Can't afford to eat healthy food...

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I agree MisAdventure

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.

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.

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

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

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?

Well said Lazigirl

Lazigirl excellent post, the lack of tolerance

Good post Lazigirl

Lazigirl excellent post, the lack of tolerance on this thread is quite upsetting. I do wonder how all these useless mothers came to be, since our generation were apparently so perfect when raising them.

My son & dil (both good cooks) certainly didn’t learn how to chop vegetables, it is wonderful that children today are.

Actually, FROZEN vegetables and fruit are more nutritious than fresh

Anniebach all I was try to say was how much it costs to smoke these days and how that money could be put to better use. I wasn't being judgemental just stating a fact I am also on a limited budget and could not afford to smoke (not that I want to) or drink copious bottles of wine either.

I really don’t think smoking is the problem. Fewer people than ever smoke, certainly far fewer than when we were all young. Studies have also shown that it is the older middle class who consume the most alcohol. Accusing families of prioritising these items over their children is unfair, and untrue in the vast vast majority of cases. It creates a further divide between the generations, because here we are again, using every excuse possible to badmouth young families.

Chicken livers in cream and paprika are relatively cheap. They are off the list at the moment as I need to reduce my cholesterol. A vegetable curry is cheap. I spend an hour a day making a big bowl of salad chopped into cubes with a dressing of lemons, extra virgin olive oil and seasoning. I understand how people on a low budget couldn't afford either the lemons or the olive oil. Baked beans on toast is probably nutritious. My friend is married to an Italian and she makes home made pizza most days. I don't feel the dough is a healthy base eaten daily.

Spaniel Nanny you have your opinion and I have mine have you been to some inner city areas and seen the deprevation that happens there it may not be vast but it is true.

sweetcakes I lived in an exceptionally deprived area of Liverpool for a few years, I saw deprivation that haunts me. But what I also saw was mothers who frequently went without food to feed their children, and parents who worked 2/3 jobs just to keep the roof over their families heads. Vilifying them, in my opinion, exasperates the problem by creating a ‘them and us’ attitude which makes it easier for us to not feel guilt at their suffering. It’s much easier to ignore it if we can find a way to blame them.

sweetcakes, you connected smoking to diet, what else has the cost of cigarettes to do with this thread

I agree annie and missadventure (and others). The reasons for not cooking “proper” meals are complex.
Many parents lead stressful lives, working two or more jobs perhaps, or long hours, others have health issues, or anxiety issues, others have low income and lurch from crisis to crisis, others are dependent on drugs or alcohol.
They may not have proper cooking facilities, may not have experience of home cooking, or simply (as illustrated in Hugh Fearnley Whittington’s programme) have no nearby shops selling fresh food, but plenty of take-aways.
Some don’t plan shopping or cooking, they just find themselves with a hungry child at teatime and give them money to buy chips.
Education has an important role in teaching children about healthy eating and giving them the skills to cook simple meals. (Not fancy showstopper cakes!)