To think knowing about food and being able to cook are key life skills?

[Notcontent]

This is something I strongly believe in, but I think that notwithstanding various small-scale initiatives to teach young people and families about healthy cooking etc the lack of skills is getting worse not better.

I was listening to a Radio 4 programme the other day about child food poverty and they were talking to some young people - one of the teenage girls talked about the fact that until recently she couldn’t cook anything)no and I also had little idea of what a normal meal should be.

This seems such wide-spread problem. So many people think of food as being readymade, processed things that you unwrap and eat.

I think that there should be education about this at schools as obviously many people are not getting these skills at home. It’s so important - eating is what keeps are alive.

I am one of those people who can’t cook.

Or should I say I can “cook” but what I produce is nearly always awful.

I boiled some pasta and when I looked in the pan it was a gloopy mess.

I have have made cauliflower turn blue and produced a curry so hot that with one mouthful people were running to stick their heads under the nearest tap.

Years ago we would host dinner parties.
2 sets of friends we invited over on one occasion met in the local restaurant by accident as they knew that what I produced would be inedible.

In the end I got a load of sandwiches from M&S and some tins of soup and served that.

I am a creative cook. It is just that what o create no one can eat.

Dp either cooks me something or dc do. They have learned a few recipes as they really don’t like my cooking.

Otherwise I live off vegan cheese and tomato toasties

I agree with you although I think you don't need to know loads about food until you decide that you really want to expand what and how you cook but the basics about food so you can prepare food on even a small budget can be a life changing skill.

but I think it's just not ever going to be something that certain people could possibly have the chance to learn when you actually look at the environments and the huge issues some people are having to grow up in.
We think in the uk that most people have a certain standard of living but it just isn't the case for some.

No care giver or parent to teach them
Poverty
Abuse
Incarceration
Neglect
Crime
Addiction
Unemployment
Disability
Young caring
Mental health issues
Homelessness or unsafe housing environments

And that's just off the top of my head. For some people just it's only going to be about survival. Learning about food and how to cook would be as far away Possibility as learning nuclear physics.

I can do a salad as well

Interestingly all my family are great cooks but I left home at 16 not knowing how to cook anything.

I suppose because I'd not grown up on 'freezer food' it didn't appeal to me after a few weeks of living alone and I quickly taught myself to cook. Im a brilliant cook now if I say so myself.

I have a former friend, who I met around the time I left home, she had two children young. She can't cook for shit and often used to feed them 30p Tesco value lasagnes.

I shouldn't laugh @oliversmumsarmy but your post did make me giggle. 😂

I'm almost 40 and I'm a terrible cook I'll openly admit. My mum didn't really let me do much around the house and over the years my confidence has shrunk and being a lone parent who works full time, I have used lack of time as an excuse to go for quick and easy options.
I've been scoping out cookery classes recently and there's a beginners one near me starting in January I was hoping to enrol in.

What is a normal meal?
How do you suggest 2 ft working parents do it during the week?

I was never taught to cook. My DM never let me near the oven because for unknown reasons she assumed I was going to cause some disaster and everything would catch fire. I shouldn’t be too surprised when anytime I walked anywhere carrying a drink she’d tell me not to spill it, or don’t drop it (like I was planning to?).

I learned to cook through trial and error and reading recipes. DH loves to cook so we share it.

What I don’t like is when people say they can’t cook, they burn eggs for example as if it’s cute and funny. It’s not.

I love cooking, cook from scratch most days and both my DC (11 and 15) can put together a simple meal.

But I love food, and find it fun to try and recreate a recipe I have eaten out etc. However, I can't bake for toffee, couldn't produce a basic sponge even following the recipe to the letter. Probably no coincidence that I don't like cake.

So I used to be of the 'If you can read, you can cook' school of thinking. I can read, but I can't bake. It's not always as simple.

There’s a reason obesity and poor nutrition is associated with poverty and socioeconomic status

A couple of extra food tech lessons won’t do a thing for poorer families maybe lack access to a car, have to buy from convenience stores, only have access to a microwave etc etc If you have £5 in your account left to feed the family you’re not going to be buying an array of fruit and veg...

DH can cook but doesn't really like cooking. Not a problem cos he picks up most of the housework and I do most of the cooking, safe in the knowledge that no one would starve if anything happens to me. He does need a recipe book though.

DS is much the same. Can and will cook as long as there is a recipe to follow but doesn't like doing it, doesn't experiment.

Me and DD will chuck things in pans and see what happens. Usually turns out ok but we are both interested in cooking, have a good knowledge of the basics and in all honesty, if it goes wrong, we can afford to bin it and go to the chip shop.

Not everyone is in that position and it's much safer to buy the frozen supermarket stuff so you know your kids will go to bed with a full tummy if nothing else.

It is but it's also one of those problems that gets stuck in families. Parents cant cook so cant teach their kids and so on.

This ^

People saying 'it is only a matter of reading a recipe' or 'there are videos on You Tube' are kind of missing the point.

If you've never seen tasks being done as 'normal' or 'expected' then, for many, it doesn't occur to them that if something you could learn.

Same as people growing up in families who always "get a man in" to do any DIY - it doesn't really cross their mind that they could do it, if they do a bit of research and have a go. Of people who would call the AA to change a tyre etc etc etc.

As a pp said, there are people who don't even know that you can make a sauce. You have to know that making a sauce is actually 'a thing' to think about looking up how to do it.

Maybe if it was valued beyond the 'if you can read, you can cook' mentality it would have stronger claims to be on every school's curriculum.

As it is, learning about healthy eating in a practical way is very much at the mercy of a) the particular whims of the government of the day and b) the priority given to so-called 'cinderella' subjects by headteachers.

