Panorama tonight - ultra processed foods

[Beobloke]

Cooking from scratch for a family more often than not involves cooking multiple variations of a meal or multiple dishes. Unless you've got a special gift or especially biddable children it takes time, money, know-how, ready access to a range of fresh foods, tolerance for friction at the dinner table. I mean lots of people manage it but let's not pretend it's not a ballache.

Genuine question, as I do not have children - when did cooking multiple meals become a thing? When I was a child, the two dinner choices I was given were “eat it or go hungry” and every friend and family member I have ever asked about this has said that the situation was exactly the same when they grew up.

I have always hated liver and haven’t touched it since I left home over 20 years ago. However, when it was served up to me as a child I drowned it with brown sauce and ate it, as I was hungry and knew for certain there would be no second option.

 

[SteveS1]

Sorry, I disagree.

Going back around 15 years we had an extension in our old house which meant our kitchen was out of action for nearly 3 months. We had to wash up in the bath and we had a microwave, and that was it. Now, obviously like good community people we made sure the local pub did well out of our time of need at the weekends but, during the week we were forced to buy whatever we could that could be done in the microwave.

We found a few healthier options but they were very few and far between, but we did our best not to buy the very worst stuff. By the time the kitchen was back in action, we observed two key outcomes of this time - firstly my eczema was noticeably worse than it was at the beginning and, secondly, our weekly shop was costing us around £55-60, compared with around £40-45 normally.

Consequently I have since viewed the opinion that eating healthily costs more as utter poppycock.

Your post looks very confusing. I suggest you go and check out some of today's prices. The only food that has not got seriously more expensive is also not particularly healthy and the real high sugar/carb muck is as cheap as ever comparitively. Things looked quite different five years ago, never mind fifteen.

I would also add that cooking stuff from scratch if they can, or have the time, is great, but the cost of energy has also given people additional cost. Ready meals, take-aways and other fast solutions are not just popular for their taste shaped addictive qualities. All too often they provide time pressed, hard up households a viable, practical solution.

 

[dweezil]

There are lots of cheap, healthy foods for cooking from scratch: oats, potatoes, beans, lentils, kale...But it's a false economy if you're cooking for a family because you are going to be throwing half of that shit out, or else waging perpetual war on your children. It isn't just that the frozen chips and burgers are cheap, tasty and easy to cook it's that you only have to cook one meal, it will all get eaten, and there will be peace at the dinner table. Guarantee none of the food moralists here have cooked for a family 7 days a week. Cooking from scratch for a family more often than not involves cooking multiple variations of a meal or multiple dishes. Unless you've got a special gift or especially biddable children it takes time, money, know-how, ready access to a range of fresh foods, tolerance for friction at the dinner table. I mean lots of people manage it but let's not pretend it's not a ballache.

Remember well those days of cooking 6 different veg; at one time when i did a roast dinner 3 different gravys were required.

Even now as adults we often do different veg. It's not too hard once you get used to the idea.

Does the concept of leftovers still exist? i can't think of much we throw away.

 

[Ponty]

A couple of things:

1. When we were kids, there were no meal choices. We ate what was put in front of us, which in my case was a home cooked meal. What we were having for dinner wasn’t open for discussion or debate.

2. When we were kids, dad went to work, mum looked after the house and us kids, including all cooking. Yes, she therefore had time to prepare home cooked meals. She also had a (modest) weekly allowance / budget to work to. We’ve gone wrong since then insofar that both partners typically now work, so can see how convenience can play a part. Great if you can afford it, convenience costs.

 

[dweezil]

Genuine question, as I do not have children - when did cooking multiple meals become a thing? When I was a child, the two dinner choices I was given were “eat it or go hungry” and every friend and family member I have ever asked about this has said that the situation was exactly the same when they grew up.

I have always hated liver and haven’t touched it since I left home over 20 years ago. However, when it was served up to me as a child I drowned it with brown sauce and ate it, as I was hungry and knew for certain there would be no second option.

It's so much easier now, grew up with a Rayburn and most of our food was from the garden; now we've got a wide cooker and ten small saucepans plus 15 different veg in the fridge.

It's no hassle to bung in an assortment of veg.

Worth retrying liver, thick slices, well pink in the middle maybe rolled in a spicy mix first.

 

[SteveS1]

Remember well those days of cooking 6 different veg; at one time when i did a roast dinner 3 different gravys were required.

Even now as adults we often do different veg. It's not too hard once you get used to the idea.

