Can't afford to eat healthy food...

OK We're all supergrans, planning, buying and cooking nutritious meals for a pittance. We are marvels at budgeting and planning, especially when times are hard. No doubt better education and support would help those who don't do as we do, but as I tried to say earlier on, no doubt clumsily, it's not so simple. The reasons why people make what we may consider poor choices for themselves and their families are complex, and the plain fact is, if you have more cash you have more choice, and not just about diet. What about the level of alcohol consumed by older, middle class people. Should we be judgemental about that too?

My priorities have changed over time. With a family to feed on a limited budget, I cooked to balance budget and nutrition.
Now I am cooking for two of us, I am up on money, but down on energy. My priorities are things that are reasonably healthy, fresh and most important, that we enjoy. Frozen vegetables are fresher for small quantities. Then, anything we fancy, we have. Outer current favourite indulgence is Waitrose Essential tiramisu...with a snigger at the word essential

All families who do not eat as grandmothers did is simply because they smoke. Sorted

Cigarettes are roughly £8.00 to £10.00 per packet if that's a packet a day we'll say at worst £70.00 a week and that's just one parent! I would say £70.00 was a decent budget to feed the family on for a week after all it only goes up in smoke doesn't it.

I guess all of us oldies hark back to the 1960s where our schooldays were very different to today, where you either loved or hated school meals, they were wholesome but some kids hated them ( the skinny ones) . I do remember one or two overweight kids, most of us had to walk or bike to school and PE was obligatory.
It does not cost extra to cook using fresh ingredients but it does take some more effort and basic cooking is not rocket science, even I can do it.
From day one modern mums get it wrong, they ask the kids " what would you like to eat darling " surprise surprise kids choose unhealthy options the use pester power to get it.
The only option I ever had was " take it or leave it", mum was definitely in wartime ration mode, we ate well but choices were very limited.

I agree MisAdventure

I think poverty often goes hand in hand with other issues.
Its too black and white to say everyone 'should be able' to prepare and cook wholesome food.

For many years I worked lo g hours. Out of the house by 7am and back in at 6pm. However I spent Saturday mornings batch cooking, always made large quantities of pasta sauce from scratch, I could make a chicken do at least 3 meals plus stock for soup. A lot of parents work long hours but a little preparation and planning means you can have a home cooked meal on the table very quickly.

We are fortunate not to be on a tight income but never-the-less, some meals we eat work out about £1.50 per head. Particular favourites are Spanish omelettes, Indian style black eyed beans with veg like courgettes and brown rice and pasta dishes like penne and arrabbiata sauce. We choose to eat meat about 3 times a week, not every day and then go for good quality meat. I used to live on ready meals when I worked but never go near them now.

I fear there are new generations of people with no idea how to cook! Are there still home economic/ food tech classes? Are they compulsory? When there are kids who have no clue what vegetables are , can't name them in their raw state, the country is in real trouble! I don't believe you can't eat well on a budget, it's about education! My daughter can cook because I showed her, I can cook because I was shown as a kid. My dgd helps me in the kitchen and with shopping, so knows what ingredients i buy to make the food she loves.
The food the kids are served in schools and hospitals is of such poor quality it appalls me. How my very poorly dgd was meant to get better fed on a budget of £1.24 a day I've no idea. I fed her home cooked food.

I'd like to proffer another view here.
I taught Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE) for seven years or so in a very middle class area. The curriculum is designed to help pupils to develop the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to keep themselves healthy and safe, and prepare for life and work; this includes teaching about healthy eating and, specifically at Key Stage 5, how to maintain a healthy diet, especially on a budget.
I was given a great deal of leeway by my head to devise my own curriculum and I included some basic old fashioned 'cookery' lessons. When teaching the older teenagers to identify, chop and cook vegetables for a soup I was shocked to find most of the teens had no idea what many of the vegetables were, had never handled a chopping knife and had never had a home made soup. None of them had heard of turnips and swedes, couldn't identify lentils or various dried beans and some of them didn't even know that chopping onions causes eyes to water. In discussion it was revealed that very few of their parents (mostly working middle class) cooked from scratch and in fact it was very common for pupils to 'cook' their own microwaved meals in the evening and eat at different times to their parents.

ALL school children should have cooking lessons in first 2-3 years of secondary school. Everyone has to eat so everyone should learn to cook & they can earn easy healthy recipes that way too.
To be fair cooking was the only lesson I really enjoyed at school & even though I learnt from Mum & Gran I still remember those lessons fondly & still make omelettes the 'French' way they taught me & (I can't believe I still do this!) run my finger round egg shells to get last bit of egg white out.
MY GC love cooking & are getting rather good at it. My 13 year old GS makes my Chinese chicken better than I do!