Ed Balls (remember when he was Education Secretary pre Strictly?) did some useful work in that direction. Tumbleweed since.

Absolutely agree, my DS has been cooking for a few years now (usually shoving something in the oven as he didn't like having to use his step to reach the hob) ow he'lls tall enough to use the hob I'm teaching him to a few basic meals and hoping to expand that as he gets older.

His dad can't do anything except toast/sandwiches etc and it drives me batty (he has tried repeatedly but can't focus for long enough and even when he's used a timer it still ends up burnt! - We think he has possible ADHD or ASD but he doesn't want a diagnosis) however when I'm not well enough to cook he makes sure we all eat, even if it's a takeaway.

We did home economics in school. Six weeks cooking, six weeks sewing, six weeks woodwork and so on. Everyone did it.
The sixth form schools we are looking at all do personal development/independent living type workshops where they teach the kids to iron, budget and other life skills. Yes ideally these would be taught at home but often aren't. My son (16) learned to iron when doing CCF. He also taught himself to cook. He does his own laundry. I'm starting to teach him about budgeting - he has a job but is a real spender! I'm amazed how parents send their kids out to the real world with no idea how to clean toilets or cook a few meals or budget. I guess people think the kids see them do it and so will automatically know how - but they don't!

@Energem

What is a normal meal? How do you suggest 2 ft working parents do it during the week?

I have just come back to this thread, but this is literally my point - if you can cook, then not only can you make cheap healthy meals, but you will also know how to whip up something quickLy. It does’t have to be a gourmet meal.

(I say this as a working lone parent!)

oliversmum, why can't you follow a recipe?

What is a normal meal?
How do you suggest 2 ft working parents do it during the week?

Well, hundreds of thousands of families with two parents working outside the home seem to manage to eat every night. Are you really saying you don't think it is possible to cook something either
a) when you get in - quite a lot of meals can be cooked in under 30mins.
b) before you go out - put in slow cooker or on a timer in the over or prep something that only needs to sit in the oven once you get in
c)you make it later in the evening the night before and heat up
d) you make it on your days off and heat up
e) you make a larger amount and have enough for at least two days

This is where I think Jamie oliver is amazing. I can’t think of any equivalent person with a high profile who has put so much effort into enabling people to cook and eat good food in the uk. (In Australia Stephanie Alexander)
My husband was never taught to cook. He did need some pretty sharp discussions with me about minimum standards and if you can’t cook throwing food into a pan is not going to taste delicious just because it is when I do. You can read, find a recipe and follow it. Once you know a few recipes then you can experiment. But there was a lot of pushing needed. I csnt really picture what he would have done on his own, presumably worked it out somehow and just couldn’t be bothered with me in the picture still makes me mad thinking about it.

What is a normal meal?
How do you suggest 2 ft working parents do it during the week?
We have 2 small children, both work ft, have been juggling the 2 year old at home. I had work meetings every evening last week and we had to pack up fragiles in the evening also as the house was being restumped. On the weekend I cooked a big stir fry and a curry. We ate the stir fry for two nights and the curry for two nights (froze it for a day first) And Friday will be ravioli and sauce from the supermarket. If you are a decent cook it’s not that hard, except insofar as parenting and life is hard. You also need meals that you simply throw together like tuna pasta or cheese and frozen peas omelette if there’s nothing ready.

SummerPoppies
My cooking disasters have always been a talking point.

My mint chocolate chip ice cream that tasted like toothpaste because I didn’t have creme de menthe so I used peppermint essence (1/2 a mini bottle) didn’t think it would be so potent.

blueshoes I used to try and follow a recipe but it just didn’t go to plan.
In the end I gave up as it was just too stressful
Aveisenim I am probably ADHD. I have burnt down at least 6 kitchens over the years. I also have a tendency to burn everything as I can’t stand in the kitchen for the time it takes to cook I always find I need to do other stuff. I can never focus on the job on hand

Cooking isn’t simple, saying follow a recipe or look online is just ignorant. People wheel that one out all the time. Yet they don’t say “why don’t you change your own oil, surely you can follow youtube?” Or “Why don’t you make your own outfit, why can’t you follow a pattern?”

I wasn’t shown how to cook as a child, we were on FSM so our school lunch was the main meal, when we got home dinner would be a stuffed roti. Our school did catering (you did one term per year), we couldn’t afford the ingredients and I’m guessing there wasn’t PP back then as school didn’t provide ingredients to people who couldn’t afford it. Instead we designed packaging for whatever crap item the class was cooking. The lessons were also only an hour long, even if you hadn’t cooked you helped to wash up. Cooking was always before lunch registration and sometimes washing up ate into that time, this would lead to our form tutor giving us all lunch detention and shouting at us. So yeah, catering wasn’t a positive experience.

You probably dont work in london.

Anyway i get what you mean which is reasonable but also the impression that spag bol and fish fingers dont make the cut and it needs to be slow cooked meat off the bone with vegetables etc daily which thousands of families would love to but dont have the time.

I can cook, and do enjoy it sometimes, but it never ends. There's always another bloody meal coming up. Convenience food is convenient.

I can also do DIY and basic car maintenance and sewing by hand or machine. Fortunately, I also have sufficient income that I can afford to pay other people to do these things.

I agree lack of education shouldn't be a barrier to people being able to cater for themselves, but some people will choose not to even then.

Billions of people manage to cook when working ft...

All parents of my friends managed it. All my friends with kids manage it. Cooking doesn't mean 2 hours in a kitchen every night. MN genuinely often surprises me with "but" and "impossible" attitudes.