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Original poster

To be sad and appalled that a healthy diet is now beyond the reach of many.

489 replies

Darkesteyes · 01/05/2014 21:51

Absolutely appalling. And it will have an effect on the NHS. Poorer people are bashed for being poor.. and bashed for being overweight. Why do I have a feeling its only going to get worse. Sad Angry

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27225323

OP posts:
AShadowStirsWithin · 02/05/2014 21:20

Oh you've posted more since I said that. Ugh, look, can you understand that some people, some people who are poor, could walk into a supermarket and not know what a chickpea or lentil was? They wouldn't know what to do with it, what it goes with, how much leccy it will use to make, how long it will last, if it will taste nice. These are people who have been labelled by the likes of you as "scroungers". They don't tend to get offered free cookery lessons and budgeting courses. They will walk into tescos and buy what they know, what is familiar and what is easy.

When you look at a new ingredient, you draw on your life skills. You draw on previous cooking experience it decide whether you think it should be diced or sliced, put in a pan and boiled or steamed like spinach. You draw on cookery programmes you've watched, cooking you've seen your family do as a child, things you've read. Your brain retrieves relevant information and uses it to make a good guess at how you should proceed. Not imagine that all the knowledge and experience your brain has to draw on is based around bung in the oven food and microwaving. I was in refuge with a girl who didn't know how to boil potatoes. She didn't know whether to use boiling or cold water, so didn't know how long to boil them for. She knew she had to peel then but didn't chop then and then didn't understand why they seemed hard after ten mins. Someone told her to leave them and she did, 30 mins later the fire alarms going off and they've boiled dry. The next day she microwaved some instant mash.

The way you need to look at this to understand it, is with the knowledge that all your life experiences shape the way you view YOUR world. The life experiences of someone less fortunate than you are very different and they shape their world. Does that make any sense?

AShadowStirsWithin · 02/05/2014 21:25

Montegomongoose, I think the only way to stop the comfort eating is to make people less desperate and miserable. The only way to do that is to stop cutting benefits, sanctioning people willy nilly, forcing the disabled to work or starve and other such bollockry.

TequilaMockingbirdy · 02/05/2014 21:26

ashadows I applaud your posts. Very emotional, eloquent and exactly they portray exactly what it is like. If people don't read them and come away with a bit more understanding then they're fools.

iwantsun · 02/05/2014 21:27

I mentioned that our food bank offered cookery lessons and nobody came

Quite often clients refuse things because they are not fast food and they think other food tastes awful and they will not feed it to their families

Same at my foodbank, seem to find the money for cans of lager and bottle of wines though Hmm

WorraLiberty · 02/05/2014 21:28

Montegomongoose

Regarding comfort eating...

I think more than ever, we are raising a whole future generation of comfort eaters, so I'm not sure that will ever change even if everyone became rich over night.

When I look around me in RL or on MN, so many people are advising parents to give their kids a snack to occupy them/stop them from screaming when they're doing something boring like shopping/attending a wedding/sibling's school concert etc...

When I was a kid you took a toy or a book, but nowadays food seems to be the more popular option.

That means kids are learning from a very early age that if they feel bored, sad or angry...eat something nice and it'll make them feel better.

The weight loss topic is full of comfort eaters now, can you imagine what it will be like in the future? Sad

AShadowStirsWithin · 02/05/2014 21:29

I think the problem with offering things like cookery lessons is that those things can't instantly help families that need it most. They often don't have the basics, pots, pans, weighing scales. They don't have enough money to run the cooker daily. They see the words "cookery lessons" and it goes over their heads because they can't relate how that will help, to their actual lives. Knowing how to make a bolognaise, doesn't help them to know how to afford all the pans needed. And it's a whole sea of ingredients they don't buy, aren't familiar with. And it's scary and new.

Original poster
Darkesteyes · 02/05/2014 21:29

Very moving posts from garlic and ashadow Wine Thanks

OP posts:
AShadowStirsWithin · 02/05/2014 21:30

Thanks Tequila. Unfortunately I don't think any posts will get through to certain people, and they are the sorts of people we need to be getting through to!!

iwantsun · 02/05/2014 21:33

I think the problem with offering things like cookery lessons is that those things can't instantly help families that need it most. They often don't have the basics, pots, pans, weighing scales

Talking to the people at my local foodbank, they prefer the quick easy option, can't be bothered to cook. Have pots and pans and all the basics. We even provide basic kitchen equipment, not interested in it. Would rather have a pack of processed crap

WorraLiberty · 02/05/2014 21:33

Montegomongoose, I think the only way to stop the comfort eating is to make people less desperate and miserable. The only way to do that is to stop cutting benefits, sanctioning people willy nilly, forcing the disabled to work or starve and other such bollockry.