You do not have to be poor to be struggling with long days and small children and struggling to cope. Plenty of people are doing that at every level of income and some of them still manage to provide their families with good nutritious food.

So many people are suggesting it is lack of time that stops home cooking. Yet in fact it is often quicker and easier to cook a meal than buy ready meals or trail out to take- aways.

In my working days I could throw a casserole together in less than 10 minutes. Lump of diced frozen meat straight from the freezer, tin of tomatoes, a few dried onions, stock cube, herbs or spices, water. Shove in the oven with a couple of potatoes on the top shelf. Set the delay cooking start timer, something every cooker including cheap ones had in the 1970s and 80s and when I got home I opened the door to the smell of supper, cooked and ready to serve. Double the amount. Freeze half and another meal ready at 10 minutes notice. Nowadays you can use slow cookers.

As others have suggested, baked potatoes, omelettes, soups can cook very quickly. Just as quickly as heating successive ready meals or heating things through from frozen in an oven.

I just want to comment that children ARE taught how to chop onions and other vegetables at school. I regularly help out at my DGS's primary school and part of the year 3 syllabus is to learn how to safely slice up (using the 'bridge' method) onions, carrots, mushrooms and other vegetables and herbs, stir fry them (over a single burner gas camping ring) and make themselves a vegetable wrap. The teacher insists that every pupil has one bite of the wrap then if they don't like it they can leave the rest. The most unpopular ingredient is mushroom! They also study healthy eating choices.

It’s a combination of laziness and lack of cooking skills and the poor kids suffer. Nothing wrong with the occasional bit of junk food but it’s sad to see kids being taught bad eating habits. Not sure they’ll live longer as we are told people will

When mine were little I worked full time and made time at the weekend to cook up shepherds pie, casseroles etc. To freeze for meals during the week. For the price of a few takeaways you can get an electric pressure cooker and cook cheaper cuts of meat, and all sorts in a fraction of the time, and electricity. The nearest I get to junk food is making sticky ribs and chicken wings, in 20 minutes in it, delicious with roasted veg or potatoe wedges, or salad, yummy.

It seems to me that families also spend inordinate amounts on bottled drinks of all kinds. Carbonated sugary drinks contribute hugely to the obesity trend. We are not exactly poor but all my family, including the grand kids drink tap water all the time (apart from special occasions and often even then), it is the only thing that will really quench a thirst and still costs hardly anything. If you wean yourself off sugary drinks, you´ll never want to go back to them. And I shudder to think how much keeping us all in bottled water for the recommended 2 liters a day would add to the family budget!

We can talk about it , make ourselves feel good but it won’t change a thing. I have never lived in a high rise flat, my daughters were able to play in a field near the house, when babies lay in their prams in the garden, walked to school, never took them to a burger bar,certaintly couldn’t afford take away meals. Never left them with child carers.

Things change with each generation.

I think one or two are choosing to see snobbery that's not there. I'm certainly not judging anyone for not knowing what to do with the likes of pearl barley! I know that's largely down to your upbringing, and I was 'lucky' enough to have a mother who was frequently extremely hard up so meals just had to be both cheap and from scratch - no alternative then.

But I do think there are some who just don't like the taste of 'proper' food, and won't eat it - certainly children who've only ever been given the likes of pizza, nuggets and chips. And that isn't necessarily down to lack of money at all - a dd had a friend who'd only eat that sort of stuff. Her parents weren't remotely poor, but since her mother didn't like cooking that was more or less all she'd ever been given.

There are so many cookery shows on TV - I can't say I watch them, but do any of them ever feature cheap, tasty meals that aren't hard or complicated to cook from scratch? And that don't involve one or two more expensive ingredients you have to go and buy specially, and hardly ever use again?

How about a MasterBudgetChef series? Would anybody watch it?

You have saved me a post Day 6. I have noted that all the rented properties by me, with families, have cigarette ends piling up on the path. The same parents on their mobile phones completely ignoring their kids. My Dad gave up smoking in 1948, he was supplied them free whilst in the Navy, he did this to make sure we ate properly. We were poor, both parents worked although Mum part time but she still cooked from scratch, lots of leftovers.

