To not understand why food is such a class issue in the UK????

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This is prompted by the food bank thread in Chat. If you haven't read it, it's basically various posters claiming that porridge and honey are "posh" foods that "normal" people don't eat...

Anyway, I have lived in the UK for over a decade and still don't understand this obsession with categorising food in such a way. What is the origin of it? Many of the foods considered "posh" are basic foods which normal people around the world have eaten for hundreds or thousands of years, and are still eating them.

Why are chick peas sneered at while baked beans are ok?

Why do people prefer to give their kids cornflakes and think that having porridge is something to laugh about?

I am so busy I often buy oatsosimple sachets and we buy scratch meals- they're a fiver from wait rose and include prechopped veg, meat and spice. You tip it in a pan. I eat out at least 3 meals a week, I eat lunch out everyday. I drink a take out coffee a day.

Why isn't anyone outraged at that? Why isn't my lifestyle the subject of endless patronising threads about lack of education and opportunity?

There are a lot of people who only eat fast food and ready meals. Bread is white plastic sliced yum , all pasta sauces come out of a jar, pizza is from the freezer cabinet, their children eat one of the following for EVERY meal: chicken nuggets, fish fingers, baked beans, cheap sausages, pizza. Anything which doesn't come ready formed with masses of added salt and sugar is posh and likely to not get eaten, and will therefore not be purchased.

Sadly I think quite a lot of people live like this in the UK.

Didn't used to be the case. My nana bought up six boys alone on a council estate and was an amazing cook. That's what what you had to be to feed a family of 7 well on a tiny income. No cheap ready meals in those days.

In my experience the whole eating quick to prepare, over processed food is a lower middle class thing.

My family adopted that kind of food with gusto, I ate very little cooked from scratch type food growing up. We weren't poor, there were no clever ways to make meat stretch further or hearty stews bulked up with vegetables going on in my family because there was no need to cook like that. However no one had any culinary aspirations either, new or foreign foods were looked on with suspicion and considered as not the kind of thing we ate. Unusual food was for posh people and foreigners. We were solid respectable people who knew our place and didn't smell of garlic.

What my full time working mother and grandparents were was time poor, and also fairly uninterested in what went into their diets, speed and ease of cooking was everything. I never ate real porridge until I was an adult, I had ready brek, soup always came out of a can and vegtables were almost always frozen peas and/or carrots.

Pocket, my family were the same in the same time period. But this was pre-Jamie and Nigella and the remergence of an interest in cooking healthy food, particularly amongst the middle classes.

I think this was partly because many of our parents were still old enough to remember the tail end of rationing, so were less likely to view deprivation as a virtue and more likely to view it as an imposition.

It was also the era of Shirley Conran telling women life was too short to stuff a mushroom. A middle class woman was more likely to indicate her status by being too busy with work to cook meals from scratch for the whole family. Consumption was seen positively and spending on prepared food was viewed with more approval. It's just fashion and perception. I imagine it's highly likely in 20 years our daughters will be on whatever medium has replaced the forum discussing which magic balanced nutritional tablet they and their families consume which allow for optimum weight and health, and scoffing at the awful proles who actually cook things which are much more hit and miss nutritionally. And their daughters will probably lead the backlash for real food and home cooking!

You don't need to know how much milk to add to porridge any more than you need to know how much milk to add to tea of how much jam to put on toast.

You would only need to try it once to see for yourself how to make porridge to your own taste. It is no harder than ready brek.

If people don't like porridge, fair enough. I hate chick peas and will never eat them. But it is as cheap as to be almost free, it's hot and it's healthy, and takes no more effort to make than a cup of tea does.

If you have a microwave or a hob, there are no barriers to accessing porridge. If you have no microwave or hob, obviously you can't make porridge.

Alice, it sounds like you eat well, and have no problem affording food.

Lots of people cannot afford to eat well, and lack the knowledge or confidence to get a nutritious diet on a crap income.

I don't get what's patronising about that.

Like R0nJ0n I had a middle class upbringing and every meal was fish fingers, chicken nuggets, baked beans and that good old standby findus pancakes. My mum didn't cook as such other than the Sunday lunch. I have fought back from that and cook from scratch for most meals, I have a 4 yo who I don't think has ever had a chicken nugget in her life she'd much rather have a chicken drumstick instead.

