How did we get to this?

www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/15/coalition-helped-rich-hitting-poor-george-osborne

Could this be the reason we got to this, whitewave?

Whitewave, CEO of Action for Children, also on the board of Defra.

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/tony-hawkhead

Yes I also read that this morning and agree this will be a huge factor, and likely to get far worse if the next lot of cuts are to go by. £30bn how on earth is that going to happen?

This is from the fareshare website in August.

www.fareshare.org.uk/more-people-are-suffering-from-malnutrition-as-a-result-of-food-poverty/

Isn't it the Autumn statement next week? Doubtless Gideon will tell us how he is going to shaft the poor even more before the next election in that.

A couple of years ago DD and a few others joined a group to help mums budget and cook easy meals from scratch,all went well for a couple of weeks and the classes gradually dropped of, some of the reasons given where they liked to watch daytime TV and couldn't get to the supermarket to do a shop for the ingredients even if DD or pals offered to take them.The idea was closed down and has never been started up again a real slap in the face for the mums who tried to help people get themselves organised with their cooking skills.

You can have little money and still eat well. My strapping young nephew would come in raving about the fish and rice meals that his West Indian colleague's mum used to serve to her large family on a tight budget, plus there'd always be loads of it. And remember "a girl called Jack" and her budget recipes ...

Been there, done that, glamma with similar results.

I remember one session being devoted to 'smart shopping' - in other words, making a little money go a long way. We went through how to make a shopping list because some of them had never done that. One mother said all she did was look in the freezer and count how many pizzas she had left.

DD is given a printout of school menus. The choice is either a blue or red tray, both consisting of meals she would be giving GDs herself. On the odd days that GDs want a packed lunch, usually because they and their friends have planned this, the school rule is, no sweets or fizzy drinks allowed in lunch boxes.

GD1 who is 9 has just had her first baking lesson at school. Empire biscuits which were sold to family and friends for school funds.

Hopefully, someone will decide that basic cookery is an essential skill and it is reintroduced into the school curriculum.

I am sure that most of the Grans on here teach our grandchildren to cook. My 5 year old GS is a whizz at peeling tomatoes to make soup.

It's just a pity that some people can't be bothered and their children and grandchildren suffer.

Our GC love to pick their own sweetcorn and we cook it lightly immediately. Delicious! One tip that was very successful is to grown peas in big plastic tubs. It keeps youngsters quiet for ages, picking all the peas and eating them raw.

The children at the village primary school where I am a governor have a very outdoor focus to their work. They have apple trees and a polytunnel to tend. They harvested the apples and made and bottled gallons of juice; they made jams and preserves from some of the polytunnel produce - all were sold at the local farmers' market opposite the school in the village hall and they have made a tidy sum for school funds. They did engage with the idea of suitable packaging and labels etc., but they also learned about gardening, nutrition, hygiene, teamwork, maths, writing etc. This is what education should be about.

That's lovely Mishap. I doubt if many teachers have the ability to organise something like that. Are there just one or two dedicated people who run it or do parents help?

merlotgran I could have written your post myself. I am another Food Tech teacher who is so glad to be retired. Do you remember the first Technology SATS tests ? Our 14yr old pupils had to 'Design and Make' a healthy cereal bar and include ingredients from a list. The list of these so called 'healthy' ingredients included margarine, sugar, syrup and chocolate. It was a taste of what was to come (no pun intended).
I could also have written your post Mishap. It made me so angry that our knowledge and skills of teaching a practical subject were reduced to such depths, but we were only in the classroom and could not possibly be trusted to teach what we knew the kids needed to know.
I'll stop now before I really get going !!

stillangrytenyearslater

It is very interesting to get the views of teachers and to know that it was not just me as a parent who was exasperated by all this. How frustrating it must have been for those teachers who wished to remain true to their subject and who valued what they had to teach.

Interestingly, in spite of this, my DDs and their partners all love to cook and to experiment with recipes etc. - perhaps that is their backlash.

I've just read through this thread and there are many good points made. I certainly sympathise with the nonsense that was Food Tech for which DD got an A*. All she had to do was deconstruct a supermarket 'salad lunch', design her own and improve it. Lots of fancy presentation notes to go with it as well. She thought it was foolish, designed her own, deliberately put beetroot in the first design so she could improve it by removing it. The A* was achieved because she made her own mayonnaise which I had taught her.