Getting down, depressed and frustrated when you are struggling to make too little money go too far is so hard - and I do speak from experience, not from any patronising or superior attitude. If you gave children a jacket potato with some baked beans or cheese it would be healthier than a packet or take away, and surely anyone can manage to cook a potato. Most people have microwaves - they don't need to put on a main oven in order to cook so many different foods. Porage fills you up for hours and costs about 4p a serving, while cereals cost 25p. I've just spotted Sheilasue above and realised we are two minds with one thought!

It is so easy to think when you have a little money, when you have absolutely none it’s not.

Well in my experience of poverty, our wits tended to be sharpened by having very little money, What has happened to society that we are excusing people for not budgeting, or living within their means? Being poor means it's OK to feed your kids crap?

It's very tough that some people are poor, but don't forget many writing here have experienced financial hardship too and the depression that can bring with it.

We are in danger of talking ourselves into believing there is a sector of society - 'the poor' that can be excused almost everything, because they have less, even though they live in a welfare state. There must be many, many of us who came from families who were poor but would not face the shame of living on benefits. (In the 50s when stigmas were attached to almost everything, people would do anything rather than admit to the 'shame' of poverty and 'handouts.' People were less enlightened, liberal and much more judgemental.) We hid behind the sofa when the rent-man called. Dad grew potatoes and carrots after his day in the factory and Mum shopped in the market and carried vegetables home. No car, no money for taxis. We ate meat and two veg. Staple fare even if it involved the cheapest cut of meat which my mother would slow-cook and make soup from the bones and left-overs.

It was a physically hard life then too. Loads of effort was involved, and scrimping and saving too.

No one wants a return to that and if life was fair we'd all have money in the bank. But it's not. The left wing tend to use "the poor as their war cry today, even though we have recognised for nearly a century that we have to try and make life fair for those with least. If a family gets £300 in benefits (for example - given above) every week then perhaps a nod towards nutrition isn't too much to ask?

We have to enquire why some people don't seem to get it and are rearing overweight kids. Don't we?

Or do we? Is to enquire and wonder to judge too?

Don’t forget jacket potatoe with beans or grated cheese and if you don’t want to cook it in the oven the microwave will cook it in 4 to 5 minutes. Omelettes are cheap, I like sardines in spring water on toast for lunch. You just have to look about Lidl is great for shopping on a budget.
My mum went through the war. Food then was very limited she taught me to cook and have followed a lot of her recipes

I'm with Rosina here. I worked clinics attached to schools/children's centres in a Northern town. I also worked with local authority and Barnardos Family Centres. It was commonplace for toddlers to be weaned onto bottles of highly sugared milky tea and Greggs pasties. Mum would bite the corner of the pastie and then let the bairn suck the contents. The Family Centres ran cooking and nutrition classes, but the effect never generalised to home. Frozen chips, pizzas and chicken nuggets were the staples. Yes, most of the families were on benefits, but the mothers nearly all smoked, thought it normal to drink cans of lager through the day and had Sky TV. I'm not talking about a minority either, it was the norm. I'm sorry, but that's not poverty, it is cultural! We are so keen to be seen as 'non-judgemental' that we fail to condemn the harm done to children.

I have known of families where money is so tight that even energy on the meter is accounted for. And cooking from scratch can cost more in gas/electric than sticking a few things from frozen into the freezer and still having enough on the meter for a shower. I admit these cases are not the majority.

For a lot of people it's not just a case of being lazy either, more a case of if that's how you were raised and you're fine then it seems perfectly acceptable.

For others I know, where both parents work full-time, then pick up kids from childminders and don't get home until 6, cooking from scratch can take up valuable time spent with their kids, so again, it's easier to chuck a few frozen things in the oven. I think there's a lot of 'time-poor' people these days, and what they and their kids are eating isn't as much of a concern as getting some free time.

I do agree with the point that cheaper foods mean people with a bit more cash can eat more, which is what often leads to unhealthy eating. And I do think there needs to be more education around that. I work in a secondary school and frequently hear kids saying 'this is healthy though miss, says it's got real fruit in it' as they sit and eat sweets/drink fizzy pop. There's a lot of work to do around educating children about healthy diets, even how to make foods such as pizza healthier, they need to be taught how to make healthy versions of the food they like. I agree with a pp who said that food lessons need to be improved, in our school they do a lot of healthy eating lessons, and a lot of cooking lessons, but I rarely see them learning to make healthy dishes.

MamaCaz No people are not given the means to buy a cooker. Councils can give emergency loans but they aren't automatically given and they don't have much money now.
And by 'illegals' I presume you mean people.