To worry about the lack of cooking skills of the next generation

[jdoe8]

People seem to barely cook these days and peoples supermarket trolleys are bursting foods that are quick and easy to make. Such as mashed potato, pre chopped onion and soup. Soup is very easy to make and home made is fresher and better for you.

Crushing up some ginger nuts, mixing with butter and dipping in melted chocolate seems to count as cooking. Lots of mess when you can just eat the chocolate and ginger nuts. The same for making a brownie mix and then icing with pre made icing. That is cooking?

I don't agree. Time is the issue for most

Ie yes I have potatoes in fridge and can chop and peel. But I can also buy Waitrose ready made fresh mash which contains just potatoes and butter so just as fresh. If I arrive home at 7.30pm and need to feed 5 and 6 year olds, homework and bath them and ideally in bed by 9pm I will choose the ready made mash. If it's the weekend and I have time I would choose to make mash from potatoes at home. Dh the same.

We make 99% soups from scratch, but if I'm out and want some soup for office il just buy a ready made fresh one from deli section.

The pre chopped stuff is fantastic now for old people. I remember my great grandmother and grandfather really struggled to cook when old and used lots of readymade soups and people cooked for them more. My grandparents are now elderly but the pre prepared items mean they can still cook more for themselves as not having to stand so long preparing. They buy stuff like pre chopped vegetables and onions and garlic now to make casseroles and soups easier. They buy the pre grated cheeses and pre sliced for sandwiches. They buy meat pre chopped in chunks rather than a whole joint now. Things like premade pastry. All things which make life easier and allows them to be self sufficient still. Yes they used to make everything from scratch, yes my grandmother could make great pastry and scones and bread and knows how. But buying premade or half done is easier

By and large soups, chopped veg, frozen pastry etc aren't so bad in my opinion. They tend to be ingredients to a meal. The full on "remove packetand heat" tend to be on the unhealthy side.

YABU loads of people work full time and need to make as many shortcuts as possible just to get dinner on the table.

These shortcuts are the difference, in my house between a home made meal or McDonald's.

I'm generally on the go from 6am in the morning until 5:30 when I pick DD up from after school club. I then do a quick run into Tesco and by the time we're home it's atleast 6pm.

That leaves me with an hour to get dinner cooked, eaten and DD sorted for her bedtime.

I can't think my situation is much different to most working households, the problem isn't the lack of ability, but lack of time to do these things.

The convenience foods often save washing up too which I love!

My 18 yo DD is a good cook and can prepare food from scratch. She is now at uni in hatred halls but has to feed herself at the weekend. She has become fairly competent at producing a decent meal with only the use of a microwave.

Her 24 yo sister was a reluctant cook but is now fairly competent. She cooks for herself from scratch every evening after work. Mostly healthy things like fish, kale, rice.

I'm an awesome cook but I don't always cook from scratch as I have a hectic lifestyle not to mention a 2 month old baby. I'm grateful for more modern conveniences like pre chopped stuff and slow cookers, make it yourself kits etc. There's making an effort and eating well and there's just plain making things difficult for yourself just so you can turn around and say you are Mrs Kitchen Pants 2016. I'd say this generation has it perfectly balanced actually and there's no harm or shame in having the odd shortcut.

Some things are worth making from scratch and some are not. When you have to find a balance between time and cost, and how tasty and how healthy you can make dinner of an evening, I'd say knowing when to cut corners and when not to is an essential skill for cooks these days.

Case in point - my DH makes a mean pizza. He has discovered that it is well worth doing home-made dough for the bases because they are SO much nicer than ready-made. So we invested in a bread maker and make batches of it to freeze. As for the tomato sauce - totally not worth the effort of sieving tomatoes. It's no cheaper, or tastier than Napolina. So why waste time when time is precious?

I'm not worried. I couldn't cook as a youngster, but learned through necessity and a process of trial and error. I don't use pre-chopped onions but only because it never occurred to me. Now I'm thinking it sounds like a good idea...

I think it is easier than ever to 'cook from scratch' now we have things like pre chopped vegtables, froozen grated ginger, jars of thai curry paste etc.

I think there is sometimes an evangelical approach taken to homemade/ cooking from scratch - a worthiness that it really doesn't deserve. I don't particularly enjoy cooking and I can't abide baking. I use as many "cheats" as I can possible find. I cook in batches, freeze, defrost, add prepackaged/ frozen veg as needs (invaluable with a shift worker in the house). There is very little waste in our house (2 adults 3 kids) and to be very honest I'd rather do other things with my kids than cook.

