To get fed up with people with people like Jamie Oliver trying to coerce poor people via taxation.

[Booyaka]

I absolutely loathe Jamie Oliver anyway, but this crusade of his over sugar is driving me mad. I think something possibly needs to be done about sugar, but I don't think this is the way to do it. He did make a suggestion about prominently labelling total number of teaspoons of sugar in a product, which seemed quite sensible. But mainly he was pushing the tax angle.

Jamie Oliver's entire schtick seems to be that poor people can't be trusted to make the right decisions so they should instead be priced out to force them to make the decisions that he and his ilk believe that they should be making.

It bloody annoys me that they seem to think if you are wealthy and can afford them anyway you can be trusted to make the right decision anyway, but if you're poor you need to be coerced, and that coercion, of something as basic as what you eat and drink, is fine as long as you are poor. He did very much concentrate on handwringing about 'the deprived' too and how this tax would seemingly save them from themselves.

Apparently 1/3 of the products he sell in his restaurants are high sugar anyway, but he probably doesn't mind that, because he prices his tat so highly only middle class people can afford it and they're sensible enough to be trusted with sugar unlike the proles.

He probably doesn't realise, but a lot of people can't afford to take their kids to Tuscany or the Caribbean, Cornwall or even Skeg-bloody-ness. They can't buy their kids a lot of toys or give them days out. Is it really fair to give these people a financial kicking for giving their kids one of the few treats they can afford? Especially when many of them do so sensibly and in moderation.

Would he fuck Charity For what it's worth, I have a DP who is very disabled and believe me, if I thought JO had it in for people with disabilities I would be straight on him.

Helena If you don't like JO or think he has a negative attitude towards people who are poor, fair enough. I'm just saying people should not attack the way he looks and the way he speaks. I've never heard JO say anything akin to the comments that have been made about him on here but if he has, I'm happy to stand corrected.

Pirate I'm sorry to hear that.

My son has autism and his disability is very real but invisible to Tory policy makers and the people who support them as JO does.

And yes, he slated the poor, uneducated and learning disabled in order to get cheap publicity for his book.

And yes, he slated the poor, uneducated and learning disabled in order to get cheap publicity for his book

I'd be really, really shocked if that was true. Can you direct me to any reliable source to confirm? He may be irritating but I find it hard to believe he would be stupid enough to do the type of things suggested in this thread.

charity where does he do that?

I think what he says here makes sense www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-34576006

No, I am not a massive fan but he does make some sense.

A sugary drink tax, he says it s one part, deeply symbolic and it could raise a billion pounds, and that all sounds good (to me).

I was not taught really to cook at home properly or at school, and I now hate cooking, and I am very overweight.

Must sleep, thanks for the interesting discussion .... off to guzzle some sugary drinks... NOT REALLY! .

Night all.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events/a1836958-Jamie-Oliver-webchat-Thursday-29-August-2-45pm

This is all to sell his next fucking book though isn't it? He always pops up this time of year.

There is also a problem in the diet industry They promote a lot of low fat but high sugar products.

The NHS advice on low fat is out of date, I can eat a small amount of fat and still lose weight. its sugar i have to watch. I dont deprive myself though. I like a bit of choc yule log at Christmastime

Taxation is such a blunt instrument. I dislike taxation being used as a means to control people. I'd say the same about minimum pricing on alcohol too.

Charity, I've looked really hard and I can't find anything about JO supporting the Conservative Party. Nothing at all.

that's disappointing, yes read that webchat. Plus: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/27/jamie-oliver-poverty-ready-meals-tv

There's a lot of crap in there from JO about poor people feeding their kids rubbish but having expensive plasma screen TVs. I like the way that the writer describes poverty: What I had not understood before I found myself in true poverty, and what Oliver probably does not, is that it means living in a world of "no". Ninety-nine per cent of what you need is answered "no". Ninety-nine per cent of what your kids ask for is answered "no". Ninety-nine per cent of life is answered "no". Cinema? No. Night out? No. New shoes? No. Birthday? No. So, if the only indulgence that is viable, that is within budget, that will not mean you have to walk to work, is a Styrofoam container of cheesy chips, the answer is a thunderous "YES".

Or this JO gem: "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,” said Oliver, 38, whose own wealth is estimated at £150 million.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/10266648/Jamie-Oliver-sparks-poverty-row-after-he-attacks-families-for-eating-junk-food-and-buying-expensive-TV-sets.html

Helena I am not sure what I missed but reading his comments on that web chat he came across as lovely. He made one inappropriate comment about TVs. He gave a copty of his book away and he has given a copy to every library in the country, the meals in his book cost £1 something a portion to make on average (or whatever). i can't see why people don't like him! I really can't. Maybe they do not like his style, or his style of cooking or whatever but .... I think he is pretty good. that's delayed me from bed... off to zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I was not taught really to cook at home properly or at school, and I now hate cooking, and I am very overweight.

