To think that Jamie Oliver is a Goady goady mc judgy pants personified!

[LEMisdisappointed]

judgey much?

It reads like a clip from the daily mail - actually, it probably is!

Now there are people, i have a friend who can make an amazing meal out of apparently nothing (she is italian though!) in ten minutes flat - although she has lots of those ingredients that are expensive to buy in the first place but go a long way,i would never know what to do with them!

I am such a boring cook, i have a small repertoire (sp) of meals that i cook - over and over again, the ingredients in my cupboard are basic because i can't afford capers and porcinni mushrooms etc. I rarely fall back on ready meals and feed my family healthily. But its boring really and i can understand why some people use ready meals - time, money - So yeah, making your own pizza will be cheaper than dominos or tesco fineset but it is not going to be cheaper than icelands £1 pizza is it? Not from scratch, not from the start - yes if you divide the amount of pizzas your flour, cheese, tomato sauce and anything else you want to put on it by 20 it might be cheaper but those ingredients have to be bought in the first place.

See, I would welcome cheap and easy ways to make my meals more exciting and thankfully we are not on the breadline this month, but im not going to watch that smug little bastard telling me how i can just knock out some pucker tucker out of a packet of anchovies and dust from the cupboard!

I have always thought him a smug twat - this confirms it!

Thaumatrope - I am rural but fortunately reasonably well of - however as I have said before its the many (predominantly) young mums stuck on estates with no childcare who I think are in need of the real help.

Bloody hell, Roasted! We budget £4-7 for a typical every day meal for 4 of us and about a tenner once or twice a week. We're not poor!

When JamieO started the school meals thing a SN school I knew of struggled as some of their autistic kids would not eat the list of OK foods, indeed work to encourage some to eat anything much at all was set back hugely. I made contact with JO, and got a snotty letter back saying that autistic kids deserve a good diet. Missing pint much? Teachers were taking years to introduce new foods in such tiny amounts and making progress then wham! they could no longer do it because the plate of chips necessary to get a child to eat one pea was barred.

Have refused to watch him since.

'I meet people who say, 'You don't understand what it's like.' I just want to hug them and teleport them to the Sicilian street cleaner who has 25 mussels, 10 cherry tomatoes, and a packet of spaghetti for 60 pence, and knocks out the most amazing pasta.'

I'm quite a chilled out person, but I have an overwhelming desire to punch him after reading that snippet!

jamiedonut yes, it's true. Some people don't want to cook. It's a free country.

The problem with AWomanCalledJack is her prices don't add up, you can't buy a single egg etc... I think the problem isn't to do with money some of the time its we are time poor. If you've just done a ten hour day do you really want to cook for an hour.

And yes- I am blessed enough to be able to cook and enjoy it, but certainly were I like many in a bedsit and only able to get into the door after 6 and before 8, and the kids need food; or living with my children in a single room in homeless accommodation where the single shared kitchen is permanently filled with drunks then certainly I'd struggle to feed my boys with healthy food. I have seen both situations recently, even though the first is technically not allowed councils are struggling.

I think he has a bit of a point in that if we are relying on convenience food (cheap or not) we are not instilling into our children the idea that you can cook tasty, nutritious food reasonably cheaply (and even quickly) with a bit of planning, even without expensive equipment or massive amounts of skill.

He's talking about a cultural thing isn't he? He shouldn't really be directing his anger at the people eating the crap though, more those manufacturing it.

He would be better doing a show in the style of 'The men who made us fat' and the one on now 'The men who made us thin' to show how these companies can make the food so cheaply and still turn a profit, and how that business model is making the poorest the least healthy.

Fillyjonk you might be right about JO, there's no doubt he is doing something wrong besides making ignorant comments about big tellies.

I really hate Britain sometimes.

Better food is for other countries because some people are poor and/or isolated here therefore let's not hear another word about it.
Don't mention ingredients that are actually pretty cheap and reasonably widely available because some people can't get them.
Many people work hard and don't want to cook when they get home so god forbid you even mention a recipe that is cheap and easy but takes longer than fifteen minutes (and if it only takes ten, you can have a go at it anyway for having poncy herbs in it).

