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.

Totally agree @ebearhug
Cooking takes time, it requires stocking up, prepping and cleaning up after.
My kids eat a bit healthier than I do because I love microwave ready meals
As long as it's not one extreme and reasonably balanced food I'd rather spend precious free time playing with the kids or being out and about.
Obviously if you enjoy food from scratch then that's great too, but not everyone does nor should be made to feel any lesser/guilty. My DS for one could not care less or wait a minute more at meal times and eats anything in sight.

Of course it’s possible for two parents working FT in London to cook every night. How bizarre to suggest otherwise. All my circle of friends there do.

Not wanting to us a different thing.

There is a high degree of personal responsibility involved though. At 18, I had no idea how to boil an egg or make a cup of tea. Zero skills whatsoever. But I was suddenly living completely on my own in a new country, no access to a canteen and on a very tight budget. So I went on the internet (this was 14 years ago, content is even better now) and taught myself to do it. Within 6 months I was a good cook and I still love cooking and mostly cook from scratch.

Many people won't cook even if they have been taught to do so because pre-made food and takeaway is very convenient. Only when you take away the convenience, would people be forced to cook more.

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?”

Bog difference there. Will paying to have oil done or buying ready made dress affect your and your children's health? No.
Will your unwillingness to cook affect your children's health, size and life quality? Yes.

People choosing to have children while they are not even willing to learn to cook for them is frankly selfish and wrong.

YANBU. I teach cookery classes for children (or I did, pre-lockdown) and have always taught my DC to cook. DS14 does the bare minimum and won't even bother to butter bread for his sandwiches if he's making them, but he knows how to sustain himself well enough to survive even if he chooses not to at the moment. On the odd occasion he does cook, he'll produce something lovely.

DS9 loves cooking and has made endless meals and deserts during lockdown - I think he's naturally one of those people who just enjoys the process, and has a capacity for following recipes and knowing what tastes good, plus patience for doing things properly. DH and I both work full time but manage to cook most evenings. I think the main part of cooking is enjoying it - if you don't enjoy it I can see why you'd do the least amount possible and buy in ready-made stuff.

@Energem

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

Why on earth would they not be able to cook through the week?

My parents worked full-time and I went to after-school care. I often wasn't home from school until 6.30pm during the week but they still managed to cook meals for me.

A cooked meal doesn't have to be fancy - jacket potato, homemade soup with cheese on toast, pesto pasta, pasta with tomato sauce, stir-fry, salads, sandwiches, meat and veg, sausage and mash, toad in the hole. I often had things like beans/egg on toast too. Quick, but healthy and nutritious and filling.

Weekday meals don't need to be fancy but I very much doubt the majority of parents are too busy to cook some pasta or whatever. They just don't want to and would rather put something in the oven or microwave.

I think it's a bit of a myth that you need to be taught how to cook. Find simple recipes, follow instructions. Branch out more as you get used to it. Anyone in their late teens or twenties (and most people older than that) happily uses the internet as the fount of all knowledge for everything else, why not cooking? If people don't cook it's mostly because they don't want to and aren't interested.

At 18, I had no idea how to boil an egg or make a cup of tea. Zero skills whatsoever. But I was suddenly living completely on my own in a new country, no access to a canteen and on a very tight budget. So I went on the internet

And for those who didn’t have the internet where were we supposed to look.

Bit extreme saying that if you can’t cook then you shouldn’t have kids.

I managed to bring 2 dc up quite healthily on ready meals and eating out a lot.

And for those who didn’t have the internet where were we supposed to look.

A physical cookbook like I and millions of others did...

Oliversmumsarmy ~ 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

You actually burnt them all down?

I mean rather than get a timer?

Cook books didn’t have how to boil an egg in them.

You are forgetting that without the internet the information wasn’t readily available. There might have been a cook book to tell you how to boil an egg but you had to search for it not knowing what it was called or if you were looking for something that didn’t exist
If you asked someone about something that was considered really simple you would be derided and laughed at.

Yes your parents were supposed to teach you stuff but I can’t be the only one of my generation who had “absent” parents.

I think people forget how little information was available and how much effort it took to find out really simple things.

WorraLiberty yes I have caused fires and yes in some cases I did have a timer. It was just that the timer was in the kitchen and I was not.

@Oliversmumsarmy

At 18, I had no idea how to boil an egg or make a cup of tea. Zero skills whatsoever. But I was suddenly living completely on my own in a new country, no access to a canteen and on a very tight budget. So I went on the internet

And for those who didn’t have the internet where were we supposed to look.

Bit extreme saying that if you can’t cook then you shouldn’t have kids.

I managed to bring 2 dc up quite healthily on ready meals and eating out a lot.

I moved out at 19 with DH and a baby and don’t know how to cook. I got books out from the library and charity shops and watched cooking programs. Internet was about then( I’m thirty now!) but we didn’t really have it and it wasn’t the way it is now.

I didn’t know how to cook, clean or run a home. But I learned because I wanted to. If you want to learn then you can do it. Regardless of Internet.

Now,obviously we still have library books, books from charity shops, Cooking channels, recipe blogs, YouTube videos, BBC good food type websites, cooking classes and so on.

If you’ve literally never seen anyone in real life boil a pan of water before, or cut up an onion, I think real life teaching is much more effective than a cookbook (or YouTube for that matter).

It wouldn’t have to be much, just the very basics. How to peel, chop, fry, boil, season.

One you have very basic skills down and a small degree of confidence, cookbooks and so on would be much more helpful to you.

I too was on my own at 16.