Ah, now this goes some way to explaining what I see as your rather impractical attitude to food and diet :) Properly understanding food makes you immune to most of the balderdash spouted about it, particularly by 'experts'. Of course, it also helps to have a proper understanding of life, which Jamie Oliver does not. Good quotes & links, Boo.

Properly understanding food and health makes you immune ...

No good getting on my soapbox if I forget half the message.

I think that television chefs have contributed to making food preparation seem difficult and confusing. Many people equate 'good eating' with exotic foods with a huge list of ingredients. That's why they're choosing ready made meals over things that people used to eat years ago. As far as I'm concerned, and I've said this many times before there's nothing wrong with egg and chips. If you put a few frozen peas on the side too that would constitute a brilliant meal. We're forgetting this though and becoming conditioned into thinking we need more complicated food to satisfy us. We don't. Eat a jacket potato and beans instead. The celebrity chefs won't make any money telling us this though.

Right I just checked out some of Jamie's cheap & easy recipes. They are very similar to the things I make myself ... but! For one thing, the cheapest ideas are vegetarian which is not a wise nutritional approach on a very small budget.

Then. There's this sort of thing. I looked at his frittata suggestions: I make a hell of a lot of frittata, eggs being exceptionally good nutritional & culiinary value - though I don't do the full oven finishing thing that makes a frittata great, as pre-heating the oven costs money. OK. so we learn how to make a frittata (using a thick, non-stick, oven-proof, hob-proof, shallow pan which I'm sure every cut-price household owns and free-range eggs according to him.) Then we get:

"Or try making a pizzaiola pasta frittata – make the basic pasta frittata (I like to use fusilli, but use whatever shape you have), then serve by slicing and layering over 6 ripe cherry tomatoes and 40g of fontina cheese. Scatter over a few fresh basil leaves, and finish with an extra grating of Parmesan.

If it’s springtime, make the basic recipe extra special by adding peas and pancetta."

A few fresh basil leaves? Fontina cheese? Pancetta! Does he know the price of that stuff? I notice we're grating real Parmesan here, too, not sprinkling it with the more affordable dried toe cheese version.

... and this is an example of the sort of thing that irritates the fuck out of me. Oliver's a good cook and a likeable chap - I've met him while eating at his restaurants in a previous life - but he has no business setting himself up as a diet guru for deprived people. Because he has no fucking clue. At all.

Agree with you very much there, too, Pirate.

I'm not sure that's supposed to be a cheap meal, to be fair?

says "Jamie's Food Tube: The Pasta Book"

What appears to make JO so offensive is that he wants to help people to help themselves. Whereas by contrast most of you on this thread want it all on a plate - preferably with a huge slice of cake on it.

As previous posters have said, he should have turned this campaign on its head. I have some support for a sugar tax but given the rising use of foodbanks the lack of food for some families whether it's healthy or not is a bigger imperative. Also, if we are going to tax sugary food that money should be used to subsidise healthy food and to ensure that lower income families can access that food. Another option would be to provide free meals for children in the holidays when many children go hungry.

On current trends by 2050 half the adult population will be obese.

Tower Hamlets has half the rate of adult obesity than places like Cumbria, mainly because it's full of poor foreign born people rather than poor white English born people. I live in a very poor and ethnically diverse area where people spend very little on food but are still able to buy and cook delicious healthy food, using veg and lots of pulses.

Obesity among the white working classes in the uk is at crisis level. It really isn't just about income. It's about shocking ignorance about food and a lack of cooking skills.

There is a high street near me lined with very cheap food shops selling huge bunches of fresh herbs, fish, meat, all at massively below supermarket prices. Hardly any white English born people shop there. They all go to Asda a mile down the road so they only have to walk 10 yards between their car and the shop, where they can pile their trolleys full of ready meals and giant bottles of fizzy crap.

It's depressing and infuriating.

I agree with you. As cb said its just about snobbery, he did the sainsburys Xmas adds telling people to gorge on cake and trifle.

the cheapest ideas are vegetarian which is not a wise nutritional approach on a very small budget

Wtc! Veggies live longer healthier lives.

Gorging on cake and trifle once a year is fine.

Drinking an extra 200 calories of empty calories every day in the form of sugary drinks for years on end will leave you obese.

Jamie Oliver is right. Occasional feasts are fine. It's junk food and sugary drinks most days which are destroying the health of children in the poorest communities in the UK.