Too poor to eat properly

In any case, food is food.It doesn’t have to be home made lentil and chicken carcass soup.Protein, carbs and a bit of fruit and veg is fine.Children have school meals at lunchtime.
I had a poor upbringing with a Mother in full time work.
Meals were often a meat pie and canned soup, chips, or just cheese on toast and a banana ( suited me!) It’s all food.
Neglected children are another matter entirely.

Some people are keen on referring back to the "good old days" when mothers and grandmothers cooked healthy, nutritious meals.

No doubt some people were comfortably off and lived quite well but significant numbers of people had poor housing and sanitation and also suffered from poverty-related diseases such as rickets, TB, bronchitis, etc. It was not all rosy, and the current increasing numbers of people on the breadline is starting to affect people's health once more.

Perhaps it suits some people to shrug this off on the grounds that these are merely "excuses for the lazy" but my own feeling is that the decisions made by this government, such as cutting benefits and making them more difficult to access, and starving local councils and vital services of cash plays a very large part.

I also agree with those that say the cost of housing is having a severe impact, even for people on average salaries.

In April 2017 the Sun - hardly a left wing rag - reported:

"BRITS renting outside of London now spend more than half of their disposable income on rent.

"The average rent in the UK now stands at £761 a month, with those in London forking out an eye-watering £1,879 for a place to live."

and

"With rent prices rising by 63 per cent in the last ten years, house prices inflating and continued low interest rates, it is becoming harder and harder for anyone to put away enough cash to get on the property market."

Unfortunately many of the young have young parents who have not been taught the basics themselves.
Some come from broken families or have been through the care system. Whilst I agree in principle that it is not the schools responsibility in some cases it is the only constant in these young people’s lives.

Again I ask, why is it yet another responsibility of schools? Parents? Grandparents? Where does their responsibility lie?

Teach home economics in school

Buy nuggets and chips from Iceland?

A couple of years ago, we were in really dire straits (without the kindness of some GN members, our Christmas would have been very bleak indeed).

We would actually walk round Lidl with a calculator to see if we could have a small jar of coffee.

However, I was able to produce meals, chicken thighs (a large pack of which from Lidl were pretty cheap!) featured heavily, in things like chicken hotpot,1 thigh per person, but lots of carrots and potatoes,(We still have it sometimes now, but go mad with 2 thighs each!) as did things like macaroni cheese, and of course what became known as "random vegetable soup"!

But I think there may be 2 different issues here, yes, maybe some people really do not know how to cook from scratch, but also it may be that some others are just without funds while waiting for their benefits to be sorted?I

Lentil and bacon soup is filling, cheap and nutritious, but if you don't have the ready money to buy the ingredients, what can you do?

Right, we should spend more on preventing poverty, that's us, not the government. It comes from our taxes and if the government pays out more we pay more taxes. How will we get people to vote for that? LibDems promised to put a penny on taxes to give to the NHS and people didn't vote for them. How do we persuade people to vote for an increase in welfare? Please don't castigate me, we don't pay enough taxes for all the things people think the government, any government, should provide. I don't have the answer.

Ps agree that using foodbanks is a necessity and not a lifestyle choice.
(Sorry, Lily, don't understand your post!)

Even taking on all of the above and credit to our virtuous and thrifty parents and grandparents. Why aren't we to blame if we didn't teach our children and grandchildren. I'm not an expert or interested cook but my 3 AC can all cook well from scratch as can my 21 and 18 year old GDs.
As a retired teacher it was my job to teach my own children to cook, while teachers are responsible for the maths, language, reading, science, etc, etc, etc.

Roundar waywe have alady giving outslow cookers

Slow cookers are an economical way to cook but first you have to buy one.

And of course up to 2 hours at a time on the phone, waiting to be put through to the dwp, sometimes three times a week, depending on how much wrong info they give you..

Don't forget having to actively prove that you've been jobseeking for 35 hours a week into the equation.

Low income families pay more than that for their fuel if they have prepaid metered supplies Nonnie. I accept people can do what they like with benefit money but I was very frustrated working with families putting cigarettes and alcohol before putting a meal on the table. Having said that many had no table or cooker either.

I can remember my own mother telling me how they went hungry as children and how the uncles would go poaching to get trout or a rabbit. Her family even 'shared' funeral clothes they had so little. I don't pretend to have any answers. I have survived on next to nothing in the past, but have always had utensils, a cooker, access to home grown vegetables that I grew myself and a good sound knowledge of cookery.

It's easy to talk about managing to make meals from scratch from practically nothing but poverty can also be depressing and people lose the wherewithal to make things happen, to source cheap nutritious food and cook it. Living on cheap food could also lead to a loss of energy - the type of food provided by food banks is not fresh food; it may be good, but fresh fruit, vegetables are not allowed to be donated.

Sorry Ellan, I agree, Greed has taken over, I thought the Thatcher years were as bad as our generation would see, how naive was I.

I'm glad my mum's not around to see headings like this as she'd have been permanently in floods of tears. She had a " thing " about always having plenty in------just in case.
Forever baking for everyone and meals that Desperate Dan would have been proud of.
How she did it in the '50's I don't know. It used to upset her greatly to see someone, especially a child, who was poor. It worried her then she'd get an upset stomach.

379 pensioners died last year--------every day ! We're talking about those " younger " ones 60 and over included.

Its hardly surprising that mental health issues are so prevalent.
Its depressing just thinking about it.

I was likening this country to a third world one.
It is greed and it's spread like a disease.
Another area of complaint as far as I'm concerned is heating costs. Why can't bills be capped ? These companies got away with murder, literally, when over 50,000 people died last year when the " beast from the east " hit us.
The government can intervene if they wanted. They're not doing enough to ensure the health and welfare of its citizens.

We can't go backwards.

No Ellan third world countries ha e enough too contend with, it is not necessary for anyone to be hungry in the UK,
It’s plain greed and an uncaring government to blame.

It's shameful, Grandmashe43. Shouldn't the third world countries be helping us out now ?

I wouldn't judge anyone although I have walked in their shoes. We were seriously poor, my mother had little education, did cleaning jobs in school terms and, I later discovered, had pawned and sold her engagement and wedding rings which were the only valuables she owned, poor thing. She was fortunate in that in those days, widows received a pension for life and had support from her sisters. I got a grant for my school uniform and had to queue at a second window in the dining room at school with those few who also got free school dinners. I am right up there with the situation and sentiments expressed in I, Daniel Blake!

What is different now it seems though is the preponderance of cheap food made from cheap additives and the housing shortage. It is appalling that the housing situation has returned to one where landlords can do what they like. One of my enduring memories is of my mother receiving a letter putting up our rent with the rider 'if you won't pay the extra, then consider this letter your notice to leave in two weeks'. One of the Labour governments introduced rent control but the Tories removed this, I can't remember the dates now.

Aldi do actually do packs of cooked rice and packs of pulses, eg. curried chick peas for £1 a time. Also cheaper tinned food such as tomatoes and so on. Without judging anyone, poor diet produces children who don't grow properly, who often have poor behaviour and who don't do as well at school. Later on, poor diet leads to chronic health problems. I think shrugging and saying oh well, it's up to them what they eat is avoiding looking at what choices are made available to them through the political system we have. In France, children eat incredibly well and are fed good food at school and encouraged to appreciate food and to know how to cook it. We could do that too if we supported different political choices that provided proper support for those who need it. That goes for giving grants for cooking equipment too!