Can't afford to eat healthy food...

And people can afford to eat too much because food is a lot cheaper, relatively speaking, than it has been historically and there is a good deal more of it available even to poor people in developed countries.

My post was simply to refute the argument that people give of not being able to AFFORD healthy stuff. Not WANTING to eat it, preferring junk food

I think that is the crux of the matter too. Convenience foods have swamped the market. Iceland ready meals are cheap and for some it's become too much effort to cook with fresh ingredients from scratch. People use remote controls for the TV, they use microwaves or delivery services for food.

I saw a mother open a six pack of crisps in the supermarket the other day and give them to her toddler, sitting in the trolley. I felt so sad. She could have got an eight pack of easy peel little oranges for the same amount and peeled one for her child, and provided her from an early age with a bit of nutritional education and given her the experience of tasty fresh fruit. Instead the little girl got salt and fat. I kept my little ones happy on shopping trips with grapes and bananas. The maternal instinct to nourish little ones seems very lacking. I want to scream when I see toddlers in pushchairs eating bags of Haribo.

It's neglect - of advice and health. .

Yes, it does irritate me when people try to imply that healthy eating HAS to mean things like salmon steaks, organic chicken breasts and blueberries.

I think the problem is often that people who are used to eating a lot of relatively cheap junk food, don't actually like veggies much, if at all, don't know how to make cheap meals from scratch, and maybe even aren't prepared to do a lot of peeling/chopping up - not uncommon regardless of money.

I used to have a comfortably off (largely non cooking) colleague who asked me for a recipe for a particular soup - she complained afterwards that her arm had ached from all the chopping! All it had involved was one large onion, a few carrots and a couple of sticks of celery.

Having been exceedingly broke in the past - thankfully a long time ago - I know I could feed me and Dh healthily on very little if I had to. It would involve a lot of cheaper, seasonal veg, lentils and pearl barley, etc., the cheapest cheese and eggs, and probably the odd chicken, of which every scrap would be used. Chicken and eggs would have to be non free range, of course - I haven't bought non free range for ages - but needs must.

At one point in the very broke past we were practically living on very substantial seasonal-veg soups, with bread and the cheapest cheese. My Dh still loves this sort of soup and I still make it a lot in winter.

I agree with most of what has been said, but (apologies if it's already been said and I missed it in my scim-reading of much of the thread) i feel I need to throw into the discussion the fact that many of the long-term poor probably have to think twice before using the cooker - they are likely to have been put on on the most expensive energy tariffs there are! And that is assuming that they even have a cooker, (or fridge or freezer), as a large proportion of social rented housing is not let with white goods.

Yes, it is still possible to eat reasonably cheaply and healthily without those things, but it might not be quite as easy it first seems.

I do think cookery education is very important you would be surprised at the number of people who can’t cook even a basic meal? it’s true that there are online videos but I think people need help to access them. A lot of the clients we see are on benefits and don’t have WiFi so struggle just using top up mobiles. In addition there is the wider issue of helping people maximise their income, many of the very poorest get the worst most expensive energy tariffs etc and many are living in poorly maintained private rented accommodation which eats up their heating budget.
When I was at school we learned cookery but it was a ridiculous subject! All I ever learned was sweet making ie scones or biscuits whereas the food I really loved growing up as now were the spicy curries, middle eastern fare and Italian meals of my parental and grand parental homes. I was very lucky that my mother and grandmother were excellent cooks and we had Indian friends who my mother used to do their tax returns for (she was an accountant) for free and in return they came to us or vice Versa every Friday and cooked proper Indian meals together, it’s one of the delights of my childhood?
My own 3 DD are fantastic cooks and all my SIL are foodies too so I see my DGC growing up as they all did with a wide variety of healthy food.
For a period when my children were tiny and DH was ill we were on a tiny budget but I used to walk all over town looking for best value fruit and veg, bought stuff from health food shops carefully and was a limited supermarket user. We always managed decent healthy vegetarian meals, breakfast of fresh fruit and toast and a reasonable amount of carefully regulated snacks. But as I said I had been given the benefit of a cooking family which others have lacked
I always imagine how it would be for a young mum stuck in a tiny poorly maintained flat trying to feed her child on the minute amounts that the DWP allows her AND not having had any education in cooking! If you grow up being fed a frozen Pizza or nuggets and chips and had never seen anyone choose chop and prepare vegetables or put together a meal how can you be expected to do this?
In our area a community group called “Community Stuff” offers free or cheap ( £5 for a 6 week course) of cookery lessons for families (all coming to cook together) for older people living alone and for the adult males who often seem not to have been taught to cook anything by parents and maybe after a divorce are left living on micro meals and takeaways?

I did hear somewhere that poorer people can't afford to put the oven on to cook something from scratch. They can buy takeaway food already hot.

Not all mothers are as perfect as the mother’s posting on this thread , you are so judgemental it’s upsetting . Many mothers haven’t heard of peal barley, don’t give free range chicken a thought because their mothers didn’t. Junk food isn’t something which has become a problem overnight .

Now we get Jamie Oliver and Hugh Thingy on tv sorting out the obesity problem. It has become a class thing ,

Sorry if I have upset some X

I find that both interesting and shocking, inish. Interesting because I wonder how true it is and how well it has actually been researched, if at all; shocking because, well, I am not poor but I can't afford to eat takeaways. When I was poorer I couldn't either. The cooker heated the kitchen (which had no other heating) as well as cooking cheap food.

Pearl barley isn't expensive and never has been. It has always been a food of the poor.

But people that poor are a very small proportion of the population. The huge rise in obesity is not the result of just 10% of the population having bad eating habits it is the results of 80% or more having bad eating patterns.

