Barbara Ellen is misguided in her faux common-sense pronouncements on eating healthily, “It’s simply harder to eat well when you are poor” (Comment). Families or people living together can have meals together and people living on their own in the main can cook. This may not always be possible but it is achievable some of the time. Buying fresh fruit and vegetables is cheap, especially if you take note of the season and what is abundant at that time of year.
Processed food is poor value in any way that you look at it and is the least healthy option. Making excuses for people is not helpful. We need more education around good, plain cooking and far less advertising of sweets, sugary drinks, snacks, etc.
Successive governments stand by while the need for clear labelling and proof of the harm that sugar does are ignored. Our health service would also benefit if more people ate healthily, but that will only happen if governments will take some positive action immediately, instead of worrying about their own longevity in power.
Making changes in this country is deliberately slow to enable pocket lining. This could and should be changed.
Martin Sandaver
Hay-on-Wye
Hereford
It is not more expensive to eat healthy food. Fresh foods, vegetables and some fruit are cheaper than processed junk food, especially in proper greengrocers rather than supermarkets.
Also own-brands are about half the price of branded goods, wholemeal bread is the same price as white, beans on toast is nutritious, fish fingers are real fish, dried foods such as lentils, soup mix, porridge oats, packet meals etc keep for weeks. As for being too tired to cook, join the club, grit your teeth and get on with it!
Ms Ellen even seems to disparage the microwave oven, although they are a tenth the price of a conventional cooker and use much less electricity. For many foods, they are quick and ideal. If herbs and spices are too expensive, don’t use them! This is not gourmet cooking. A bit of curry powder works just as well.
I’m no cook, but a good budget cookery book such as Cooking in a Bedsit, by your own Katharine Whitehorn, is well worthwhile. I lived alone for 20 years, cooked for myself and I am still in good health at 69.
Geoff Theasby
Sheffield
Barbara Ellen quotes from the Health & Social Care information centre that states that 25% of children in poor areas are obese compared to 11% in more affluent areas. If 75% of people in poor areas aren’t obese, could it be that actually people are eating healthier food than she imagines? A casserole of liver, potatoes, veg and stock comes to about £4 and will comfortably feed a family of four. There aren’t many junk food products where a full meal works out at £1 a person.
Turning to the “exhaustion” factor. The meal I’ve described takes 10 minutes to prepare, then straight in the oven. All in one dish. Make enough for two or three days and freeze some. I’m not sure where Barbara’s comments on the equipment costs come from, either. The savings when using a microwave as opposed to conventional oven are negligible. Indeed, by the time you’ve read all the instructions on the fast-food packets and heated them all individually in the microwave, I’d wager its cheaper and less tiring to cook a casserole in one dish in the oven.
Is Barbara forgetting that the meals I describe have their origins in poverty because they are cheap and easy to prepare?
The advertisers are clearly doing a good job. Barbara’s article does nothing but reinforce the age-old sterotypes about people in poverty and and has served as a reminder to me as to why I hated sociology so much at college!
A good idea would be for more cookery shows giving helpful advice around cooking good and nutritious food on a tight budget.
Robert Pugh
Stockport
