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

[Darkesteyes]

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.

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

'Sainsburies are doing selected veg for 69p at the moment. I don't believe a healthy diet is beyond anyone's reach financially'

They're also doing packets of rich tea at 15p...I can utterly see where the issue lies.

We've been doing the 'below the line' challenge this week. There are 3 of us, so we had £15 for the weeks shopping. Cheap pasta, cheap meat and loads of cheap carbs. Very little veg or fruit.

Sorry, that's 5 days shopping. But there are families living on that little, and if you can get 5 apples, or 3 packets of biscuits then the biscuits will win every time, because they'll last you more days and (superficially at least) fill you more.

Apologies to everyone, but I absolutely cannot read a thread on the tragic problem of starvation occurring in this, the 6th richest country in the world, which has already (and inevitably) descended into competitive healthy-dietism and grotesque victim blaming.

If you can't get a job and are on JSA, the jobcentre will go out of its way to 'sanction' you for minor or imagined rule infractions. Even more so if you're currently being subjected to the humiliations of workfare (which increases your outlay.) Sanctions mean ALL income is stopped. How can people in our country still be waffling self-righteously about the best way to buy apples, and the evils of Basics steak pie, when this is happening an people are starving?

Did you know the food banks are having to ask for more tins of processed food, because clients don't have any gas or electricity to cook or even boil the kettle for pot noodles?

Did you know temporary accommodation in B&Bs provides no cooking facilities? Most actually prohibit microwaves. Not that you'd want to be microwaving much in the bedroom where you and all your children live, study & sleep together.

The low waged on zero-hour contracts have no steady source of income. It's really hard for them to claim top-up benefits, as the system hasn't yet caught up with this particular abuse of labour. Plus, those on low wages can be harassed by the jobcentre to attend daily appointments, jump through incessant paper hoops, and be 'sanctioned' for not attending a jobcentre-mandated activity because they have to work.

How DARE you - any of you - make this about inadequate housekeeping skills?

I'm sorry, but that article is an absolute load of PAP. sorry. A healthy diet IS affordable when there's not much money (this coming from someone who's had about £10 spare for the week to spend on food this week!
You buy smart price tomatoes, 30p a tin. Baked beans, 30p a tin. A huge bag of lentils for £2 that will last the entire month.
You make stews out of it. Or a portion of a big bag of rice and some peas and ham stirred in for risotto.
Bags of 3 bananas are 39p in Aldi. Or 69p a bag of apples. So fruit doesn't have to be expensive either.
You CAN eat healthy. It just means making the effort to cook from scratch and shop around.

I buy my veg in the local market and got the following for £1 each last weekend: 7 bananas, 8 apples (Granny Smith), 12 lemons, 10 large tomatoes, 7 aubergines, 10 red peppers, 8 sweet potatoes, 4 lbs of red onions, 5 lbs of potatoes, 4 lbs of carrots. Two Savoy cabbages for £1 as well, and a box of mushrooms (large box), also £1. I could have had 6 iceberg lettuces for £1, but not keen on iceberg, and didn't think we could eat that many anyway. This will keep us going for a good two weeks. Lentils are also cheap, around £2 for a 2 kilo bag; I buy a box of frozen crushed garlic and frozen crushed ginger for 75p each, and a kilo of frozen spinach for £1. I don't think it could get much cheaper than that.

'Sainsburies are doing selected veg for 69p at the moment. I don't believe a healthy diet is beyond anyone's reach financially'They're also doing packets of rich tea at 15p...I can utterly see where the issue lies.

Well, that all depends on where your priorities lie, doesn't it. Cheap veg, or cheap biscuits.

Garlic I AGREE with EVERYTHING you've said there. Im sorry if my posts came across as competitive dieting crap. I did NOT mean them to. I was just trying to explain that because I cant eat half the healthy stuff im supposed to due to stomach/colic issues there is no healthy alternative that I can replace it with.
And when I was signing on in the late 90s and again between 2005 and 2007 I went through it again Carbs ARE cheap And the saying "cheap as chips" was invented for a reason.

I went through a stage of being malnourished. I had been made redundant and my only income was CB. I had dd to feed, housing costs and job hunting costs so my savings dwindled rapidly.

I regularly skipped meals often going more than 24 hr without anything to eat. My body craved calories and filling bulk. When I did eat it Was plain pasta or to save money on cooking dry bread my I'd sometimes go through a packet of cheap supermarket brand biscuits like the 15p ones mentioned up thread because they tasted so good, eased my craving and more importantly eased the pain in my stomach in a way fruit never did. I fed my daughter properly I just couldn't afford to feed us both properly.

It's taken me a while to recover from this and some days I feel so rough I'm not sure I've recovered 100%.

Garlic when I was on workfare back in 2000 all I could afford was a portion of chips every day.

Because bus fares wernt paid back till the Friday My weight ballooned and my health suffered.

You can buy a kilo of frozen veg from Asda for 75p. Tinned tomatoes for 25p. Kidney beans for 23p. A kilo of rice for 40p, a kilo of spaghetti for 40p. Buying loose fruit and veg instead of prepared or packed stuff will save you money - £1.95 for a kilo of fruit isn't extortionate. 75p for a kilo of fresh carrots, a lettuce for 50p.

You're looking at minimum £1 for a pizza, minimum £1 for a readymeal.

When I did the below-the-line challenge (live off £1 a day) I ate an awful lot of fruit and veg. No meat though.

It's not the prices that are putting people off eating healthily, it's the effort of actually cooking it.

Or what about the cost of cooking it.

Fish and garlic, you make good points. There ARE some people who it is genuinely out of reach to feed themselves, never mind to do so healthily, at least some of the time. I used to be proud to live in a country where people didn't starve...

