What do you think are the barriers to eating real food?

[diapergenie]

I am doing some research and I would be eternally grateful if any of you home cooks could give me your opinions on what you think the difficulties (if any) are with feeding yourselves and your families a really good fresh food diet.

Basically, we all know that food poverty is a reality amongst lower income groups in our country. As I am single mother on benefits, we are classed as a low-income family and we eat like kings, but only because I have been cooking all my life and am food-obsessed enough to know exactly where to go and what to do to make the most of our limited resources. For me, the pursuit of good food is a full-time occupation, but I understand that most people just do not have the time, energy, resources and (perhaps) inclination to do the same.

It worries me that the current level of welfare benefits do not permit low-income families with children or pregnant women and girls to eat what I regard to be an adequately healthy diet unless they already possess cooking skills, (which have been completely phased out in most state schools) equipment and a hell of a lot of time and passion.

The Food Poverty Network

As people who cook real food, how much time do you
spend?

Do you have to really go out of your way to get good, unpolluted fresh food?

Does buying fresh food and the consumption of time involved with producing meals put you out of pocket?

What do you think you need to spend each week to feed your family fresh every day?

Why do you think it is that we have such a pathetically non-existent food culture in Britain, as opposed to, for example, France or Italy, where the vast majority of the population eat wonderfully good food.

What kind of objections have you heard people giving to the idea of eating well?

Obviously, this is not a particularly structured form or research - I just want to pick your brains, if that is ok.

What do you do with your kids while you are cooking and preparing food, especially if they are too young to help?

Does the amount of time you spend cooking have an impact upon the amount of attention your children get from you? Does this matter anyway?

Atm, my kids arent eating great meals, mainly due to time, we are tending to grab food on the way back from hospital most days.

but my sneaky way of getting my kids to eat some veg, is to grate up carrots into shepherds pie. they dont know, and i'm a happy mum lol.

They love home made curries, BBQ chicken, rice with some vegs (but not peas). i can cook, and wish i had more time atm, but i dont.

I agree with much of what has been said on here, but I also would like to add that I think many people simply don't realise the enormous health benefits of eating "real" food. I have recently done a lot of reading on the subject of eating organic foods, but also on eating totally non-processed foods too. Unless we make it mandatory reading for everyone (not practical!), then I don't see how we can get the information across.

weaning kids on to real food v jars.. whilst I often agree with QoQ, on this issue I am not so sure. I will start by saying that we do occasionally eat junk food and not a food purist by a long shot - my kids eat chocolate and the odd sweets..however do believe babies deserve real food IF POSSIBLE and my kids have proper homecooked (cheap) meals most of the time - and not sure when it would be not possible - forgive me for my thickness..

16p buys you a bag of carrots and that is from Tesco so not exactly bargain basement shopping. A bag of apples is cheaper than a 99p MD burger. All you need is access to water, saucepan, masher and heat...got to be cheaper than jars.

I understand if people don?t have access to a kitchen - obv. jars would be an option. But then, how many people have a baby in this country and don?t have daily access to cooking facilities of one description or another?? Can?t quite get my head around the idea that some people have no option but buy baby jars. Even if it is because you are out in the daytime, some food like mashed banana, baby rice etc. can be made on a park bench with thermos flask in tow - I know, been there and done it.
When DD1 was about 6 months we were without power and water for 10 days thanks to our dozy neighbours (long story) and managed to carry on living in our home with a bit of planning and help from other neighbours for thermos flasks of hot water, access to their kitchen now and again. We avoided jars, not out of martyrdom - had to, she refused them, got used to real food..
Just would like to see someone put up a really good explanation why people have to rely on jars rather than home cooked stuff other than sheer convenience. Not looking for a fight, just would really like to know - honest

when i had dd2, i was living in a refuge (long story, rather not get into it). there were problems with food going missing, food being messed with etc. so jars were a safer option. but dd2 couldnt tolerate gluten or additives (she would projectile vomit) so i used the baby organix range.

The time i spend on cooking varies, days that i'm not working, i plan to do meals that take more preparation and then quick and easy stuff on days i'm working. But always with what i consider 'real' food. The only processed food i used to buy were frozen chips for really lazy days but this household has now decided they are just as revolting as all the other processed junk out there!

