Foodbanks! Did I just hear Julia Hartley Brewer correctly?

[fUNNYfACE36]

Am I being unreasonable to be disgusted by Julia Hartley Brewer's comment this morning, tha t in the course of her work she has visited many foodbanks, and the people who use them are not that thin!!
So until you are emaciated you should just not eat?

Why wouldn't you buy lentils or pesto? Pesto pasta and lentil Dahl with rice are cheap and easy. I'm with you on the kale!

I don’t own a microwave. They encourage me to make too much convenience food. I haven’t had one for about 5 years. Ditch yours and you’ll be surprised at how much your diet improves.

^^ Totally this and JHB obviously wasn’t thinking of the food bank user’s children either or any other dependents they may have.

All JHB had to do was look at a socio-economic map of UK and she will
see that the areas with most obesity are also the most financially deprived. There is a direct correlation between the two.

If you are living on the bread line you may not have access to fresh fruit and vegetables within walking distance of your house, you are more likely to live close to a fried chicken shop.

If you are struggling financially you may not have a good selection of spices and condiments that make staples like rice, pasta and lentils tasty. Your electricity is metered so you may have intermittent power for stove and fridge. And funnily enough, if you have worked hard all day in a physical job (many people who live under the breadline are working) or you are doing minimum wage shift work, and you have dc to feed, you may not always have the energy or time required to make pots of healthy chickpea casserole every night!

to meet a daily requirent of say 2000 kcal you would need 9 bramley apple pies ie 1.5 packs costing £1.87 but you would need 20 apples 2.66 packs costing £2.27. The 'healthy' apples are over 20% more expensive and much less nutrition. I hazard that you would living only eating only 9 apple pies a day than 50 apples!

Sausages are ludicrously expensive. Too many people seem to think every meal needs to involve meat. We probably eat meat 3 times a week.

I have a microwave. We never eat convenience food. Dd and dh make porridge with it, I use it to steam veg and fish and to heat up leftovers.

THIS ⬆

Often people on very high carb diets - tons of bread and pasta because they're cheap and filling - become enormously obese but are also vitamin deficient and malnourished.

it is quite possible to be obese and malnourished due to eating calorie-dense food that has little to no nutrients.

But I’ll bet these aren’t people who suddenly became obese as they relied on food banks. They’ve probably always been unhealthy eaters and overweight/deficient, but now there’s another ‘reason’ for it.

I mean, how do you respond to this? Does anyone take responsibility for their own lives now or is it passé?

Well that’s you isn’t it? I make porridge on the hob and heat food on it. It just means I don’t buy microwave meals or lots of convenience food.

Has a thread about that scabby fucker JHB having a dig at the people using foodbanks turning into a MN competitive under eating and food vitue signalling thread?😆

The country is now so overweight that normal diets are seen as ‘competitive under eating’.

She's used to it.

Ghastly woman.

This post completely sums up the level of ignorance that surrounds the complexities of poverty.

Also because food is a more affordable vice. So when you do have money, you buy some cheap treats, which are worse for you than if you could buy better quality stuff. I get through bad times by seeing friends and spending money eating out . If I didn't have that, I'd be getting myself some Poundland chocolate bars for sure and multiple ones.

If you have very little money and feeding kids then you will play it very very safe because you can't risk them rejecting it, so more likely to go for beige food.

And the point of food banks is that they are supposed to stop you starving, stop you being thin. Not waiting till you can prove your suffering and then dole out some tinned carrots.

When are trying to pay your bills, most people cut food right down because you can go cheaper. Until there is no cheaper and you can't cut anymore.

And people saying get rid of the microwave are daft. It's much cheaper than cooking with the hob or oven for lots of things. They are just not always nice things.

But you’ve just contradicted yourself in that post. If UK supermarkets were filled with healthy food and there was a cap on the percentage of confectionary and ready meals they were allowed to sell, and we had a different food culture and councils didn’t give permission for fast food outlets to fill our high streets, and we brought back proper cookery lessons in to schools,then maybe our influences would be less unhealthy and people would eat better.

And remember that in Spain people work fewer hours, there are more families living together with three generations in one house to help with childcare, childcare itself is less expensive than in uk. Transport is subsidised so
less time and money is spent on travel back and forth to work. So people have more time to eat and cook together. All of these factors make a huge difference.

More poor bashing from middle class tory

“Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn't. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don't want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit 'tasty'. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you.”

― George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

@Emotionalsupportviper

Yes!

Ummmm. That's just not true though is it. Most of the third world lives off carbs, and they are generally not obese.

A few points:

Actually swelling in the stomach and often limbs are associated with poor diets in the majority world. Various conditions of poverty and malnutrition feature them. Remember the round bellies and thin limbs on TV? Doing famines in China, oedema was a massive issue.

Third World is an outdated and very silly term. I mean who refers to the Second World any more?

By the time people in the majority world get underweight it is very very bad, associated with a drop in IQ, lifelong health issues, including things like resistance to disease and cardiac problems. Having so few calories that you are properly underweight on carbs is quite difficult.

Obesity is an issue in many majority world countries as well. Not to the same extent as the West but certainly when people have the opportunity to gain weight, they do. In epidemic numbers, depending on the country. In Libya Egypt and South Africa, the obesity rate is around a third of the population.

The issue often is the media likes to ,show big people at the foodbanks and skinny Africans. For the same reason, bias.

I have a ridiculously powerful electric oven so I avoid the hob as much as possible as it uses loads of power. The microwave is cheaper to run. Also those single halogen hobs are brilliant and cheap to use.

Well you can’t live off Apples so… and while I agree there is a problem in western culture with over consumption. Feeling shit and being poor aren’t exactly great drivers to get running.

and even those who are exercising, it takes about a year to lose significant weight so even those with reduced meal intake are not going to stay big after a long period of time.

for many food bank poverty is temporary rather than a way of life

No it doesn't. So many self proclaimed experts on here.

You don't have to be an expert, Self proclaimed or not,😆 to know the links between poverty and obesity. Its been well documented and reported.

I suspect that a lot of people find it easier to not feel obliged to help poor people if they can do some mental gymnastics and find a way to blame them for their own poverty. It's more comfortable for them.
JH-B isn't one of those people, she's a twat on purpose.