However there is definitely also a problem with some people in slightly less desperate situations and the quality of the food they eat. Likewise, there is an issue with some people on good incomes and their eating habits.

It's a cross income level issue, I firmly believe, with different drivers for different groups. I may be slightly cushioned by the lower housing costs around here but there are only a few of the people I work with who are in the destitute category, most come into the low/fixed income one and there are a multitude of reasons some of them have poor diets, including the perception of it being too expensive when the products they are buying are actually dearer.

I don't think it devalues one problem to recognise another - but we should all be aware of the much more severe problem of people actually starving in our country and hang our heads because we let it happen

Thanks, Darkest - and yes, re carbs. A cone of chips is a satisfying meal for a pound. Carbs & lard. Nobody at all thinks it's a healthy meal, but it works ... and at least it's 1 veg!

It just means making the effort to cook from scratch and shop around.

For fuck's sake.

Most of the least privileged in my area live in the outlying villages. It's much the same throughout our country. Many villages have no shop. If there is one, it's a petrol station franchise. The supermarkets are 5, 10, 15 miles away. The buses are cripplingly expensive (£6.60 for 10 miles) and don't even serve many of the villages, so that's a 3 mile walk or so to get to the stop. Village buses run maybe 2 times a week.

Plus, most of the social housing is all-electric, with an EPC of E or F. And flooding.

Ours is the SIXTH richest country! We have all paid huge sums in National Insurance. Why aren't you all angry about this insurance failing to pay up?
Is it really more comfortable to sneer at the poor? Aren't you ashamed that we even have poor?

garlic OK, I get your point about living in outlying villages. I used to live in one growing up and in my student days. many moons ago I lost sight of the fact how crap it used to be as the one village shop shut at 6pm and the bus to the nearest town cost about £5. Before you'd even ventured into any shops. I take it for granted I live near lots of shops now, and for that I apologise. Living in villages can be idyllic but when it comes to food shopping they suck, especially when you don't drive.
Most people have internet connection nowadays though which connects them to all the big supermarkets. At around £2 delivery off peak or £5 at weekends, that's cheaper than any bus fare, anywhere (even oop North where I am.)
Why can't you have bulk cheap items delivered in that circumstance?

I have a bag of potatoes we bought at the weekend.... but the potatoes will go off soon-ish. Potatoes should last more than a week and don't tend to go off as such if stored properly

I think part of the problem is that people go on best before dates (that are required by law) rather than the quality of the fruit/veg. So, if you are buying apples and throwing them away as they are past their date, then of course you will think that apples are expensive. If you realise that the date os arbitrary and assess the eatability of the thing on an individual basis then there will be less waste

Same with cheese. the best before date is an arbitrary thing. I've seen deeply discounted brie that is no where near reaching it's optimum eating stage, but is on it's date.

And as others have said, Aldi is brilliant for cheap veg, and the quality is good; much better than it used to be thanks to a much higher turnaround.

And for those who can;t get to a supermarket, Morrisons have good quality cheap fruit and veg and now deliver. You can get a late or early slot for only £1 delivery. They have also announced today that they are permanently reducing the price of over 1000 everyday items.

And meat is expensive. We now buy meat on the 3 for £10 offer and eat veg based meals for the rest of the week. I made a cauliflower curry this week that cost less than £3 to make (including naan bread) and fed 5 of us, with leftovers for my lunch the next day. A comparable chicken curry (weight for weight) would have cost around £7.

I love cooking, cook every day (sometimes 3 x a day, just for me) and eat a v healthy diet. But I have money, time, and most importantly the wherewithal to cook. It's a piece of piss for me to rustle up a healthy dinner from pulses, veg, cheap cuts of meat etc, but I have great knives, high-quality pans, a good chopping board, space in my fridge and freezer, a food processor, a kitchen that's big enough to do stuff in, don't worry about the gas bill, etc.

If I had 12" of space, a kettle, a microwave, no decent knives and pans, and a single spiral hotplate that ate money, I'd be eating crap too I imagine.

Cooking healthily and cheaply for a family is about far more than the cost of the ingredients.

Fair enough, Champions, but it still rules out shopping around! In my experience, too, cooking from scratch with low-budget ingredients both uses far too much fuel and yields samey, brownish-beige, slop. I'm lucky that I have gadgets like a slow cooker, can walk to Aldi, and enjoy an encyclopaedic knowledge of nutrition. All the same, I was getting £61 a week for most of last year and was clawing at the walls for 'proper' food and a few treats. When I got a large payment, hundreds of pounds went immediately on lovely food items that didn't have to be simmered with stock cubes, bottles of gin & vodka, and the bits & bobs I'd not been able to afford to replace when gone: underwear, tights, body lotion, baking parchment, compost; the list goes on! I also bought a winter coat, shoes & boots. Bye bye large payment.

It's far worse for an increasing swathe of people, who aren't going to get any sporadic extra payments and are basically stuffed when the shoes, etc, run out. And sanction targets have been ratcheted up again. Sanctions mean destitution.

We really need to be looking at the issue Darkest highlighted in her OP, and making a much bigger fuss about that.

YYY, Amethyst. When Jamie Oliver did his patronising series, the crew brought in big boxes of 'store cupboard' ingredients, cooking utensils and pans. (Even then, they cheated on the stated cost of ingredients!)

Ive never internet shopped or internet banked. I just don't like the idea of using my card over the internet.

During the Heartbleed debacle I saw Mignonette say on another thread that an IT friend of hers had warned her against internet banking etc some time ago.

Jamies attitude last year stunk Its in the webchat I linked.

cooking from scratch with low-budget ingredients both uses far too much fuel and yields samey, brownish-beige, slop.
What the heck were you cooking?!