Tory MP blames food bank use on people not knowing how to cook or budge

Maudi

Why are we are third in the obese table if according to some they hardly have any money to eat. I've never seen so many obese people young and old and I travel all over the UK and don't tell me they can only afford junk food.

When we were young we walked almost everywhere. In the fifties, when I was a child my Father had a motorbike for work, with a sidecar which was attached for us children when we went out for the day. We walked to and from school more than a mile each way, taken by my Mum and accompanied by the younger siblings who weren't at school.

These days children are taken to school by car.

When I lived in London I walked every day because it was often quicker than waiting for a bus. I also walked every lunch tine. Moving to the country was one reason for my weight gain because I drove every time I needed something. There were no corner shops or post boxes within a short distance. I'm sure this is one reason for the obesity in the UK.

That's the thing with budgeting.
It rarely involves "take 2 tablespoons of self raising flour" type ingredients.
Its more of a "take whatever needs using in the bottom of the fridge, then check out the canned food you have".

Of course Dinahmo the roads were significantly quieter than now. It was safer to walk to school from a younger age.

Well, it must be the children of the better off car owners who are overweight then.
Perhaps their parents need advice on how a body needs less to eat if it is less active.

Zoejory

I was utterly useless in my domestic science class.

For my O Level we had to make a chicken dish. I made a chicken salad. My ginger cake had no ginger in it and I presented my orange juice with steam coming off it. I'd made it far too late. I got an E. Apparently my theory was excellent.

As for this absurd man, he is obviously clueless. Is this the one that said you can make a meal for 30p?

The Jeremy Vine panel did think he might have made an error. I just can't see how anyone would think 30 pence a day was enough. Maybe he meant pounds. Which would have just as nonsensical.

No, he really did mean 30p a day. He's made a video about it.

Maudi

Why are we are third in the obese table if according to some they hardly have any money to eat. I've never seen so many obese people young and old and I travel all over the UK and don't tell me they can only afford junk food.

Do you shop in a food desert or a food swamp? The poorer you get the more likely you are to be doing so.

Don't know what it means? No? Then look it up and find out. Ignorance is not an excuse for making such crass remarks. Poverty and inequality are not about morality. They are about poverty and inequality and that is what needs to be dealt with. Any actual immorality is fairly and squarely on the shoulders of those who chose not to educate themselves and then just blame the poor for their poverty.

I will say it again. These posts are disgusting.

Audrey from Buckinghamshire - sounds like a spoof!

I'm not sure what the implication is amongst those who denigrate food bank users.
Is it that they think these people eat a load of junk food then lie in order to be given more?!

If he thinks he could make a meal for 30p then he might like to start calculating just how many meals he could make to feed hungry people from his £219,703.44 expenses.

His expenses were over the allowance, weren't they?
I'm sure I read that somewhere.
Do they have a set amount, even?

MissAdventure

I'm not sure what the implication is amongst those who denigrate food bank users.
Is it that they think these people eat a load of junk food then lie in order to be given more?!

There's a misconception among some that it's simply 'free food' and they believe that's why people use food banks.

I don't know whether they are aware that you cannot just simply walk into a food bank and pick up what you fancy. Another fallacy.

If you look at a typical food bank parcel, it contains ingredients like soup, pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, pasta sauce, etc. Staples on many people's shopping lists.

And I'm sure if the food bank users have the money to pay for the energy required to cook these items, they know exactly how to make a meal "from scratch", and do... probably many times per week.

I know one food bank user who is adept at providing beans on wholemeal toast for her children. She varies it with the addition of chopped tinned ham - which goes a long way when you incorporate it into a meal instead of making it the main ingredient. And sometimes adds curry spice (a big tub which she bought when it was 'on offer') to vary the taste. And then varies the 'meals on toast' with cottage cheese as a topping mixed with a jar of mango chutney which I gave her. She works, she budgets, she manages - just. She simply does not earn enough from the job she does - a job which has to fit in with her duties as a mother. And that - apart from any other reason, is why a lot of people are using food banks. They are just not paid enough money to live on.

MissAdventure

His expenses were over the allowance, weren't they?
I'm sure I read that somewhere.
Do they have a set amount, even?

There is quite an interesting website theipsa.org.uk which gives a breakdown of MPs expense claims. There is no set amount and the majority of their expenses are down to staffing costs which from the few I have looked at seems a pretty even amount across the board give or take a few thousand

Thank you.
I'll have a look.