As much as I hate to see people in poverty and I would love to see benefit cuts re-instated, I don't think it will make much difference to comfort eating in general.

People were comfort eating long before the recession, for whatever reason.

TequilaMockingbirdy · 02/05/2014 21:34

People will always comfort eat, but I tell you what I did it a lot more when I was rich(ish) than when I was poor.

iwantsun · 02/05/2014 21:34

Comfort eating is about instant gratification but often leads to misery and weight gain later

Original poster
Darkesteyes · 02/05/2014 21:35

iwantsun Fri 02-May-14 21:16:08

I am not gleefully kicking anybody. I have been working voluntarily with the poor and food banks for the last 2 years. If I was kicking gleefully, I wouldnt work with them

I really hope this isn't true after the attitude you have shown on here. But then I guess someone like you likes being around people you can feel superior too.

OP posts:
Original poster
Darkesteyes · 02/05/2014 21:38

After the recent publicity regarding the fact that it was found that IP addresses (that got into Wikipedia to post offensive stuff on the Hillsborough pages) were actually traced back to Whitehall it does make you wonder what ppls motives could be to post inflammatory crap

OP posts:
iwantsun · 02/05/2014 21:40

Like I said darkesteyes you know crap all about me

iwantsun · 02/05/2014 21:42

Inflammatory because everyone doesn't think like you? Hmm

TequilaMockingbirdy · 02/05/2014 21:42

Poor people aren't allowed to eat crap food because if they do it's because their poor, depressed, uninformed and need cookery lessons.

Well off people do it and it's fine Hmm

WorraLiberty · 02/05/2014 21:44

I ate far more crap when I was financially better off

iwantsun · 02/05/2014 21:45

Poor people aren't allowed to eat crap food because if they do it's because their poor, depressed, uninformed and need cookery lessons

Nobody said that. It is when people choose booze over feeding their kids or feed their kids crap so they can have big screen TVs

Sigyn · 02/05/2014 21:46

shadow your posts are awesome reading. I really appreciate your eloquence on this matter.

For those debating the toss about whether comfort eating is caused by poverty. Go back and read shadow's posts. She is saying something quite specific which is that when you have a life which is lacking in comfort and abundant in small stresses and big stresses and worst of all, having to inflict a lot of stress on your kids, then food is an affordable comfort, its a tiny luxury that makes a difference.

AShadowStirsWithin · 02/05/2014 21:47

This is the problem though isn't it, people, the people aren't thinking. It's like one of those kids puzzles where it's close up and you have to guess what it is, but as you zoom out the picture changes into something else. Whether you want to kick the poor or understand how to stop them comfort eating you are missing the point entirely. The whole issue would be markedly improved if we had less poor, and we would have less poor if we weren't juggernauting towards a country where more and more suffer. Benefits have been cut, the disabled forced into work. Rental prices are extortionate, there is a housing crisis for people everywhere and a real problem with people sat in emergency council accommodation for months and years. Energy prices are too high, the elderly are suffering and having to chose between eat and heat every winter. Keep zooming out and the picture gets worse and worse.

If we had better support for people, if we didn't keep punishing and sanctioning people, if Cameron et al didn't keep pushing and pushing to force anyone whose leg isn't hanging off to do any job regardless of how inappropriate, if the media hadn't whipped the public into a daily fail frenzy of judging and pointing and jeering at those suffering; if everyone found some empathy, we wouldn't be in this situation. Even those who have a problem with the poor don't seem to grasp that being horrible to them won't make them go away. They are people, who need help. Give them actual support, actually invest in services to help people who need it and we have less poor.

People can't see that though, it's far easier to proclaim that everyone should by working unless they are in their death throes, that everyone should be eating dust in order to claw their way out of the "scroungers lifestyle" at which point they become the deserving poor and we don't mind them having some benefits for a short while.

We shouldn't be debating how fat poor people are and how many carrots they eat, it should be about the welfare system and the class divide which has widened to staggering degrees in the past few years. People just seem blinkered, like they have been whipped into a frenzy and so can't see clearly. It worries me, especially with elections on the horizon.

WorraLiberty · 02/05/2014 21:47

I'm also ashamed at the amount of food I used to waste

For example, if the leftover beef from the Sunday roast wasn't eaten in sandwiches by Tuesday lunchtime, I'd give it to the dog.

Now we'll have a stir fry or a curry with it.

Sigyn · 02/05/2014 21:47

Big screen tvs!

Full house!

TequilaMockingbirdy · 02/05/2014 21:48

Nobody said that. It is when people choose booze over feeding their kids or feed their kids crap so they can have big screen TVs

Well that's not what I got from your posts at all tbh.

Oh hello, big screen TV's. Bingo!

iwantsun · 02/05/2014 21:49

Read the posts again then Tequila