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?

My Mum only cooked very basic food, over boiled veg and cremated meat. I can cook, self taught. No degree. I am disabled, no help and now on benefits. I am very careful and don't lead an extravagant lifestyle, so I can build a cushion each time. Nobody taught me to do that. I knew nobody would help us.

Mandelson admitted to the guacamole/mushy peas thing. It happened in Hartlepool.

Tony Blair contributed to an Islington cookbook in 1993, saying his favourite dish was fettucine with sundried tomatoes, capers and extra virgin olive oil. After he got the leadership election he started claiming it was fish and chips!

Not everyone can just do it though howtorebuild. I have many friends who can't read, write and definitely can't plan a budget. It is pretty commonplace.

Yes I would expect anyone to be able to make porridge. If you buy a bag of oats it will even give you a step by step instructions of how to make. Ie double the liquid to oats ( 1 cup oats, 2 of water/ milk).

Nowdays I do think the majority of the population can learn to cook if they have the facilities. They can get books from library/ go online at home or library or job centre or friends/ pick up free recipes in supermarkets. Yes some people haven't a cooker etc, but many many people who say they 'can't' cook do have a place to live and a small kitchen.
My parents never cooked anything), all 1980s ready meals. I would say as an adult I can now cook fairly well and have a good knowledge of nutrition. All self taught over the years.

Wouldn't it be a good idea if food banks cook offer cooking lessons and recipe ideas also to those who want it? I understand that they just want 3 days food and are probably struggling at that very moment, but surely to be invited back in small groups and be shown how and what they can do with cheap ingredients will be really useful in the future and to reduce the need for food banks as much? Ie shown how to make a simple soup with cheap ingredients, cook porridge, a hearty casserole etc.

It's not easy for me either, dyslexic and other cognitive issues. I don't make actual plans. I don't buy much other than food. Bills are dd.

We do have cooking lessons round here regularly. They do cook weird food as last time they cooked this cabbage soup thing. It didn't really go down with people that well tbh.

I just think I understand it howtorebuild due to where I live. I totally agreed with ourblanche in the last thread as I believe that reflects my rl experience.

I know things get cocked up through no fear of your own. I think It's about choices as you go along, not plans. For example choosing that holiday each year where as I haven't had one in years, busy building cushions. Someone else may choose a night out each week, branded trainers etc. They are not sit down plans, they are lifestyle choices.

fault

I think, for an awful lot of Mumsnetters, it's something that makes them feel good about themselves, more moral and also feel less guilty for being better off than other people by casting the poor as less deserving and more lazy, wasteful and feckless.

I think in a lot of Mumsnetters heads the middle classes eat healthy nourishing wholesome food because they are healthy, upright and wholesome people which is why they are wealthy and successful. The poor eat nasty, unhealthy, unwholesome food because they are nasty, unhealthy, unwholesome people which is why they are poor and unsuccessful in their logic.

I think the whole thing is a lot of rubbish. I think people with more money have a lot more options which allow them to eat healthily more easily and conveniently. For example, it's a lot easier to eat a Quinoa superfood salad every day when you can afford to buy it ready made from M&S or Waitrose. Less so if you have to buy and prepare each ingredient and carry it to work and back every day on public transport.

I think there are bad eaters in all classes, I think middle class people are much more likely to know they have to conform to a social norm for their class to eat in a certain way though. I remember in the 80s and 90s it was far more common for middle class families to feed their children chicken nuggets and chips. And a goujon is just a nugget by any other name!

I think it's just that if a middle class person gets pissed on expensive food and eats expensive crap, they're called a 'bon vivant'. If someone on a council estate does it they're called 'Waynetta' and an irresponsible slob who is single handedly murdering the NHS and driving their entire family into an early grave.

I eat loads of supposedly posh foods. I am not posh. At all.

I think it's just that if a middle class person gets pissed on expensive food and eats expensive crap, they're called a 'bon vivant'. If someone on a council estate does it they're called 'Waynetta' and an irresponsible slob who is single handedly murdering the NHS and driving their entire family into an early grave.

This is dead right.