Yes i do have to go out of my way to get fresh, unpolluted food and i am finding it costs a bit more. For me to get to a butchers, a grocery shop or a farmers market is at least a 15min drive and each in opposite directions! So i factor in a trip to one of these if i know i'm in that direction for other reasons. It would make things far easier and more convenient if i could go to one place and purchase all my produce in one hit.

At the moment we are on a very tight budget and i'm trying to keep our food spending to £200 per month for me, dp and 2.5yr old dd. This includes cleaning products and toiletries so its hard going! BUT having this tight budget is giving me no choice but to be more inventive with ingredients and make two meals out of one iykwim!

Britains "non-existent food culture" i think advertising of crap, availability of quality fresh produce and school dinners are all part of this.

I am unusual in my group of friends who have children, in that, my dd has always sat with us at mealtimes and eaten whatever we are eating - mainly because she is part of our family and so should eat with us, but also because there is no way i'm slaving over two evening meals each night!! Most families i know, do as someone else said here, feed the children turkey twizzlers at 5 and then adults enjoy a decent meal later. When i question this, the main reason is "because the children won't eat anything fancy". I have become used to this kind of comment now, but was astonished when i first heard their reasoning as its just crazy to me!! My dd has been offered a meal of fishfingers, chips and peas in a friends house, she ate the chips and peas but didn't go near the fishfingers - despite being a fish lover, but she's never seen a fishfinger before so didn't know what to do with it! Its reverse isn't it depending on what they are used to. Friends children who do eat fishfingers don't know what to do with a plate of rice or salad or basically any real food!!

My dd has always been part of meal preparation - she has always wanted to be near me, so has always been involved in whatever i'm doing. She mixes things, she cuts soft foods up for me such as mushrooms or peppers. She has a place she sits on my worksurface next to where i prepare, and so watches everything i do and has a taste or smell of most ingredients. She watches it go into the oven, tells me when the timer is beeping and then when her daddy comes home she tells him whats for dinner and how she made it. So, no the amount of time spent on cooking only enhances the amount of attention dd gets!

You asked about equipment - what equipment? My kitchen has nothing fancy, no food processor, blender, breadmaker etc etc all rubbish that would clutter up my worksurfaces
My 90year old grandmother showed me her bread knife the other day, she tole me it had been her wedding present over 70 years ago, and she said to this day it is her most treasured piece of kitchen equipment! she mixes everything with it, never had a gadget in her life.

Phew sorry that is so long! HTH!

barriers (as opposed to how wonderful my family is...):

time, if you work difficult hours it can be very difficult to get to any shops other than those with late openng hours

transport, farm shops etc great if you can get to them...

your kid's concentration level, if they are very active, cooking bores them

taste, very difficult to completely shield kids from ever eating junk food and if they are picky eaters there's a very good chance they'll like the instant gratification of salt fat and sugar better. Plus, your own taste - it can be scary to try things you haven't eaten yourself before.

What age children are you talking about?

My dd is what i consider to be very active, and its the very reason why she likes to get involved in my cooking!

And where do picky eaters start?

I may be making a general observation, but the 'picky eaters' are often a result of not having enough opporunity to try a good variety of foods.

I ran a children's nursery and we fed all the children very healthy meals, which they all ate. The parents would swear that those children would never eat that food at home. The days we served liver so many parents turned their noses up and some even asked that there children had the veggie alternative, i realised where the 'picky eaters' stemmed from.

Didn't realise how much dd (nearly 4) has picked up on my food 'snobbery' until she saw a McD advert the other day and said 'ew, look at that nasty food'... but I'll defend this to the hilt, esp after seeing those offensive sunny D adverts that portray veg-loving kids as freaks.

I never even questioned the food culture (or lack of it) in our country until I started weaning dd and somehow had the good fortune to read 'the food our children eat' (think that was the title) by Joanna Blythman. I've always eaten food made from scratch by choice - taught myself to cook in my early teens as I wanted to be a veggie and my dad said I'd have to cater for myself as he didn't know how to cook 'vegetarian food'! WE never ate processed food as kids, even though we were a 1 parent family - luckily my dad had been in the navy and knew the basics of cooking even though it wasn't 'fancy' or adventurous. I developed more exotic tastes in food to him so taught myself how to cook more widely.
I was quite prepared to buy so-called 'kids' food' for dd until I read the book above and it opened my eyes to the whole issue.
I think the biggest problems in this country are ignorance (about food basics and cooking basics) and ruthless marketing by supermarkets and food companies of processed food. They brainwash many people into thinking that cooking from scartch is time-consuming and expensive. I agree totally that it need not be and needs a Jamie-style campaign to change attitudes. Basic cooking skills taught in schools - and in the wider community -is an excellent starting point.