But I didn’t really eat or cook.
I would buy a loaf of bread and some cheese and coffee sugar and milk and lived off cheese sandwiches and cups of coffee. Then at 17 I met Dp and we ate out a lot.

I never really got to the point of needing to cook. I was hardly ever in and Dp would cook after work as he enjoyed doing it.

@Oliversmumsarmy

WorraLiberty yes I have caused fires and yes in some cases I did have a timer. It was just that the timer was in the kitchen and I was not.

Your excuses make you sound quite childish though, almost as though you find being an adult (or woman-child as I guess it's called on MN) quite hilairious.

Actually burning down 6 kitchens and producing "a curry so hot that with one mouthful people were running to stick their heads under the nearest tap."

They actually stuck their heads under the tap, rather than grab a cup or a glass?

I can't decide whether the excuses in here are funny or sad tbh. I was new to the UK and even I managed to figure out that I could buy basic cookbook in charity shop for a quid that time...

I left home with no cooking skills whatsoever. Cooking was mum's domain. She wasn't particularly interested, or talented in that area. So I don't think it ever occurred to her to teach us, and never occurred to us to ask.

I didn't know how long to boil an egg. No clue on earth how long, or how hot an oven, you needed to cook a simple chicken breast.

But you start off simple, with things you can whack in an oven after reading the back of the box. Then you start to Google things. And before long, you know the basics.

Honestly, it's not rocket science. You learn by doing. I really don't think government, or schools, to be significantly involved in this.

I do think there is a cultural aspect to not cooking in the UK. It has become the norm for a LOT of people, not just families living on low incomes.

Growing up, I would say we had a healthy diet, but 90% of what we ate was very convenience-based. My mum is a Waitrose disciple and very, very rarely cooks from scratch, so meals were always centered around pre-marinated chicken fillets, packaged salads and oven pasta bakes. Not that these foods are unhealthy, but they are expensive and I was lucky that my parents were able to afford them. I was mocked at school for my "posh lunches" and most people in my class (lots of whom were from very deprived areas) never had a proper "meal" at home - usually just sandwiches or pot noodles.

When I moved to continental Europe, I still remember the first time I went to the supermarket and genuinely thought "But where are all the meals?". I soon realised that if I wanted to eat the sort of foods I was used to from home, I would need to make them from scratch. That was 20 years ago and I make pretty much everything from scratch these days, but my family can't understand it at all, and I get lots of sympathy comments along the lines of: "Oh it's such a shame you don't have something like Waitrose and have to go to such an effort".

It took me a long time to realise that home-cooked foods taste better and are much more economical, and my family definitely consider themselves "foodies", so I think there are more barriers than just enjoying or appreciating food and having the finances.

Cook books didn’t have how to boil an egg in them.

So don't boil an egg. Lots of other cook books have simple recipes in them which anyone who can read could follow. You don't need to search for a specific recipe book - just go in a bookshop or charity bookshop and pick a basic one.

I find it hard to believe anyone has burnt six kitchens down because they 'can't stand in the kitchen while the food is cooking'. Did it not occur to you to get a timer that you can take into another room? Or one you can actually hear from another room?

The curry example is ridiculous. All you have to be able to do is read a recipe properly to avoid that kind of mistake.

Jamie's ministry of food cookbook literally does the timings for eggs , a simple or fancy roast, a spaghetti Bolognese etc.
It's not always money though, some of the most disadvantaged children I have taught have had very old fashioned nutritious food.

I'm one of those people who just isn't interested in food - I actually think I have an impaired sense of taste as 95% of food just tastes OK to me. I get no satisfaction out of cooking at all - any effort above the basic seems wasted to me, because it has no bearing on how much I'll enjoy the finished product. It will still just be OK.

I basically have variants of the same healthy breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner of raw or simply-cooked food most days. It's a varied diet in that, over the course of the day, I get lots of different fruit and veg, good protein and a sensible amount of carbs. Most people would find it very dull, though.

I hate cooking for other people (especially as everyone I know is vegetarian or vegan, which knocks out my favourite dishes). I just select a well-reviewed recipe and follow it to the letter, having no idea how it will be received because to me, it just tastes OK.

Cook books didn’t have how to boil an egg in them.

But mouths still had tongues I presume?

"Oi Barbara, how long do you normally boil your eggs for?"

@Oliversmumsarmy

Cook books didn’t have how to boil an egg in them.

You are forgetting that without the internet the information wasn’t readily available. There might have been a cook book to tell you how to boil an egg but you had to search for it not knowing what it was called or if you were looking for something that didn’t exist
If you asked someone about something that was considered really simple you would be derided and laughed at.

Yes your parents were supposed to teach you stuff but I can’t be the only one of my generation who had “absent” parents.

I think people forget how little information was available and how much effort it took to find out really simple things.

Delia Smith - How to Cook.

Starts with how to boil an egg.

Published in the 1990s, I think?

Every decade there's at least one book written that includes such things. I've got my mother's wedding present of the 1954 Good Housekeeping Cookery Compendium which explains exactly how to do just that (and how to pluck and draw poultry, fillet fish, bake cakes, prepare fresh fruit and vegetables for cooking, skin rabbits, make pastry, joint meat and anything else needed at a time when you couldn't shove a plastic tray in the microwave for 3 minutes). There's also a French book that's similar which has been in print for even longer. It's a well known subgenre in the industry and always has been. And there's this thing called television. That's had cookery programmes on it for a very, very long time.

Not being interested enough to find out is not the same as the information not being available.