In one way he's right. It is cheaper and better to feed your family homecooked food- but he's a twat for mentioning porcini mushrooms and Sicilian roadsweepers or whoever it was. If he'd mentioned good British staples like lentil soup or stew or cottage pie or mince and tatties then he would've looked less like a stuck up cock.

Of course poor people shouldn't be allowed big tellys. People should be means tested at every electrical retailer. Big Tv's are only for those who need to be able to read the subtitles of their Danish crime dramas from the other end of their massive living rooms.

I like him and agree with him that the time has come to stop feeding our kids processed shite.

It is possible to eat unprocessed, fresh and healthy food without breaking the bank. Whatever you think of JO surely this is a worthwhile thing to be broadcasting.... In comparison to Big Brother or other equivalent crap on the tv.

It's a much more complex issue than JO can fix. Him bringing out a book and having a TV show will do jackshit for this issue.

He does have a point. Maybe he's no longer the best placed person to be putting his point forward. We all liked him when he was a young lad, looking like a student. Now he's a millionaire with a beautiful family, driving around in a Range Rover people are not feeling the Jamie love.

We were by no means poor when I was growing up, but getting chips from the chip shop would have been a massive luxury for us. My mother knows how to cook healthily and cheaply. (But then she lived through WW2)

I know someone who calls the last week of the month "egg and chips week" because she's run out of money and says she can only afford egg and chips. I really want to shout at her; "Make some vegetable soup!"

And for those of you saying you can't afford capers, you really anent' missing out. They are pointless, IMO.

I agree with him, what he said is unpopular but its the TRUTH

in the UK there is a culture wherby people of a lower income (especially white people) are not well nourished. we often see that they

eat fast food (look at all the fried chicken joints)
eat ready made meals (looks at Tesco, iceland, Lidl with pIzzas for £1, checken Korma for £1 etc)
buy large cheap quanitities for crisps, soft drinks and biscuits- Poundland anyone!

you might not like his tone, but go to any high street in a non "MC" area and look at what people are eating

and as for everyone on here saying they make vats of economic vege chilli. cant you see you are NOT the audience he is talking about, you are on MN for a starters

It fucks me off that anyone on a slightly low income immediately takkes offence, HE IS NOT TALKING ABOUT YOU!

we have a major obesity problem in this country, and responses like this are massively unhelpful. you might not like him, but how thew fuck can you deny what he is saying? look out of the window!

Big Tv's are only for those who need to be able to read the subtitles of their Danish crime dramas from the other end of their massive living rooms.

- I've been trying to justify getting a big TV for a while. Now I have a valid reason. Thank you!

my partner is from an island that grow capers Lynette, and I have a bag on my desk to post to my mate. they is from peasant stock, just saying

they are 2 euros a bag there!

'Better food is for other countries because some people are poor and/or isolated here therefore let's not hear another word about it.'

I don't think it is about ingredients.

It's about access to cooking facilities at the poorest end, knowing how to cook, being absolutely exhausted because of the working hour culture (UK is third in the stats for longest days, below Austria and Greece). It's about the centralisation of supermarkets and the fact that many rural poor have no access to decent ranges of food above the level of the local Spar- heck not just the rurally poor, in my village you will struggle unless you have a car or internet access; old people here do often live off the Spar, thankfully we will have a sainsbo mini soon.

It's increasingly about the end of the social fund and people's inability to replace a broken freezer or cooker without getting into debt with a payday lender.

Microwave meals don't even feature here, indeed I am thinking of binning ours as it just clutters up the work surface and only gets used to heat baked beans. But i've seen enough of life to know I am grateful to have a kitchen at all; especially an equipped one I don't have to share with another six housing units. I am not so ill or exhausted that I an barely stay away to make lentils, or unable to adequately meal plan or work out a budget.

I am hugely supportive of expanding the amount of food education we pass on to our kids and getting information out there to the generations that missed out, but blame is pointless and alienating.

I live in what is considered to be a poor area, lots of the local schools are in special measures, we have a larger than average amount of children taking up free school meals etc. Unemployment is a big problem, as is teen pregnancy, lack of suitable housing and lifestyle health issues like obesity and type 2 diabetes are a big issue. Families tend to be large, with single parents or unemployed parents or both.