i think that taste bud expectations has a lot to do with it. People expect high sugar/fat/salt content. Years ago my mother stopped adding salt to her food and complained for decades afterwards that everything was too salty. Now that I only eat specific sugary foods, and stopped eating others, I can't believe how sweet many foods are. LIke breakfast cereals; even the supposedly low sugar ones (corn flakes, bran flakes, etc.) just taste sickeningly sweet to me. Everyone else in the family still eats that stuff, it's just me, my palate has changed.

On MN I encountered astonishment (more like horror, really) that 90% of our evening meals are just rice/pasta/potatoes with steamed vegies, usually served up with just something like butter/tamari/olive oil/kethcup/mayonaise/curry sauce out of a jar. Evidently eating simple but healthy food is just "too boring", and sends shudders up the spine. Maybe because it doesn't contain enough MSG, or it wouldn't impress Delia Smith, I don't know. I guess I don't expect that most meals should be that exciting or creative.

Also, I find this thread a bit alienating (maybe it's just me). What is "real" food? What is "unpolluted food"? Are you implying if it's not organic it's not "good enough"?

We also are car-free and live about a mile from cheap food shops; we cycle though, so it's quite manageable.

I also think that communities need access to home-grown food as I recognise transport is a problem for many low-income families. The mobile vegetable shops seems a good idea, as are the mini-markets that set up regularly in community halls and centres which have been tried out in some inner-city areas. The govt and county/city councils need to get involved.

I would class 'real' food in its most basic form the difference between making a tomato sauce using onions, garlic, tomatoes, etc compared with opening a jar of dolmio. But I also agree that there is nothing wrong with simply-prepared food. I do think there's a bit of pressure to conjure up exotic-looking meals as opposed to meat/fish, potatoes and veg. But I'm so used to cooking pasta bolognaise / risotto / whatever now from scratch it really doesn't seem like much of a hassle to me now.

Not related, but thought i'd like to share this!

I treated my dd to a pack of jelly tots when we went to get our paper at 8.30 this morning. She opened them straight away and has been playing with them all morning, one or two have found the way to her mouth and the rest have been distributed in various bowls and are 'cooking' in her play oven. A few minutes ago she came and asked for some strawberries, i said we didn't have any but offered her a bowl of raspberries, she's polished them all off and been back for her second bowl!!

I wonder if we filled all the sweety wrappers with raspberries and blackberries, those children who are 'picky eaters' would enjoy them just as much!

Just come back for third bowl

Do you have to really go out of your way to get good, unpolluted fresh food? no - fresh food is fresh food - i cant start worrying about whethr the fish i am eating is full of mercury or the apples are full of pcp's - i would turn into a person paul mckenna would have to fix becuase i would become obsessive

Does buying fresh food and the consumption of time involved with producing meals put you out of pocket? err no. ont really understand this quetion. fresh food costs money - lots of it and when your on benefits with debt hanging over your head to boot - its more economical to buy cheapo crap.

What do you think you need to spend each week to feed your family fresh every day? too much. 5 portions of fruit or veg a week multiplied by 5 people - i would like some disposable income thanks.

Why do you think it is that we have such a pathetically non-existent food culture in Britain, as opposed to, for example, France or Italy, where the vast majority of the population eat wonderfully good food. i think we do have a wonderful food culture in britain - i think its for a certain socio-economic group predominantly. just for those reasons - there are the exceptions to the rule, people who can cook pulses and feed a family of 5 and only spend £3.50 however for most i suspect the reality is 7 p beans, spaghetti tomatoes in a tin. 25p loafs. big bag of ready to fry chips - becuase they are only just over a £1 for 5lb.
when i was on the bones of my arse i did buy fruit occasionally when i could afford it. i always bought a tray of 8p yoghurts becuase its good snack food and cheap. but i never tasted other cheeses, rarely if ever had fish its too expensive, anything thats ground up chicken feet and arsehole covered in breadcrumbs is really value for money - especially when you hide behing the settee when the money man comes

What kind of objections have you heard people giving to the idea of eating well? money - thats it and i wouldnt phrase it as an objection rather than lack of choice