Does the concept of leftovers still exist? i can't think of much we throw away.

Indeed but I can also remember the days of single income families with stay at home parents, mortages/rent that did not require two incomes to cover and so on. That has about as much relevance to the rapidly worsening situation people are up against today.

My other half volunteers for CA in what most would regard as a "well to do" area. These issues are very real and ballooning. The idea of people on low incomes that are falling ever further behind, cooking healthy meals every day with hours they do and against the galloping inflation they face, is just fantasy with a pinch of victim blaming.

 

[Ponty]

Indeed but I can also remember the days of single income families with stay at home parents, mortages/rent that did not require two incomes to cover and so on.

Chicken and egg. I’d suggest the proliferation of the dual income family in the 80’s / 90’s was a key factor in driving up the market making it now pretty much mandatory aside from the very wealthy. This is clearly having an impact on diet and health.

 

[SteveS1]

A couple of things:

1. When we were kids, there were no meal choices. We ate what was put in front of us, which in my case was a home cooked meal. What we were having for dinner wasn’t open for discussion or debate.

2. When we were kids, dad went to work, mum looked after the house and us kids, including all cooking. Yes, she therefore had time to prepare home cooked meals. She also had a (modest) weekly allowance / budget to work to. We’ve gone wrong since then insofar that both partners typically now work, so can see how convenience can play a part. Great if you can afford it, convenience costs.

What are you talking about? You had a priviliged upbringing, as I did. Not because our parents were special but because the economic circumstances were very different. No way would my folks have been able to do what they did in this environment. The thing that has gone wrong, is that this is what economic decline looks like. Those least able to sustain it are affected first and that grows.

Meanwhile the well insulated put their own good fortune purely down to their own special ability, rather than the whole picture. It helps them when kicking down and feeling smug to frame it in a way that those worse off and up against far bigger issues than we faced, somehow deserve it.

 

[SteveS1]

Chicken and egg. I’d suggest the proliferation of the dual income family in the 80’s / 90’s was a key factor in driving up the market making it now pretty much mandatory aside from the very wealthy. This is clearly having an impact on diet and health.

Oh do tell, who exactly encourages that? Who profits and where do their donations go to make sure it perpetuates?

 

[Seanm]

Genuine question, as I do not have children - when did cooking multiple meals become a thing? When I was a child, the two dinner choices I was given were “eat it or go hungry” and every friend and family member I have ever asked about this has said that the situation was exactly the same when they grew up.

I have always hated liver and haven’t touched it since I left home over 20 years ago. However, when it was served up to me as a child I drowned it with brown sauce and ate it, as I was hungry and knew for certain there would be no second option.

There's a bit more give and take these days: my kids are adventurous and will try stuff, if they still hate it after a couple of goes we don't persist. We move on the next thing, or cook in a way that allows the dish to be tweaked for one or other of them. I would say it's more doable than in the past because there's more food choice, both in terms of ingredients and dishes. It's still a ballache, but preferable in the end to the kind of joyless experience of food and family that you describe. I don't think there's much appetite for that kind of thing any more. Apart from anything else it requires a particular kind of social setup that barely exists these days.

 

[Bob McC]

There are lots of cheap, healthy foods for cooking from scratch: oats, potatoes, beans, lentils, kale...But it's a false economy if you're cooking for a family because you are going to be throwing half of that shit out, or else waging perpetual war on your children. It isn't just that the frozen chips and burgers are cheap, tasty and easy to cook it's that you only have to cook one meal, it will all get eaten, and there will be peace at the dinner table. Guarantee none of the food moralists here have cooked for a family 7 days a week. Cooking from scratch for a family more often than not involves cooking multiple variations of a meal or multiple dishes. Unless you've got a special gift or especially biddable children it takes time, money, know-how, ready access to a range of fresh foods, tolerance for friction at the dinner table. I mean lots of people manage it but let's not pretend it's not a ballache.

Utter rubbish!
What a snowflake view of meals.
My three kids all ate a family meal every day 7 days a week round the table. Meals were only ever eaten around the family table. Everyone ate whatever I or my wife had prepared. They weren't forced to eat, but there was no alternative if they didn’t eat it. That was fine. I for instance won’t eat broccoli so if it’s the only veg I don’t eat veg.

 

[Seanm]

Remember well those days of cooking 6 different veg; at one time when i did a roast dinner 3 different gravys were required.

Even now as adults we often do different veg. It's not too hard once you get used to the idea.