I know this because they gave us a lovely talk about how unfortunate we are at the community centre one day

I buy fresh fruit and veg but with DH working away in the week and just DS and I at home, things go off before we use them. I do my best with things I can cook and freeze, but what do you do with, for example, a cucumber that's passing it's best?

I have a car but many people don't. They are just too expensive a luxury

Anyway, the nearest farm shop is several miles away. It would take me about an hour and a half to walk to it, and I walk quickly. So that would be a three hour round trip to buy good fresh veg that was cheap.

Public transport would mean two buses there and two buses back and still take about an hour. I think you can buy an all day saver for £4.25.

In the other direction, the nearest market is about an hour's walk. It runs Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

It's only one bus each way but the fair is £2.20 each way from here, so still quite expensive.

DS was only in school in the morning, for three hours, last year so trips like those for people without a car are difficult if not impossible if they have young children not in full time school.

There's no way I could walk to the farm shop and back in time to fetch DS, and no way I could walk with him to it after school. That would add at least another hour to the journey because he's smaller, slower and he would need to rest more than I would.

And as we couldn't buy fresh stuff in for the whole week without taking the risk that some of it would go off before we'd used it, we'd need to make at least two trips a week to ensure we were buying the freshest we could get.

So that's the two places Jamie would prefer us to shop written off for many families here. Even if they don't work, the cost of transport or the time needed to get there and back makes it difficult to impossible in many cases because of children/school/childcare etc.

Within walking distance we have a Lidl, which is about a 20-30 minute walk for me. And an Asda about a 30-40 minute walk. Sainsbury's about 40-50 minutes away.

Within fifteen minutes I can walk to the local equivalent of Iceland for frozen meals. Or to Iceland itself within half an hour.

I'm not surprised that many local families do. I'm sure they already know it's not the healthiest food, but it is cheap and convenient in more ways than being microwavable. It's local, they can walk there and back in much less than an hour, it's cheap and freezable. If the market or the farm shop were closer they might be used by people local to me but time, travel costs and distance have put them out of reach on a daily basis for most if not all people here who don't own a car.

It's not just about people being too lazy to cook or finding the microwave more convenient.

Not everyone has a market or farm shop on their doorstep, and a three hour round trip every day to buy ten mange tout is a big thing to ask of someone who has young children to get home to before school is out.

(And I would so love someone to ask the local spar lady if she has 26 mussels, some cherry tomatoes and 60p spaghetti amongst the crisps and sweets she fills the shop with- very MC area btw, and assumption everyone can drive elsewhere for a big shop, forgetting not everyone so young / mobile / the large council estate conveniently hidden behind the hill).

He's right
He's trying to educate people about food
Many people, poor or otherwise do rely on microwave or takeaway meals

Basically there are 2 issues -

1. how bloody difficult it is to buy the ingredients for healthy home cooked food/the equipment and power to cook it in various circumstances. Even if you are a working family and in theory should be okay. Massive issue which doesn't get enough attention and the government is doing absolutely zero to fix.

2. lack of education about how to cook cheap basic nutritious meals.

JO pointing around with £9 fish pies (serves 8 apparently, but still - £4.50 for one meal) isn't helping with EITHER of those things.

I do think that showing people how to cook genuinely cheap and nutritionally adequate meals is helpful, but in reality that means things like 1001 things with mince and leftover chicken. how to actually cook lentils, what they taste like and are useful for plus accurate guides for portion sizes, etc etc

Not bloody £9 fish pies.

It's about all those things Peachy, I agree. I just hate the defeatist tinge that these threads always take on.

Nobody is blaming anybody for not having been taught how to cook or for not having enough money (or indeed, interest) to be able to. And it's not our fault that supermarkets are the way they are.

It's all the excuses for why people like Jamie Oliver shouldn't even try to have something to offer. As a nation we seem to have such a can't-do attitude.

I think his heart's in the right place and he does have a very valid point.

I really like him and I have all his books.

what I like about JO (so shoot me) is that he is a MASSIVE fan of south italy, and cucina povera. ie spagetti/and tomato sauce. costs fuck all

its not about pulled pork and £10 fish pies

But I get it, especially for people like sarahandfuck

and I dont think she is who he is talking about