A graph

Supposing instead of eating too many cheap calories and being obese, I eat half as many more expensive calories.

Will I be thinner and healthier, but no worse off financially ?

It needs to start in the schools. Children love to cook and often don't get the opportunity at home. Schools could open their facilities to mums and children after school so that they can learn to cook together.

Anno - schools are expensive assets which stand unused for about half the time - they could be used for classes for parents and children, as you suggest, and for many other community uses.

To be fair, I think many school buildings are used outside of school hours for various community events. There are insurance issues that have to be covered and someone has to be employed to 'caretake'. This costs councils money they don't have and that is one of the limiting factors.

In DD's primary school where I was on the Parent Council, even we, as parents of children at the school, had to "do a let" via the council to get the use of rooms for meetings or events. If another group was already paying rent for using some space at the same time, we didn't have to pay. Otherwise we did (where would the money come from from non-profit-making events?) so we avoided using the school building unless we had to.

True thatbags the costs have to be covered as schools pay rates/electricity/gas etc like everyone else as well as the hourly rate for caretaking .

There is no room nowadays for local authorities to subsidise this..they used to. Private schools and academies may be able to do more because often they have some charitable status and may have specific funds available..though most funds are used for their pupils and not the community.

As a former member of a parent/ teacher association we had many problems using the school premises for fund raising events re insurance and caretaking fees, and even , would the caretakers do overtime as no=one else could substitute. This was some years ago but perhaps things don't change.

People using school premises can cause all sots of damage (sadly) and the prime purpose is for the students so that does need to be the priority. If it is a big school & there are lots of lettings it might be possible to hire additional caretaking staff. Caretaker is on duty early in the day so needs to be ready for duty in the morning.

When I was teaching Food Technology, one of our well equipped food rooms was used by an Evening Class group. Each cupboard and drawer was supposed to contain the correct equipment for each unit so the students could set up quickly for their practicals.

Everything had to be sorted out and put back in its correct place the morning after an Evening Class. When numbers fell and the classes were cancelled we heaved a sigh of relief.

Maybe schools could do more, but to be frank, I can't believe the problem is lack of education.
Any adult in the UK who doesn't know that eating a diet high in sugar, fat and processed foods is bad for you must have been living on Mars for the last decade.
And as for how to budget, and how to produce nutritious healthy meals, well there is plenty of info and advice around. Newspapers, magazines, TV, internet, you name it, they all have lots of stuff about food and health.

"To be Frank". Are you, indeed? We have been wondering what had happened to him...

I seriously do think it is a bit rich for Jamie oliver to jabber on about healthy eating , when he has a personal fortune of £150 million.

like it or not a low income is a barrier to healthy eating IMO

Hmmm

I think Jamie should stick to cooking and stop trying to dictate what people spend their money on. He is a chef not a politician. He seems to assume that poor people have no idea how to eat properly, he should take lessons himself from the pensioners who lived through a war and a depression.

Jamie Oliver/Sainsbury's/local markets

BTW, there isn't a local market near me. Even the nearest not very supermarket is twelve miles away. Get real, Jamie.

Some funny comments following that tweet too

chrismse1 does being a chef, or any other occupation for that matter, mean you cannot become a politician?
I am not arguing for or against JO but just think that anyone can be a politician!

I thought they were amusing comments THat Bags !!

Laugh !

My mother in law is a pensioner who lived through the war and is still the most abysmal cook! When I was doing her shopping I used to have to buy awful stuff for her.

When my daughter was at university her friends used to wonder how she could afford to travel to America to see her boyfriend. The answer was that she lived on pasta with a few vegetables and some fruit. Cheap to buy and cheap to cook. Her food bill was about £5 a week

And he is right about people's priorities. I've worked with people who haven't got a lot of money yet turned out to have a massive plasma TV, or a state of the art computer system or a new car. The food they were buying and what they were doing with it came very low down the list.

What do posters mean by 'food' markets? In my local town we have the regular weekly market with stalls selling vegetables, cards and stationery, clothes, plastic foam for upholstery and many other items. The vegetables sold here are much cheaper than supermarkets and, particularly near closing time there are really good bargains to be had. Then there is the Farmer's Market, now that is more expensive, but the regular market, is not.

The problem is, of course, that the regular market is on Monday, 9.00am - 5.00pm, fine if you are unemployed, retired etc or work shifts but for many poorer workers working normal hours, inaccessible.

The television graph is interesting, and I get Jamie's point, but when proper research was done into television size the main determinant was not income but education, the better the education the smaller the television, the fewer you had and the less likely you were to watch it.

Have any of you seen the blog 'A girl called Jack' in which a temporarily unemployed single mother explained how she fed herself and her son on £10.00 a week? Well here is her reply to Jamie Oliveragirlcalledjack.com/2013/08/28/i-didnt-need-a-hug-jamie-i-needed-a-fiver-the-independent/

The point Jamie fails to get was illustrated in the first programme about putting modern claimants on the benefit conditions of 1949. One family had been moved to a house with a garden and the garden was a tip. They were given help and instruction and the mother in the family commented, 'We have only ever lived in high rise flats, we have never known anyone with a garden, how can we be expected to know how to look after garden when we suddenly have one'

The same can be said of many families at all levels, Their parents have fed them on ready meals, they have not been taught to cook at school. How can they be expected suddenly to cook from scratch and on a budget and know how to shop strategically if they have no experience of it. How far are our generation responsible for this? How many of our children live on ready meals because their grasp of cooking is nebulous?

Flick perhaps the show when it starts will help poor people to learn to cook? It has to be given a chance.

Imo JO has as much right to his opinion as we do, the fact that he is rich does not mean he has forgotten what it is like to be poor and I wonder how many people would watch such a programme if it was not fronted by a sleb?

My mother and mother in law both lived through the war and both were rubbish cooks. I think it is wrong to assume that not being able to cook is something new.

Many of us could help those on small incomes find ways to save money but would it always be welcomed?

I am not sure being poor means you do not know how to cook or that being rich means that you can! All sorts of people are good at cooking and all sorts are disasterous!

Any 'educative' programme aimed at a socio-economic group is doomed to failure IMO.

It might be better if celebrity master chef gave the contestants a limited budget and a family of four to feed for a week! 21 meals on £80. That would fox them!

It would have to be on less than £80 wouldn't it?

Well, depends on average budget I suppose. Was not just thinking of those on bare minimum but hard pressed families with earned income. £20 pw per head for food??

I think that is a great idea for a programme nanej I think you should suggest it to whichever channel JO is not on.

They could start with a reasonably generous budget then reduce it each subsequent week until they were really on the breadline. The winner to be whoever could continue to produce meals that were nourishing, tasty, and affordable.