Does the concept of leftovers still exist? i can't think of much we throw away.

We're more and more veggie so we've moved away a bit from the idea of one central meal: lots of veg and people can pick and choose. But it needs planning, a way to restock the fridge every few days, lots of pots and pans and space. Time and money in other words.

 

[Bob McC]

Remember well those days of cooking 6 different veg; at one time when i did a roast dinner 3 different gravys were required.

Even now as adults we often do different veg. It's not too hard once you get used to the idea.

Does the concept of leftovers still exist? i can't think of much we throw away.

Unbelievable!

 

[Seanm]

Utter rubbish!
What a snowflake view of meals.
My three kids all ate a family meal every day 7 days a week round the table. Everyone ate whatever I or my wife had prepared. They weren't forced to eat, but there was no alternative if they didn’t eat it. That was fine. I for instance won’t eat broccoli so if it’s the only veg I don’t eat veg.

No offence Bob but you're a thin-skinned, crotchety old bastard. Your way of doing things is not going to be for everyone.

 

[Bob McC]

True.
However I didn’t recognise any thing at all in your post as relevant to my family experience.
But it isn't as hard as some are trying to make out, nor as uncommon.
I actually think families eating together around a table is vital for social development.

 

[flutteringwow]

Utter rubbish!
What a snowflake view of meals.
My three kids all ate a family meal every day 7 days a week round the table. Meals were only ever eaten around the family table. Everyone ate whatever I or my wife had prepared. They weren't forced to eat, but there was no alternative if they didn’t eat it. That was fine. I for instance won’t eat broccoli so if it’s the only veg I don’t eat veg.

Thank god I had better parents.

Deciding to be a vegetarian from an early age, I am so grateful that my mother helped me to do that, and prepared alternative foods for me rather than telling me to go hungry as I couldn't eat what she was eating.

I actually believe forced occasions on a daily basis is not a good thing at all, it certainly didn't work for me in the 80's/90's and I saw the pressure of the 'rule' structure cause more problems than it solved. Its an old fashioned notion that was built in a different time, while it may have had some form of social development 'back in the day' as exposure to a larger universe was a lot more restricted, it certainly isn't now.

Making an 'occasion' out of something, say once a week, a Sunday gathering, allows exploration and grounding at the same time and is a better solution , especially considering both (if present) parents have to work all hours to pay the bills. Putting undue pressures on parents, and children, to formulate a 6pm ritual bound by rules and regulations is unnecessary, as many folk who don't do this grow up fine, and it's certainly evident those that did, often didn't.

 

[Beobloke]

Your post looks very confusing. I suggest you go and check out some of today's prices. The only food that has not got seriously more expensive is also not particularly healthy and the real high sugar/carb muck is as cheap as ever comparitively. Things looked quite different five years ago, never mind fifteen.

I don't need to "go and check out some of today's prices" - I do the shopping once a week!

Meat comes either from a local farm shop or some in bulk once every couple of months from Costco, Veg comes from a different local farm shop and the rest from Lidl, apart from cheese which comes from M&S - we treated ourselves to their Cornish cheddar during lockdown and can't seem to give it up! Ironically, though, it is no dearer than a posh cheddar from any of the supermarkets, and cheaper than the cheese counter at the local village deli.

Yes, of course the cost of that weekly shop has gone up - it's now £65-70, but so has the cost of the unhealthy rubbish.

 

[flutteringwow]

I don't need to "go and check out some of today's prices" - I do the shopping once a week!

Meat comes either from a local farm shop or some in bulk once every couple of months from Costco, Veg comes from a different local farm shop and the rest from Lidl, apart from cheese which comes from M&S - we treated ourselves to their Cornish cheddar during lockdown and can't seem to give it up! Ironically, though, it is no dearer than a posh cheddar from any of the supermarkets, and cheaper than the cheese counter at the local village deli.

Yes, of course the cost of that weekly shop has gone up - it's now £65-70, but so has the cost of the unhealthy rubbish.

Are you both retired?

 

[Seanm]

True.
However I didn’t recognise any thing at all in your post as relevant to my family experience.
But it isn't as hard as some are trying to make out, nor as uncommon.
I actually think families eating together around a table is vital for social development.

Me too which is why I want the kids to enjoy food and not fight them over it or have them go hungry. We mostly get there through a give-and-take approach but a short cut is to put something tasty in the oven that everyone likes.

 

[Beobloke]

Are you both retired?

No, why?