What planet are people like Maudi on? ALL the cheaper foods seem to be the kinds that put on weight. When , due to avoiding diabetes I followed the health diet recommended by the Walk Away From Diabetes NHS course my food bills went up , and I already ate pretty well ( just too much!) It is shameful that those who are struggling are then shamed and denigrated by those completely ignorant of their plight

Can I just say, again, - Sure Start and other family centres. They ran baby massage, toddler taming, freedom project (for victims of domestic abuse) plus many other helpful enjoyable group activities AND cooking on a budget

Blair was the Sure Start enthusiast. Cameron started closing them, a process continued by every successive Conservative government.

GrannyGravy- like others, we have often posted from different political perspectives but - I can’t recall from extremes. I felt politically homeless in the Corbyn years so I empathise

The reason many children are driven to school, is because their parents drop their children off at scchool on the way to work because they do not have time to walk them to school, and then walk home to get the car to go to work.

In the 1950s, most women did not work outside the home sp had the time to walk children to and from school. It was in their job description.

All this harking back to 'when I was a child' is ridiculous, when my mother was a child, they did not have electricity and the bath was in the kitchen, in my grandmothers childhood........ It all starts sounding like that Monty Python sketch.

As for economic cooking and 'bottom of the fridge' soup fritttata (needs eggs) and so on. For those in absolute food poverty, there is no bottom of the fridge stale veg etc. This is wat those pontificating on basic cooking and budgetting do not understand. There also isn't any money to budget with once the necessary bills are paid.

I do understand about not having a fridge to find bits at the bottom - and I know eggs aren't cheap these days, but they and tinned fish are my main sources of protein.

As I've explained, I do eat frugally, but I have a fridge, freezer, microwave, slow cooker, toaster and an oven/hob. I know lots of people don't or they can't afford the fuel to switch them on. They're are people worse off than I am. That's why I think what that MP said was so ridiculous and out of touch.

growstuff i am sorry i did not make myself clear. I meant people migh have fridges, but every scrap of food that was in it has been eaten so there is nothing left in the veg basket to make into bottom of the fridge soup.

No, he really did mean 30p a day. He's made a video about it

Wow, growstuff Unbelievable.

Planning, budgeting, and shopping are all important when it comes to economising on food, and not all of those is possible when you are working full-time (or worse, running between two or more jobs that pay by the hour). Getting supermarket bargains relies on being free at certain times of day, and it is very often the poorer areas that have no access to cheap markets selling off fruit and veg at the end of the day (assuming that you are free then to buy them at that time).

I don't think you can make a decent meal for anything like 30p; but I can get several meals out of a chicken, and know how to bulk things out with pulses and grains. If I had to, I could plan for a week, making sure that what I had left from Monday would be used up on Tuesday, and so on.

I think that children should be taught this sort of thing at school. It would be good for them later in life and they would learn or consolidate other skills along the way (eg arithmetic, proportions/fractions, creative thinking and so on). Obviously the whole ethos of the National Curriculum would have to change to accommodate it, but it would be great if they could do it for real - plan a few meals, budget for them, shop for the ingredients, cook them and show how they would use the leftovers for the rest of the week. They could do it in groups, to allow for BOGOFs etc, and learn co-operation at the same time.

My children were taught separate things like 'chopping skills', for an hour a week. These weren't much use really (they would have picked them up along the way anyway, as I was a firm believer in collective responsibility for chores), and meant that they came home with a bag of sweaty chopped cabbage or something, that parents had to think of a way to use. I don't think they ever brought back a whole edible dish, other than a traybake of Krispie cakes or similar. They were probably typical of their generation (born in the early 90's), and it's not fair to blame young people for not being able to do what no-one has taught them to do, any more than it's fair to blame older people for not being able to operate the latest technology or find their way around social media.

Sorry, but I really disagree that schools should have to teach budgeting and cooking. Most pupils will have forgotten what they've been taught by the time they come to use any skills they learn. I also disagree that young people can't cook. Cooking and budgeting are life skills which I think most people learn when they need them as they go along.

You can learn cooking skills from you tube videos now. In fact there isn't much you can't learn from there.

As I've said, a lot of people who consider themselves as pretty clued up on nutrician actually have no more idea than anyone else.
It's something that is learned from necessity, I think.

Almost everyone I know under 30 can cook. Some very well

I do wonder on what basis people make these sweeping statements about whole generations. There are people who cannot cook or cook very badly in every generation.

Does anyone remember the tv seris 'Butterflies' with Wendy Craig as a dentists (geoffrey Palmer) who couldn't cook? This lack of culinary skills rang a bell with many people back in the 1980s

In the 1950s, most women did not work outside the home sp had the time to walk children to and from school. It was in their job description.

In the 1950s most kids walked to school on their own, or with other kids who lived near them.