However, that's an aside. The cause of malnutrition in an affluent Western society are complex, but undoubtedly poverty is the main one. Added to that the loss of traditional skills, the devaluing of cooking at home, the dominance of big food and drink companies who impose their own agenda on government, the lack of local shops necessitating an expensive bus ride to obtain food, the lack of markets and the fact that penny for penny 'healthy' food is more expensive and provides fewer calories than junk food, are all factors.

Whilst it's true that there are some feckless parents, I don't think it's helpful to blame the poor for their own misfortune.

If any of us had to hold down two cleaning jobs with antisocial hours, live in a damp flat with hugely expensive heating and survive on erratic zero hours work, I don't think we'd find at all easy to cook nutritious meals.

Yes, tiggypiro. The words 'Design and Make' would make me groan.

One of the activities that the kids used to love and I used to hate was nutritional comparison.

They typed the ingredients of, say, an apple crumble into a computer programme and then substituted low fat spread for butter and sweetener granules for sugar. The nutritional analysis for both products then popped up on the screen and guess which one was deemed to be healthier???

Enough to make you weep!

Rubbish in, rubbish out.

Agreed, MiceElf, with your post of 16.05
It's far too easy to blame the parents. If you have little money to buy food, you cannot buy nutritious food. If you cannot pay for the fuel to cook with, there's no point in talking about nutrition.

I dont think I will ever forget the lady who pushed through takeaway to her DD on the Jamie's school dinners programme.

Not sure what my point is, but I did realise that you can take a horse to water, but you cant make it drink.

I dont mean that the lady is a horse btw.
And she did understand what she was doing by the next series, and was instrumental in helping others understand what Jamie was trying to do there.

You are so right, durhamjen!

The bottom line is that children are hungry. Children should not be hungry. The proiority is to feed children, wherever in the world they are, then attack the underlying causes.

And - while we are talking about the "good old days" - when I went to secondary (grammar) school in 1958, we had "Domestic Science" for one year only, and on that year we had to make the dreaded apron and cap, learned how to make rock cakes, and coffee (actually Nescafé)

We started Latin in the second year, apart from some students who apparently weren't up to that, and they studied German. (I am telling this as it was, not in any way condoning what happened!)

I can cook, but it took a while. My DD, (50) who never had a cookery lesson in her life, is a brilliant cook, as is DGC1 (18). But that proves nothing apart from their particular traits. Anecdotal information like this is interesting, though.

I am, however, involved in Rotary's Young Chef competition, and our local school is outstanding in encouraging and teaching the very successful national contestants in their wonderful Food Technology Dept. Anecdotal again....

The government wants us to blame the poor for their situation and I for one won't go down that road. I agree with those that say the main reason there are increasing numbers of malnourished children is that there are increasing numbers of poor people.

No doubt good education can help with giving information as to what constitutes a healthy/unhealthy diet and how to cook cheap nutritious meals, but it won't compensate for the fact that increasing numbers of people just don't have enough money to live on.

Oh merlot and MiceElf you are going to get me going again !

I won't go down that road either Eleothan

eloethan absolutely - somehow this slide to ever increasing numbers of poor has to stop. What so worries me is that this is the thin edge of a very large wedge. £30bn more cuts must mean more hardship, and I so worry about the NHS as well.

I will not buy this idea of deserving and undeserving poor, I had thought that this disappeared a century ago, but clearly not.

A very nasty ideology is creeping into our society and somehow it must be stopped

mice elf good post (16.05).

And I agree with ariadne that no child should go hungry.

Does anyone have a link to the report?

Are they talking about malnutrition or hunger. There is a difference.

Having enough food to eat is one thing, eating enough nutritious food is another.
Adequate money is needed to buy food and benefit cuts have made this difficult, but parents do need an understanding of what a healthy diet is and the skills to be able to cook such meals.

From the many television programs it does appear that a number of people with enough money to eat healthily do not.

As so many others have said I do feel that the sort of cookery lessons I had were so much better than those my daughter had in the early 1990s.

We learnt basic cookery skills from the start and we did not have the cheap ready meals and takeaways that were around when my children were in school.

My DD's food technology program was as bad as others described including designing fruit bars.
Both my children went to Uni well able to cook for themselves though and did so.
Our generation also ate vegetables much more readily than many families do now. It surprises me how many plates you see in Cafes etc, with vegetables or salads left on the plate. There seems to be a fashion for not eating them.

I think the ready to eat meals producers have a lot of responsibility for this situation. Maybe we have a generation hooked on easy ready meals who are no longer prepared to challenge their taste buds.