What do you do with your kids while you are cooking and preparing food, especially if they are too young to help? my kids can cook a basic meal. becuase ifeel its my job to socialise them as a mother.
we very occasionally have fun times with baking cakes. i used to do this for birthdays when i was skint. packet of cake mix for 27p some eggs and a borrowed cake tin from my MIL - me and which ever childs birthday it wasn't made the cake.
Does the amount of time you spend cooking have an impact upon the amount of attention your children get from you? Does this matter anyway?

kids have to know that they cant get attention from you all the time - cooking isnt rocket science and is only as complicated as you make it - s as a working mum with 3 kids and a fab husband theres always a parent available to the kids - however that parent is usually on mumsnet or slouching in frontof the tv after work - so they are not devoid of attention becuase of the cooking but because we are probably fucked after work.

This is one of my fave topics so I had give my humble opinion.
I don't see how feeding ready meals / junk food etc can be cheaper than, for example buying a tin of tomatoes a few veggies and some pasta and being able to make a meal suitable for all of us inluding 8 month old DS. I tend to make batches and freeze up to 5 portions for him and get them out to defrost in the morning. I think alot is to do with how you were brought up yourself and also convinience. I don't live near a supermarket and I don't have a car, but fortunately have a good local green grocer which does help.

Haven't read all this post unfortunately but would like to chuck in two penn'orth!
I can't claim to be much of an earth mother when it comes to food as DS1 has very weird eating habits but I really can't understand why people say that fresh food is more expensive than junk food! Every supermarket has "value" ranges these days and often veggies and fruit are included there.
A friend of mine is helping a client with a healthy eating prgramme at the moment. This woman claims she doesn't have money to but healthy food and yet on the first day of her food diary, the main meals were both McDonalds

Just to clarify, as I should have done in the first place, what I mean by 'real food' is any kind of food cooked and prepared at home by yourself as opposed to processed pre-prepared foods that you can buy.
When I said 'unpolluted food' that is my own food snobbery creeping through. I recognise that it is more important to get more people eating fresh food, no matter what its source, what its' potential pesticide content etc than it is to try and turn people into epicureans who spit out anything that doesn't come from Fortnum and Mason.

I do draw the line at meat, though. Please throw rocks at me if you think I am off the mark, but I really think that some of the cheap cuts of meat and chicken carcasses that they sell in the supermarkets are not fit for human consumption.

Actually my main barrier to using "real food" all the time is exhaustion.

Kid B won't eat the same things as Teen A (despite both being weaned the mashed nana/avocado way)

Neither of them likes my veggie food and Thin Spouse doesn't like bananas or nuts or dried fruit...

so "real" food all too often means 4 meals cooked by me

and yes I know we should all be sitting down together for the same bean stew - but life is not like that in my house anyhow

Just to play devils advocate for a moment, but as I have worked in the food industry in the past I would like to say that processed organic baby food, although not fresh as such, is certified by bodies such as the soil association, so especially in terms of meat, you can be sure of what you are getting.
I do however, also grow my own veggies and have had an allotment in the past when I didn't have a garden, this is a great way of getting cheap fresh organic veggies, and there are so many allotments going to waste and ending up being covered in cheap housing!!

Hi
I would say it is down to
.lack of cooking skills /health awareness
.time limit to being able to cook especially things like stews etc
.how quickly fresh food goes off as lot of people cant go shopping every day or two
. location and advertising of farmers markets etc..i have no idea where our local one is?
. price of fresh food in the supermarkets
.conditioning of what you are used to eating
.laziness

I have made that list up from personal experience..I am a lazy cook. Sometimes I will put a lot of effort in but tend to find when I spend the extra [of our v.limited budget] then a lot of fresh food seems to get wasted.

don't want to hijack thread topic but cheap housing is not a BAD thing? our keyworkers can't afford to live in our borough

no one got a genius idea for feeding a fussy 42 yo
13 yo
7yo and veggie mum without cooking multiple meals from scratch then????

I will say that we do probably eat alf our meals of home prepared variety but it tends to be pastas and rice dishes as the base ingredients such as spices etc dont go off as quickly.

I didn't say cheap housing is a bad thing. I said building on allotments is a bad thing

flr,
Tough situation
Maybe you should use it as an excuse to buy an ice cream maker and just eat nothing but different flavours of ice cream every day. Surely everyone would be happy, if a little podgy? Same base mix, different flavours.