I agree with Artandco my granny thought the invention of the microwave, frozen meals and convenience foods was on a par with indoor plumbing. She loved the convenience of it, the choices it gave her, how easy it was, the lack of waste (that was the most important bit ). She could cook and bake most people under the table but she wasn't precious about it.
And I know it was asked earlier but my 11 year old does Home Economics - we've had curry, pastry, bread, something stewy? so far this term. She loves it, most of her friends can find their way around a kitchen, can follow recipes, know how the oven works but are very reluctant to clean up after themselves - make a bit of a pigs ear of it apparently.

Tbh id say more people cook now that 1980s due to various tv programs.

YABU DD is 8 and can cook a lot of stuff and enjoys it too.

It's not about lack of skills.

I worked 16 hours a week through uni and have worked full time without a break for nearly 10 years, as has my husband. At this point, if we want a portion of mash with our sausages, I'll be damned if I'm getting in at 6.30 and peeling potatoes, chopping, boiling and mashing for the sake of a small part of the meal. We'll go for ready-made out of the fresh veg section. I don't care if it's £1 which could get me a whole bag of pots in Lidl.

Someone always says "Oh, batch cook portions and freeze them". We have a tiny freezer and plenty of people particularly in flats don't even have one! My mum and dad have 2 freezers, one in the garage. I do not even have a garage let alone a second place to store food.

In the same vein, I have soup for lunch at work, which is about £1 per fresh tub from the supermarket. That way I get to choose a flavour instead of making a massive pan of the same thing and eating that all week long. There's not actually that much price difference either when factoring in stock, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, onion and herbs for example.

Overall I really do think that pre-prepped and convenience foods are much better than they were.

I have arthritis in my hands and pre-prepared, peeled and chopped veg are a godsend,

I'm making roast chicken tonight, the tatties are pre-peeled, peas and carrot batons in a bag ready to go and the onions for my skirlie are from a ready chopped bag

It suits me perfectly and saves me from making the pain in my hands worse

Agree with others who have talked about how much easier it is for more elderly individuals. No way is my grandma who now lives by herself going to enjoy making meals from scratch every night. She loves her food prep cheats.

I know loads of people my age who don't have a clue about cooking and I know just as many who can cook but don't have time.
Nearly everything I cook is from scratch including chopping and peeling, I buy a few old El Paso kits and curry sauces for CBA days and I can't make my carrot, swede and potato mash taste as nice as M&S no matter how hard I try!
However I am a SAHM to school age children so have the time to. I spend an awful lot of time in the kitchen. When I worked between DC2 and DC3 I'd chop a load of veg for casseroles, stir fries etc and bag and freeze it to make life easier.

I do find it odd that some parents seem to value swimming and bike riding as more important life skills than cooking.

Personally I am not too concerned about lack of cooking skills because these can be learned relatively easily.
I am concerned about lack of basic food and nutrition knowledge as well,as lack of knowledge/awareness about where food actually comes from and how it is produced.
However, this may not be a new thing as I have a friend from university days, who thought food came from the supermarket and came ready-packaged - this was 36 years ago!

I didn't really learn to cook until I left home at 18. To be fair, I was a Guide, so I could light a campfire and cook camp food from around 14, and I learnt to make lemon curd and a few other things at school
I ate from packets for the first week, then bought "Cooking in a Bedsitter" and went from strength to strength.

We cook from scratch almost every day, although are partial to oven chips, and I'm never going to make fish fingers from scratch...

DS is in Y8. Last year in food tech he learnt knife skills (which is more than I ever learnt), made salsa and made a gluten-free, vegan curry (handy, since he and I are both coeliac, and my brother is vegan!). This year he's made bolognaise sauce, chilli, and chocolate brownies. He shows no interest in learning how to cook from me or DH, but has been very keen to make his food tech recipes at home (provided one of us sits nearby to supervise the knife use). He still can't butter bread, but I'm putting that down to the horrendous fragile quality of gluten-free bread...

I didn't really learn to cook until I left home at 18. To be fair, I was a Guide, so I could light a campfire and cook camp food from around 14, and I learnt to make lemon curd and a few other things at school
I ate from packets for the first week, then bought "Cooking in a Bedsitter" and went from strength to strength.

We cook from scratch almost every day, although are partial to oven chips, and I'm never going to make fish fingers from scratch...

DS is in Y8. Last year in food tech he learnt knife skills (which is more than I ever learnt), made salsa and made a gluten-free, vegan curry (handy, since he and I are both coeliac, and my brother is vegan!). This year he's made bolognaise sauce, chilli, and chocolate brownies. He shows no interest in learning how to cook from me or DH, but has been very keen to make his food tech recipes at home (provided one of us sits nearby to supervise the knife use). He still can't butter bread, but I'm putting that down to the horrendous fragile quality of gluten-free bread...