The point about porridge was a comparison to ready brek and yes porridge is cheap and easy to make but if you are being provided with things from a fb then ready brek works out cheaper still.

Blueberries are expensive for the amount of fruit you get.

The only difference between porridge and ready brek is porridge is milled to be smooth. I have been giving it to my DC as first foods so investigated this recently.

The point with food banks and not giving porridge is they won't get given fresh milk to make it with, which makes it not a very good donation. But from the previous thread lots of posters don't care whether their donation is useful or not. It has nothing to do with being posh or not.

So Morris its about people being poor? In poverty? When you live in poverty your life expectancy is drastically reduced. You are more likely to suffer addiction, mental illness, and violence. You are more likely to be raped or killed.
So why is food so important? What is the problem if poor people spend their short miserable lives eating crap rather than learning from the educated lower middle classes how they can make a chicken last a week and make a delicious meal for 30p from Passata and black beans?

Alice you said the magic word Waitrose. Nobody is going to criticise you on here if you shop at the sacred temple of supermarkets.

Alice. You're personally responsible for ruining the planet, you know that? Why not replace all your meals out with a shared pot of hummus and some wraps, and give the money you save to a food bank? People like you cause the downfall of civilisations! Instead of paying £5 for a pre-chopped meal, you can pop a tin of chickpeas and some sausages in the slow cooker before you go to work. Also make sure you put on a hair shirt, and read Cooking For Dummies on your commute.

HTH.

Cross-posted! Obviously, people wouldn't get poorly or be raped & killed if only they knew what to do with gram flour.

Alice, I don't care what individual people eat. It's not my concern.

But if poor people prefer the taste of processed foods and don't want to eat traditional 'square meals' then let's just say that. Instead of saying it's because of x social issues that are complex to address.

My own view is that people who eat the processed shit you mention do so because that's their preference. But I get bashed for saying that on here, it's meant to be because of a raft of factors which I could never understand, because I am MC.

Actually you are told by professionals to use readymade meals if you have a disability. So the middle-class professional is adding to the issue.

I only use a few ready meals, as I often make big portions so I can freeze portions in takeaway style containers for bad days instead of a takeaway or readymeal.

I make porridge now. I bought a Pyrex bowl just the right size and a cup measure to make it easy. If I was in benefits I would not have spare cash to get these things. It's all well and good saying it's cheap and easy, but even for a basic dish there are start up costs - equipment that you need to buy when money is very tight. And if you've never made porridge before or seen it made how would you even know that you were buying the right size bowl or that the recipe would work or that you would like the taste? It really isn't difficult to see why people on very restricted incomes stick to food that they know and that takes little preparation.

In my 1970s childhood we used to have honey flavour spread. Also chocolate flavour spread. The chocolate one was particularly delicious - much nicer than Nutella.

But you don't need equipment to make porridge, I use a mug to measure out. If you don't like the taste or consistency then you learn from your mistake and do it differently next time.

You might as well argue that people shouldn't drink squash because they don't know how strong to make it to their taste.

Porridge - stick some oats in a pan, slosh some milk on and cook till thickend what is special about that, too thick - add more milk - bit thin add a few more oats and cook a bit longer. I think we all have something we can measure with - it doesn't have to be special the ingredients just need to be equal. Buy the packeted one - you use the packet to measure the milk required. It can also be cooked in an oven but that is a bit posh as its best in an Aga!!

You need a bowl to microwave it in. That is equipment that you need money to buy.

You don't need to measure porridge any more than you need to measure cornflakes. You need no equipment at all, if you have a microwave or hob.

Look, people don't want to make porridge. That's their business. But there aren't barriers to eating it for those that would like to, if they already own basic kitchen equipment.

Overnight oats are a good idea as they don't need any cooking, just soaking overnight. I much prefer the texture, cooked porridge makes me queasy.

If you don't own a bowl and can't afford one then you are in deep poverty. Even the food bank won't be able to help you if you haven't plates or bowls to eat from.

I know poverty is very real, but I truly think a tiny minority of people don't own a bowl or are able to access one.

It's a shame porridge is seen as posh. It's very cheap, very easy to cook provided you have either a hob or a microwave, you don't need to add anything but water (adding some milk is my preference but at a push just water is fine) and a bit of your sweetener of choice, it's healthy, it's warming and it's very filling.

But apparently it's demeaning, preachy and unrealistic and to expect desperate, hungry poor people to eat porridge.