Agree with Booyaka 100% re perceptions.

I remember in the 80s and 90s it was far more common for middle class families to feed their children chicken nuggets and chips.

God yes - my mum was achingly aspirational and always told us we were "upper middle class" despite her having grown up very working class in abject poverty. We were fed huge amounts of convenience food, which was quite expensive then... I think she thought we could eat ourselves posh. And as soon as we had a microwave, we were all over those hideous McCain(?) MicroChips and MicroPizza.

Pocket, What does she eat now?

Booyaka that is an amazing post.

I don't understand exactly why people care so much if poor people can't cook or eat crap food. What is the problem?

How is porridge a faff to make...you add milk and stir...hardly bloody rocket science!!

The chicken that lasts a whole week is definitely a middle class thing.

What I should have said is *a MN middle class thing.

Actually thinking about it on here the 'buying a weeks shopping for the whole family for £50 and cooking everything from scratch' has become to my mind a MC thing too. If you date to say you spend more you are mocked for being extravagant, lazy and disorganised.

Back in the day the working poor bought cheap cuts of meat and root veg and cooked from scratch as it was cheaper. Now the working poor are busy working every hour of the day to keep a roof over their heads and don't have the time to cook from scratch. It's the MC who can afford to eat 'proper wholesome home cooked food' as they are the ones either able to stay at home or work part time so have some free time.

So much sneering on this thread from people who are completely missing the bloody point.

Porridge is just adding milk and stirring, is it? But how much is a serving of oats per person? How much milk? Hob or microwave? And for how long? And what if it ends up too runny or like concrete?

This is not to say that it's not possible to learn, by trial and error, how to make porridge from scratch. But this stuff is off putting when a sachet of Oat So Simple is pre measured (and the empty sachet allows you to measure out the milk as well) AND it comes in umpteen flavours as well.

This is why expensive, pre packaged and/or processed food trumps cooking from scratch for an awful lot of people.

Of course it's cheaper to buy a kilo bag of oats, but I know my family don't do that. My mum, although she's a decent cook, is often pretty clueless about cooking entirely from scratch. She would never make a spag bol without a jar of Dolmio. She'd never make a shepherd's pie without a packet mix. She would never buy a tin of pulses, ever.

I am middle class and often can't be bothered to cook. But I buy expensive ready made salads and healthy ready made meals from places like Eat. As a result my diet is fine.

Good point about trial and error.

I use passata or tinned tomatoes to make sauce but I have to simmer it for ages and add quite a few fresh / store cupboard ingredients before it tastes decent, so I reckon it's better to buy pasta sauce in jars for the FB.

There was a thread on here once about someone who had heated up some passata with a few mixed dried herbs and it tasted horrible so I'd hate for someone who couldn't afford to make that mistake to have to eat it.

I didn't learn to cook properly until I was in my mid 20s . The feeling when you've spent an hour trying to make something and it's barely edible is crushing. I still feel a bit that way if I mess up the spicing or flavour of something and it isn't as good as it should be. If you haven't got anything else in the cupboard it's not the time to experiment.

Flipping heck if he thought mushy peas were guacamole, he must have only has some dodgy guacamole in the past.

The whole thing about posh food is daft really. Food is posh simple because you haven't eaten it!

Chickpeas, oats and blueberries are all readily avalible in all supermarkets. Not being willing to taste something different from what you had as a child or what your next door neighbour eats isn't the same not being able to eat a food due to it being the wrong class for you!!

Maybe the English are obsessed with what class they are more that anyone in Scotland (who are obviously quite comfortable as they are all very posh with all that porridge) but it can't be everywhere in England as I'm English and couldn't give two hoots and know very few that do.

Those I've met that are seriously class conscious label themselves 'working class' despite not really being as might be assumed to be so due to their life style (as portrayed by the media) and go to great lengths to prove they are working class. Also those that bang on about themsves being middle class seem to miss the point that the vast majority are similar to them and it's not really an achievement.

Posh was the wrong word. I meant more not what anyone I know would usually ever eat.

I don't think anyone even said porridge was posh this has made up for ourrage purposes on this thread.