I didn't really learn to cook until I left home at 18. To be fair, I was a Guide, so I could light a campfire and cook camp food from around 14, and I learnt to make lemon curd and a few other things at school
I ate from packets for the first week, then bought "Cooking in a Bedsitter" and went from strength to strength.

We cook from scratch almost every day, although are partial to oven chips, and I'm never going to make fish fingers from scratch...

DS is in Y8. Last year in food tech he learnt knife skills (which is more than I ever learnt), made salsa and made a gluten-free, vegan curry (handy, since he and I are both coeliac, and my brother is vegan!). This year he's made bolognaise sauce, chilli, and chocolate brownies. He shows no interest in learning how to cook from me or DH, but has been very keen to make his food tech recipes at home (provided one of us sits nearby to supervise the knife use). He still can't butter bread, but I'm putting that down to the horrendous fragile quality of gluten-free bread...

The Galloping Gourmet!

Mum is 81; she hardly ever cooked when she was young, lived at home until she joined the RAF in her 20s, then married Dad, who did just about all the cooking till he died. If it wasn't for ready-prepared microwaveable meals she'd eat cereal, fruit and crackers every day. Poor cooks exist in all generations, and always will.

Most cooking is actually quite easy and doesn't take much practice, experience or knowledge. Obviously, the fancier you go, or baking cakes etc does require a lot more! But "cooking" meat and two veg is quick and simple. You don't need much experience to peel a couple of spuds and carrots, get some frozen peas and boil them in a couple of pans - 20 minutes. A few chicken pieces or half chicken breasts, or some diced pork/beef in the frying pan for less time that that, and you have a meat & two veg meal in under half an hour. If you want something more fancy, you can get quick/simple sauces to heat and put over the meat! There is so much that can be made in half an hour using very little cooking skills.

We did "home economics" at school, so cooking teaching was pretty poor - I remember it being mostly about baking scones and biscuits, the only proper cooking I remember was making sausage and mash! I never cooked when I lived at home. Only since getting married have I done much cooking, and it's quite a revelation just how simple/basic most things are. With google, you don't even need to buy a cookery book - at the tip of your fingers are simple recipe ideas and basic instructions about cooking various food types.

All mine can cook. DS does tend to make convenience foods and pasta but I'm confident he could follow a recipe,

There is no mystique or anything onerous about most cooking other than time for most people.
It ain't difficult. If I worked short hours, I'd cook from scratch every day

I absolutely love cooking and I'm a good cook but I certainly don't say no to a pre cut onion, why would you care about that

Overall I really do think that pre-prepped and convenience foods are much better than they were.

I'm sure they are better but they're usually still full of chemicals, i.e. additives, colourings, shelf life extenders, salt/sugars, etc.

The fact is that we just don't know enough about how our bodies cope with chemicals being pumped into them.

You have to remember that at one time (not that long ago), calories were calculated based upon how hot that particular food burnt - i.e. the assumption was that all energy acted the same way in your body. It's very recent that the scientists/biologists have realised that different types of food behave differently in the body, so 2 different foods with exactly the same calories can affect your body in different ways (i.e. fat storage and weight).

Since I've been diagnosed with diabetes, I'm a lot more aware of my food intake and how different kinds of food affect my blood sugar levels. I've learned to avoid all processed, tinned, prepared foods - even though some are claimed to be low sugar, they nearly all push my blood sugars high. Whereas, buying fresh/unprocessed ingredients (even the same kinds of foods in the same quantities), don't raise my blood sugar levels anywhere near as high. In fact, my blood sugar levels don't go as high when I deliberately eat high-sugar content foods if they are natural/unprocessed, and fresh. The chemicals added definitely affect my blood sugars. When they have that effect on sugars, they'll undoubtedly be affecting other elements of your body too.

At the end of the day, pumping chemicals into your body just isn't natural. I now avoid anything with an unnatural shelf life - so tins are out, as are packets (biscuits, crackers, corn flakes, cakes etc), and also wrapped bread is also out. Most decent sized supermarkets have a bakery, so I try to buy fresh bread, fresh cakes, scones, etc., all of which should be "bad" for a diabetic, but I find they don't raise my blood sugar levels as high as packets/factory produced stuff which will have preservatives in for longer shelf life. I also use a lot of fresh fruit & veg, and fish/meat from butchers (or a supermarket if they sell fresh meat). I really try to get foods which have been processed as little as possible which basically means avoiding anything that's been processed/packed in a factory.