round a supermarket because of sensory overload meltdowns). He would spend the minimum on absolutely shit meat and veg that wouldn't last the week (no freezer) and I had to do my best with that. It was not easy to make something palatable out of what he bought, despite me menu planning and not being a bad cook.

I made a Jamie Oliver meal not so long ago. The ingredients must have cost £15/20 for one meal for 4. I compromised on the balsamic vinegar and bought the cheapest. Disaster. The fumes, once the balsamic had been added, made my eyes (and the poor cat's) sting so badly that I couldn't see and the meal was a total waste of time and money. Tasted vile, despite following the recipe to the letter. Ended up binning it and going to the chippy.

I'm not a Jamie Oliver fan and don't watch many of his programmes, but I very much doubt he has actually come out and said he thinks poor people are lazy. It sounds to me like people are exaggerating and twisting his words, which says a lot more about them than him tbh.

He might not go about it in the right way, but all he is doing is trying to improve the diets of children who aren't fed a nutritionally balanced diet. School meals improved dramatically because of what he did. That is admirable and really doesn't warrant this much criticism, even if he is a bit misguided sometimes.

Would you prefer that no one gave a shit what children in this country were fed? Is it better for him to say that some children can't eat healthily because their parents don't know how to cook cheap healthy meals and don't have the right utensils, so it's ok for them to be brought up on sub standard food, or is it better for him to try and educate and highlight the difficulties that some people have, even if he causes minor offence here and there?

Agreed. I was fortunate enough to get a couple of years of proper Home Ec where we just cooked things. Including an excellent lesson when the school heating had broken down. The teacher lit the gas ovens and we made scones and tea while we waited for the school to officially close!

I think what he said was taken out of context. As is often done in the media.

If someone poor had said this, would he have got the same slating here?
JO has done a lot more than many other rich people to raise awareness.
Maybe it was a comment made out of frustration.

He is right when he said that poor people in other countries feed themselves more healthily.
But in this country (and many more) the food industry is geared up to low income families with ready meals of awful quality for very little money. That should be tackled.

Personally I would never buy cheap meat in bulk, we rather go without meat and have organic meat once a week. Still cheaper than eating mass farmed stuff every day/every other day.

I was astonished years ago when my younger children first went to other friends houses for dinner, and were served "child meals" which were different from what the adults ate.
I still get angry at the kids' meals in restaurants. Are children not able to eat normal food?
Probably not after years of being fed crap.

Cooking from scratch also requires a cupboard with basic ingredients stocked as standard, including flour, herbs, spices and seasoning. Just going out to get those could cost you about £10, which may be a one-off cost, but if you've only got £15, that's two-thirds of your budget versus a 69p jar of pasta sauce because you're thinking only in terms of the spaghetti bolognese you want to eat that week.

Yeah let's all go and buy his books,make him even richer shall we.

Telling poor people how to eat ,makes him a lot of money.

Cynical old me.

I never really paid much attention to JO until now.. He has actually angered me this time, and the teacher who made the comment somewhere above about iPhones and tvs.. Grrrrrr!! I am on benefits, a few mths ago I wasn't, therefore I have tv and iPhone (mobile contracted to, actually tried to sell it to buy cheaper but has cracked screen so difficult to sell) but WTF does that have to do with JO or teacher commenter? It's irrelevant I do my best for my kids as do most people.. Judgy snobs annoy me more than ppl on benefits with tvs!! We buy from sainsburys because I can't afford public transport and had to sell my car, sainos is local, I try and do decent meals but mostly get what is on offer.. So, so, so tired of being stereotyped, it really depresses me.

Well said brokensunglasses. Jamie Oliver is trying to to good even if hes not perfect at it - give him a break hes only human! His Fifteen Restaurant idea is brilliant and gives people with no chance of a job a proper career. Hes trying to improve things and to pick him on on a few comments is abit harsh.

Myself, I cant understand how people can afford meat - its such a massive waste of money - Im a veggie and when thinking to buy some meat for a friend who was coming over for dinner I decided it wasnt possible when I saw the price meat is - a vegetarian diet is far cheaper and far healthier so Jamie should be pushing vegetarianism id say!

I dont want to get into the whole TV/Ready meals crap, but I have said before on threads like these, IMO these things could be helped along by schools.

My DS did food tech this year and learned how to make scones, crumble and fruit salad, all at great cost. Now if the school had taught him a reasonable skill, how to make pasta sauce for example, he would come away with something worthwhile, DS likes to cook and is quite good at it, but there will be children out there whose parents either cannot cook themselves or are not interested.

Also, has Jamie seen a ready meal aisle in a supermarket. There are very few cheap ones, most are quite expensive and they seem to be doing more and more premium ones.

Dont get me started on Jamie actually, with his fake accent

so not only has JO raised the standard of school meals but his 'Fifteen' restaurants provide work and training for young people with difficult backgrounds.

and made £XXX million.

probably worth listening too. unless you have made more of a change to the lives of children and young people. off your own back. and in the fact of negative publicity.

Ah but 69p for pasta sauce just proves the point - if you get 33p chopped tomatoes and a 10p onion youve got the same meal with a saving of 26p - you dont need to add basil its still delicious without any of the herbs/seasoning. I get that people cant buy herbs etc as they are more like an investment, but things like chopped tomatoes tins, and backed beans are a great price and can make a great meal very cheaply.

If people didn't have TVs they wouldn't be able to watch this smug cunt's programmes.

Oh, there's a thought...

If he really feels that strongly about it, why not bring out a book of cheap, easy, nutritious meals rather than books full of recipes which include ingredients most people have never heard of, cannot afford or have no access to?

Shadeofviolet - his book Ministry of Food does just that.

Chopped tomatoes and an onion does not make a nice pasta sauce. It needs some garlic, salt, pepper, basil, and if you want to make it healthier, lots of hidden veg and some pulses to bulk it out.

I think he means well but, like so many people who have never been poor, he doesn't understand the problems that others on this thread have already mentioned: lack of transport; no freezer or appropriate cooking utensils; a budget that doesn't allow buying in bulk, etc.

But I've never been poor and I understand these things, so it isn't impossible. Maybe he is a twat.

On another note, lentils make me heave, so if I hit the skids and it was a choice between a microwave lasagne and a lentil casserole, the lasagne would win every time.

God Empress and BrokenSunglasses. His Ministry of Food in Rotherham was abandoned not long after the the cameras stopped rolling, he had no long term commitment to that.

I hate the way that he is so paternalistic in his outlook. That the feckless poor need guiding by the responsible rich who can lead them to wholesome lives.

It's all just a sticking plaster, this is an obscenely wealthy man who does a few good things which he uses to promote the goods he has on sale then expects to be beatified by the public for it.

He's a sanctimonious twat, he has no idea what it's like to be poor.

I happily eat it when Ive no garlic etc - its not essential. Its still delicious.

It's no more good for you than beans on toast though, which is cheaper.