It is nice and easy to talk about 'the poor' and thus distance ourselves from the problem. The problem is actually us. How many of us are overweight and inactive? How many of us, our children, GC, friends and family members are overweight and have poor eating patterns?

Obesity is a problem that we have to address in our own lives, not just see it as a problem of 'the poor'

The problem with judgment is that we condemn people based on a tiny snapshot of their daily life, and it is usually used as a way to make ourselves feel better. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a forum ‘AIBU to be ashemaed of myself because this person does a better job at ......... than me’. Instead we jump on things that we can criticise, and try to shame others.

So you saw a toddler have some crisps. What else has he eaten that day? Could it possibly be that he has a weekly treat after the supermarket?

Do you honesty think mothers (apparently the children’s fathers are not accountable) love their children less than we did? Of course not, they’re doing their best, just as we did. Maybe their methods are different, but the world is different.

I sometimes really feel for the current generation of mums, they don’t seem to be able move without judgement.

Pearl barley, lentils, spuds, cabbage, carrots, onions, some cheap minced meat. Typical ingredients to make a nourishing stew to feed a lot of people cheaply.

On a scout leader training weekend once there were people who didn't know how to begin chopping an onion. Why is that even a thing? It's pathetic.

I can’t stand all the judgemental posts on here. This is largely a matter of education...and I think there is a lot of class snobbery going on. You may be able to think of wonderful things to do with oats and lentils, but a lot of people just do not know where to start. Plus the cost of electricity. Meters running out, are a huge worry to some people. I tad more empathy might be nice from some posters.

I don't condemn people. I condemn stupid attitudes like "I can't", "I don't know how".

Learn how!

This does always make me cross; we've had to really watch every penny in the past and as many have said, fresh ingredients can be bought for little and with some small effort turned into a healthy meal. That's the key - effort. I worked with young people for years and the excuses that came from some families were highly creative as to why the child was fat; however they mostly managed the latest mobile, smoking, and had a car. It was the 'government's fault' that they couldn't afford other food. One boy had whatever the offer of the day was at MacDonald's every single night for his evening meal, and another would 'only eat' frozen chicken pies. It was pointed out that if they weren't bought he couldn't have them but that was met with blank stares. It was easier to put a pie in front of him than washing some vegetables or even buying frozen, which I thought were often healthier as they are frozen very quickly. I do realise some people 'don't know'- but some don't want to know. There are plenty of cookery programmes, community efforts etc. to educate yourself

My grandma had an electricity meter and was careful with every shilling. She was poor all her life. She was also functionally illiterate. She still managed to learn how to cook cheap meals.

What has happened?

Effort.

Well said, rosina.

I am on a 'very' low income due to long term ill health. I buy fresh meat, fruit and veg and Cook from scratch for nearly every meal, occassional fish an chip supper once a fortnight being the exception.
Given the amount of benefits available to families, whether working or not, (average around £300 a week for 2 or more children!), it is a lifestyle choice to continue to eat junk food.
My D has 4 children, 1 is gluten free and 1 has severe dairy, fish, soya, nut allergies. Her husband works full time while she is the main carer for the 11yr old who is also ASD/ADHD.
They still manage to pay all their bills, eat healthily and pay the extra premium for dairy, gluten and soya free foods. Saturday is usually Movie night with pizza or chicken nuggets and chips!
Its choice not finances that dictate food habits.

Stop watching soaps, films etc, and watch Mary Berry?

Anniebach Well said. The assumption that people have freezers, don't have to worry about things like shelf life of foods, don't have to worry about using electricity for cooking etc. Poverty often leads to depression when doing much of anything can be a chore.
Judgmental self congratulation seems to be the theme.

While I agree effort goes a long way, I think education would go even further. Unfortunately we aren’t exactly breeding a nurturing environment for these young families to learn in. On this two page forum alone they have been called lazy and neglectful. They’d probably be absolutely terrified of attending a cookery class or asking a health visitor etc for support for fear of being ridiculed further.

How pathetic is it not to be able to cut and onion? Well sadly that is the situation that person has found themselves in, and mocking them isn’t going to solve the problem.

I wonder how many posters have truly and honestly wonder where the next meal was coming from. It is so easy to think when you have a little money, when you have absolutely none it’s not.

Regardless of class, everyone can eat healthily very cheaply without too much effort. If my GC ask for pizza, I give them a wholewheat pitta each and they make their own with healthy toppings. Oats are cheap as has already been said, so mine also make their own flapjacks. I know not everyone likes cooking but so many dishes take so little effort. If electricity is an issue, plan meals in advance and cook in batches so that if time is tight in the week, it just needs reheating, a healthy and cheap casserole etc will last a couple of days. Stirfrys in healthy oil are good, cheap and quick. So many of us ladies moan about constantly having to watch our weight, so it also puzzles me that so many allow their children to become so overweight ensuring that they will have the same life long weight battles that many of us do. When I took GC swimming, it’s quite sad to see so many obese children, one poor boy had such big man boobs the other boys were being absolutely horrible to him. Is it something that some parents don’t see ?? We all love our kids warts and all, but surely we need them to have healthy lives and not expose them to unnecessary and cruel ridicule from others ?? Very upsetting seeing the humiliation on little faces.

I learned from my own mother how to make something out of nothing and can recall the days of rationing ,It was not how much you could afford more like what you were allowed. As one comment on GN says it is not always what you eat but how much you eat of it
Takeaways in many instances as a 'now and then' are great As a way of life are doing more harm than good.

Thank you Jaycee , I don’t feel a lone voice ?